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June 28, 2005

Battle... Won. The War???

Over the last two weeks advocacy organizations have been rallying to the defense of PBS and funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. On Friday, advocates cheered as the proposed $100 million cutback was restored in Congress. An important battle won. On Sunday, Frank Rich pints out in his New York Times column the advocates may have won the battle but the war is still very much in play with much greater ramifications for the arts and public broadcasting than $100 million.

HERE'S the difference between this year's battle over public broadcasting and the one that blew up in Newt Gingrich's face a decade ago: this one isn't really about the survival of public broadcasting. So don't be distracted by any premature obituaries for Big Bird. Far from being an endangered species, he's the ornithological equivalent of a red herring...

...The intent is not to kill off PBS and NPR but to castrate them by quietly annexing their news and public affairs operations to the larger state propaganda machine that the Bush White House has been steadily constructing at taxpayers' expense. If you liked the fake government news videos that ended up on local stations - or thrilled to the "journalism" of Armstrong Williams and other columnists who were covertly paid to promote administration policies - you'll love the brave new world this crowd envisions for public TV and radio.

The Armstrong Williams NewsHour - New York Times

Posted by musicforall at 5:41 PM

June 25, 2005

In Isreal: Music Education on the Brink

The battle for music and arts education is not soley the province of the US. Other nations are struggling to restore once vibrant systems. This article from Isreal highlights the issue - and showcases one man's solution:

Instrumental to our future
By Noam Ben Ze'ev

Music education in Israel, a glorious field up until about two decades ago, is now in a shameful state and in danger of extinction - despite the wealth of activities ostensibly being offered to students.

If a child wants to learn music after school hours, the public institutions, such as the conservatories and the community culture centers, vie for his enrollment. If a school principal is interested in providing music lessons to pupils, a list of teachers approved by the Education Ministry and a selection of educational programs developed by private foundations and orchestras are available as well as a series of morning concerts covered by the national basket of cultural activities.

Children can sing and play in youth choirs and bands and enjoy special programs that offer scholarships and competitions for those who excel. When they grow up they can specialize in performing, composing or teaching, at local colleges and universities.

From a distance this looks like paradise, but a closer inspection reveals a frightful and withering system: The teachers - who have been studying all their lives - are the victims of exploitation, working for minimum wage under poor conditions and without job security; the conservatories are starving for lack of budgets and the financing burden on the parents' shoulders is heavier every year (it has doubled since the late 1980s); the colleges are disintegrating, music instruction hours at schools are shrinking, the academic level is declining and youth music organizations are living hand-to-mouth in uncertainty.

Haaretz - Israel News - Instrumental to our future

Posted by musicforall at 11:40 AM

Julian Llyod Webber's Rant on the Decline of Classical Music Education

I enjoy reading Julian Lloyd Webber's columns in the Daily Telegraph. For those who may not know, Llyod Webber has been a champion music education advocate in England (where he partnered with the late Michael Kamen and Evelyn Glennie to bring significant preasure to the UK Government). IN this article he argues for classical music to be taught in the schools and openly wonders what the Korean culture may know that has been lost in the UK

It is no surprise that Julia Hwang - the nine-year-old violin prodigy splashed all over last week's news pages - hails from South Korea, or that both her parents play instruments. To our shame, Western classical music has become part of culture in the Far East in a way that it no longer is in this country.

Julia's father runs an IT business in Seoul but still finds time to play the guitar, and her mother plays the piano "very well". Switch on daytime terrestrial television in South Korea and you are more than likely to see someone - usually a native - playing classical music.

South Korea's president would never echo Tony Blair's only known utterance on classical music - "Every so often, I feel I should graduate to classical music" - because learning an instrument is the norm in South Korea, and their president would have "graduated" by the age of 10.

Full Story Telegraph | Arts | Choice of reason

Posted by musicforall at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)

June 24, 2005

Site Interuption

We are currebntly rebuilding the site after a service interuption. We should be back up shortly!

Posted by musicforall at 4:17 PM | Comments (0)

June 13, 2005

Charitable Giving Rises 5 Percent to Nearly $250 Billion in 2004

Estimated charitable giving reached $248.52 billion for 2004, a new record for philanthropic giving in the
United States, the Giving USA Foundation announced today. The new Giving USA report released today is the 50th anniversary edition of the yearbook of philanthropy. Giving USA is published by the Giving USA Foundation and researched and written at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

Charitable Giving Rises 5 Percent to Nearly $250 Billion in 2004

Posted by musicforall at 9:15 PM

June 9, 2005

Did Someone Hear an "Echo"

Public school enrollment has recently exceeded the prior all time high to a new record and is expected to continue growing for the next decade.

For music and arts advocates this means the potential for more students. The real key is... can we keep our programs in place to actualy benefit svereal million more students?

Fueled by rising immigration and the baby boom echo, U.S. public school enrollment has increased steadily through the early 2000s and is expected to peak at an all-time high of 50 million in 2014, according to a report released today by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics.

The Condition of Education 2005 found that 42 percent of public school students were racial or ethnic minorities in 2003, markedly up from 22 percent in 1972. The report attributed this increased diversity to the proportionate growth of Hispanic enrollment, from 6 percent in 1972 to 19 percent in 2003. It noted that Hispanic enrollment nationwide surpassed that of African American students for the first time in 2002, while in the West region, minority public enrollment exceeded White enrollment in 2003.

Annual Report on American Schools Shows Growth, Diversity

Posted by musicforall at 7:46 PM

June 7, 2005

Let Them Eat Charity

Maybe it is just me... but there is something that continues to disturb me about how arts instruction, while called a core subject - is treated and funded as anything but.

This story from the Arizona Republic highlights this issue and the inequity created when the arts are treated less than "equal." I know this may be a naive stance. But, we will never reach the often mentioned goal of music and arts education for all children unless move the idea of "core" from rhetoric to reality.

Arizona schools received more than $30 million from parents and patrons through state tax credits last year, up more than $3.2 million from a year earlier.

To some educators and parents, it's a sign that the 7-year-old system allowing taxpayers to donate up to $250 for a tax credit to public and charter schools of their choice is working well by supplying school districts with money for field trips, arts, athletics and clubs that otherwise might not be there.

For others, it's the sign a system that continues to benefit the biggest districts with the most affluent supporters and punishes those that aren't.

Arizona Republic: Donors give $30 million to schools

Posted by musicforall at 7:36 PM

June 2, 2005

Thanks Gordon

Here is a first look at my tribute column to Gordon. This will appear in the June issue of SBO Magazine
--

On Tuesday Morning April 28, 2005 the music education community lost one of our greatest, influential, and most unsung of heroes' Dr. Gordon Shaw. He was not a musician; his art form was his science.

You may not know him by his name, but you, and nearly every other person in the developed world, know of his work. Gordon was Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Irvine (UCI). Dr. Shaw's pioneering scientific work on "music as a window into higher brain function" helped launch an entire field of research, and an unending debate, about the impact of music on the development of the brain and music's role in education.

More after the jump

The Missing Link

Gordon's work uncovered a "holy grail" in research: the elusive "causal link" between music and higher order thinking skills, specifically spatial-temporal reasoning. The reverberations of this major scientific breakthrough continue to be felt today. What Plato, Socrates, and Einstein knew intuitively, but could never prove about the importance of music, Dr. Shaw demonstrated through his science.

This connection between music and the brain, and the plethora of studies it has spawned, has helped the music community make the case for the role of music in the education of our children. It has helped to convince many of those policy makers for whom no impassioned plea about the intrinsic value of music education would work. Gordon's science has been directly responsible for the saving of music education programs for thousands and thousands of children, while forcing educational policy makers to re-evaluate the educational impact of music in our schools.

In addition, many efforts either cite or have been inspired by Gordon's work: Music Makes You Smarter, The Mozart Effect, Baby Mozart products, Governor Zell Miller's CDs for Newborns in Georgia, Johnson and Johnson's CD for young children, a state law in Florida, VH1's Save The Music campaign and theme "Music Education Equals Brain Power," the marketing effort behind the films Mr. Holland's Opus and Music of the Heart, Newsweek cover stories, Dateline NBC, the Today Show national radio, television and newspaper stories, cultural references, a Simpsons episode, and the various advocacy efforts claiming connections between music and improved learning, oftentimes for better (though sometimes for worse). All of these efforts, and many more, track their beginnings to the "Brain Power" of Dr. Gordon Shaw.

The Mozart Effect

Unfortunately, the heart of Gordon's work has been largely overshadowed by the manufactured controversy - and marketing hype - regarding one study he conducted that was misunderstood and misinterpreted. The findings of this study became popularly known as "The Mozart Effect."

This study noted how, after listening to the Mozart Sonata for Two Pianos k.448, college students showed a temporary, less than 15 minute, increase in their spatial reasoning IQ. When this study was published in the research journal Nature, the media had a feeding frenzy about all things Mozart - and extended the implications of Gordon's scientific paper far, far beyond its actual findings. Almost instantly record stores (remember records?) ran out of Mozart albums and new companies, books, tapes and children's products popped up to exploit the media and public fascination. Other scientists took it upon themselves to debunk the Mozart hysteria.

The misrepresentation of this research is a disservice to a man and his colleagues who, in my opinion, have contributed more to the body of knowledge about music, brain function and educational practice than any others in the last century.

Synopsis

For your consideration, and as a tribute to Dr. Shaw, here are some of the highlights of his work:

In 1985, Gordon Shaw, Dennis Silverman and John Pearson presented the trion model of the brain's neuronal structure (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 82 [1985]: 2364-2368).

In the late 1980's Gordon Shaw met with Karl Bruhn who at the time was the senior vice president at Yamaha for funding of his research. It was this meeting with Karl that created an important partnership that would lead to the significant music products industry funding of Shaw's work.

In 1989, experiments in which musicians performed mental rehearsals of music indicated that music and other creative skills, such as mathematics and chess, may involve extremely precise firing patterns by billions of brain neurons (Leslie Brothers and Gordon Shaw, Models of Brain Function, edited by R. Cotterill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

In 1990, computer experiments revealed that trion firing patterns could be mapped onto pitches and instrument timbres to produce music. This suggested that the trion model is a viable model for the coding of certain aspects of musical structure in human composition and perception, and that the trion model is relevant for examining creativity in higher cognitive functions, such as mathematics and chess, that are similar to music (Xiaodan Leng, Gordon Shaw and Eric Wright, Music Perception, Vol. 8, No.1 [Fall 1990]: 49-62).

In 1991, Xiaodan Leng and Gordon Shaw proposed that music may be considered a "pre- language," and that early music training may be useful in "exercising" the brain for certain higher cognitive functions (Concepts in Neuroscience, Vol. 2, No. 2 [1991]: 229-258). A presentation of this concept to senior music industry leaders at the 1991 winter NAMM Convention led to NAMM significantly funding Gordon's work for the remainder of the decade.

In 1993, a pilot study found that preschool children given music training displayed significant improvement in spatial reasoning ability. (Frances Rauscher, Gordon Shaw).

A different experiment with college students found that, after listening to a Mozart sonata, they experienced a significant although temporary gain in spatial reasoning skills (Frances Rauscher, Gordon Shaw and Katherine Ky, Nature, Vol. 365 [1993]: 611). This is the "Mozart Effect" study.

In 1994, a Stage II follow-up to the pilot study again found that music training improved spatial reasoning in preschool children. This gain did not occur in those without music training (Frances Rauscher, Gordon Shaw, Linda Levine and Katherine Ky, Paper presented at the American Psychological Association, Los Angeles [August 1994]). This is the study that identified the first "causal link" between music and spatial reasoning.

Confusion in the media between the Mozart listening study and the preschool music making study created the myth of "Listening to Mozart improves the spatial skills of young children." There was no such research! but this did not stop the media or others (never let the facts get in the way of a good story!)

In 1995, a follow up to the first Mozart study confirmed that listening to Mozart improved spatial reasoning, and that this effect can increase with repeated testing over days. However, the effect may not occur when music lacks sufficient complexity. (Frances Rauscher, Gordon Shaw and Katherine Ky, Neuroscience Letters, Vol. 185 [1995]: 44-47.)

In 1997, a study found that keyboard training caused long-term enhancement of preschool children's spatial-temporal reasoning (Frances Rauscher, Gordon Shaw, Linda Levine et al, Neurological Research, Volume 19 [1997], 2-8).

In 1998, Gordon co-founded the non-profit MIND Institute in 1998 after 30 years of scientific research at the University of California, Irvine. His vision of teaching all kids, regardless of cultural and socio-economic background, how to think, reason and create mathematically - is the foundation for the Institute's revolutionary Math+Music curricula.

In 1999, a study examined enhanced learning of proportional math through music training combined with a spatial approach to learning math concepts. Children given piano keyboard training along with a specially designed Math Video Game training scored significantly higher on proportional math and fractions than children given a control training along with the same video game (Amy Graziano, Matthew Peterson and Gordon Shaw, Neurological Research, Volume 21 [1999], pp. 139-152).

Ongoing Impact

Gordon's MIND Institute (www.mindinstitute.net) continues his research work, with 61 schools using his Math+Music curricula.

Beyond the research, the work of Gordon and his colleagues has had a tremendous impact on policy. President Clinton and then First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton cited his work in forums and policy speeches. His work was referenced in Congressional testimony, resolutions, and in remarks made by both senators and congressmen in the hall of our nation's capitol. Secretaries of Education Richard Riley and Rod Paige acknowledged this work in making the case for moving music and arts education to the center of education reform. Awareness of his research made the passage of music friendly educational policies across the county easier.

From the hallowed halls of the White House and the Capital to local school board meetings across the country and around kitchen tables where parents groups meet, Gordon's efforts have made a difference.

Gordon believed that, "Music will not only help us understand how we think, reason, and create, but will enable us to learn how to bring each child's potential to its highest level."

All of us in the music community owe Gordon our gratitude for a life well lived and a dedication to his art form - science - that has changed our art form and our world.

May he long be remembered for his incredible contributions to our field.

Thanks, Gordon.

Posted by musicforall at 7:38 PM | Comments (1)