WHY MUSIC?

(in Word)

Music requires coordination of diverse types of thinking.

It is fertile ground for "teaching for transfer."

Music provides many opportunities for teachers to help students see connections between the skills of music and skills employed in other learning activities.

The theoretical basis for this interdisciplinary approach can be found in constructivist theory. "Put another way, this means that experience is the key to meaningful learning - not someone else's experience abstracted and condensed into textbook form, but one's own direst experience. And shared experience is even more powerful. The current interest in the contributions to thought and language made by the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (Thought and Language, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1962) has especially bolstered support for the social interactionist aspects of group projects associated with interdisciplinary teaching and learning. Jeffrey Aaron has written about the Arts PROPEL approach, maintaining that students learn best when they are constructors of their own knowledge and that integrating general music classes with core subjects can improve student learning in production, perception, and reflection." (Music Educators Journal, MENC, March 2001, p.23)

"Research indicates that the brain seeks patterns and this is a basic process. It apparently resists information that is fragmented, personally meaningless, and presented in isolation. Conversely, it is noted that knowledge is learned more quickly and remembered longer when constructed in a meaningful context in which connections among ideas are made." (ibid, p.24)

We know that music and movement, combined with cognitive thinking, engages both brain hemispheres resulting in a more meaningful learning experience.

Music in the Absence of a Music Teacher

Music may be used as a hook that engages children with an alternative entry point for various learning skills. This is not a case for a music program. This is not intended to replace music instruction. What we experience in this interdisciplinary model is music used as a tool to achieve learning outcomes. Music enhances learning because of its sublime intensity. Music engenders memory because it is

FUN.