The National Association for Music Education is all about music, kids, and schools. Music has multiple learning benefits, and two recent studies establish a causal relationship between music and enhanced learning abilities.
Music lessons are superior to computer instruction in the development of reasoning skills.
In 1997, psychologist Frances Rauscher, Ph.D., now at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, and Dr. Gordon Shaw, professor emeritus of physics at UC Irvine, reported that music training, specifically piano instruction, is far superior to computer instruction in dramatically enhancing children's abstract reasoning skills, which are essential to learning subjects such as math and science. Music lessons contribute to the development of the brain and spatial intelligence. Music studies increase reading skills and math proficiency dramatically. The children in the more active and frequent music program not only had better attitudes toward learning, but had significantly increased their reading scores and math performance. In addition, the Rhode Island team found that the children who continued their special music and visual arts classes for a second year continued to improve in math.