I was feeling a bit nostalgic recently and went scrolling through my first year of columns. I ran across April 3, 2013, where I ranted a bit about both making up snow days and standardized testing. I then looked through the following years and found that every year, around this time, my writing turns toward MCA testing.
It’s no secret I find standardized testing a waste of time and money, yet the government continues to push it on students across the country as something they consider to be an accurate measure of student achievement. Ugh.
Anyway, I’ve covered a lot of that in years past, so if you’re on your sixth annual column about testing, you probably figure you’ve heard it all from me. Ah, but I’ve got a new take on it this year, thanks to a recent band concert.
I love the annual March band concert. It features all the bands in the school system, starting with the 5th graders, just learning how to play, all the way through junior high and finishing with the high school band, which nailed their pieces and earned superior ratings in their contest this year. It’s so fun to see the progression all in one night, and I always hope that listening to the high schoolers will inspire the younger kids to strive for that excellence and stay in band.
I was a bit taken aback, though, when I heard that our 5th graders get very little time for band. Each child in band has less than an hour a week in instruction. Understand that across the state and country, this is becoming increasingly common. Music programs are being cut back in favor of more of the core studies. For years, physical education programs have already faced this, despite research that shows our young people need more activity.
Why the cuts in these areas? Schools feel pressure to perform better on standardized tests. (See, I told you I could make a connection!) That means we must spend more time on reading and math, right? Not so fast.
Physical activity helps the brain function better. If I’m stuck while writing, I get up and walk upstairs, do something else that doesn’t involve sitting down, and come back. I almost always get unstuck. I tried this with students while brainstorming one time; we walked up and down the halls. I got some amazing stories!
Music also helps our learning and thinking capacity. While that’s not true for every single person, being exposed to music and taking part in creating and performing it stimulates parts of our brain that otherwise might be unused. The more neural pathways we can create, the better off we are overall.
As these thoughts coursed through my mind (naturally after a break in the concert when I got up and moved around), I sat back down and watched the high school band. I started looking at individuals and noting how many honor students are in our band. There are a lot of students in band who you will also see in the quarterly honor roll lists. Is there a correlation?
Dawn Rose wrote a fascinating article for Newsweek earlier this year about this very topic. There are ongoing studies, but most seem to point to, at the very least, listening to music and, even better, performing music helps brain development and even leads to better social well-being. People learn better how to apply themselves and more teamwork skills.
So might the answer to improving reading and math skills in our students lie in teaching less reading and math, not focusing on those so hardcore to the detriment of these peripheral areas? There are national standards in English and math that all schools are required to follow. While there are standards set up for phy ed and music, they are not requirements. Maybe they should be.
I remember being required to be in band and/or choir at least through 8th grade. I remember having music class in elementary school every day. We also had phy ed each day, along with more than one recess time. Perhaps we should think about shifting back in that direction. The body movement will help improve the health of our students and allow for more cognitive functions to fire away. An increase in exposure to music will work right alongside that.
How can schools make this happen? I don’t know. There are so many government regulations on everything you do these days, and this is a problem both statewide and nationwide. Music and phy ed have been getting squeezed for at least two decades.
We need to work with students who struggle in reading and math, certainly. But there is a breaking point where a kid who has difficulty with those skills, which often leads to dislike of even the mention of them, needs less exposure to them. Find success in other areas, such as music and phy ed, and I have a feeling the benefits that research shows those bring will raise the whole child up to a better place.
More music, more phy ed, better test scores? Give it a few years in a school, and I have a feeling you could see that happen. Test scores in Minnesota are pretty stagnant, despite all the new programs that get thrown at schools. Why not try this idea out? There’s really nothing to lose and a whole lot to gain.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is idiotropic, which means introspective, as in, “The reader found himself idiotropic while reflecting on the fascinating new idea he read in the newspaper.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!