Integration Of Music And Music Therapy Into The Classroom Has Far-reaching Positive Effects On Mental Processing

The need to integrate music into the classroom as one of the teaching tools continues to cause serious and acrimonious debate among education stakeholders. Recent studies on the topic have revealed that music is an important aspect in daily human activities, including the teaching-learning process. In particular, the majority of researchers strongly agree that music positively affects students because it enhances intelligence, which remains a necessity in learning. Apart from its status as an academic discipline in schools, music education is inextricably linked to the development of different skills, including social, physical, and cognitive abilities.

For instance, playing music helps in engaging every part of a person’s brain, meaning that individual learners can benefit from listening music. At the same time, studying music presents learners with the best possible opportunity to learn, understand, and apply a new language. Typically, the language in question is more complex when compared the various languages teachers and instruction materials adopt and use in other disciplines. Additionally, psychologists and acclaimed commentators have established the growing connection between music and content are curricula, such as language arts, history, math, and social studies. Apart from enhancing the learners’ cognitive abilities, music, which should integrated into the teaching-learning process, increases their concentration p, allows the acquisition of a new language and simplifies the teaching of other subjects

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Recent research has revealed that music has far-reaching positive effects on concurrent mental processing, particularly among young adults and children. For example, Lehmann and Seufert conducted a study with the sole purpose of examining the potential effect of listening to the sound of rain as well as silence against music on the participants’ face memory (1902). Findings from the study indicated that each of the participants recorded efficient and faster recall of different faces in the presence of silence and when listening to emotional or touching music.

Equally important, the study found that the rain’s sound and joyful music, which constitute auditory background, negatively affected memory encoding. The study’s results conform perfectly well to previous findings by Peard that soft songs tend to modify a person’s visual perception of individual faces, while at the same time, binding auditory information with the various facial properties (12). In this way, instructors should use music while teaching to improve their learners’ memories and associated cognitive abilities because it engages the brain, making it easier for students to grasp and recall what they hear, see, and learn the classroom setting.

Scientific evidence continue to show that, compared to any other artistic undertaking, the act of playing and listening to music helps learners by increasing their focus abilities. Lehmann and Seufert contend that studying under the conditions of relaxed or classical music increases the student’s ability to concentrate more, as opposed reading in a silent or noisy environment (1903). In other words, music plays a fundamental role in muffling any distracting noises from the background. Another interesting but vital finding from the study by Fang et al. revolves around the fact that music therapy delays memory loss among patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), meaning that teachers can apply the same in the classroom to improve the learner’s memory (2).

Additionally, energetic songs enhance motivation while performing a given a task, including reading a long text (Lehmann & Seufert 1902). As a result, integrating music into lessons and associated classroom activities help the teacher and the student by keeping both interested in learning and mastering the much-needed content. Concisely, as stated earlier, the teachers can utilize different forms of music to reinforce or emphasize what they teach their students.

In addition, the benefits directly and indirectly associated with music not only stop with the development and improvement of key motor, visual, and cognitive skills and abilities: it equips individual learners with a new language and enhances the learning assistants’ (LAs) ability to facilitate other subjects. Typically, people involved in music tend to identify with unique ideas and concepts, including pitch and timbre, which revolve learning and using an advanced musical language. Undoubtedly, the language in question is more complex and complicated than those used in teaching other subjects. Based upon this finding, Alegra corroborates that music creates the best possible opportunity for students to undertake and perform better in challenging disciplines, such as mathematics. The abstract mathematics concepts require the use of manipulative and visuals. Accordingly, teachers can address this challenge effectively by utilizing musical notes and pitch to teach fractions and ratios and frequencies, respectively.

Conclusively, teachers should place great emphasis on integrating music into the classroom because the various musical elements help in improving the learner’s cognitive skills and abilities. In particular, students who learn, play, and listen to music often, record significant improvements when it comes to academic performance. Music further allows learners to acquire a new language, which enhances their ability to undertake tasks that are more complex. Equally important, the various musical concepts remain necessary when teaching technical and challenging subjects such as mathematics.

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