.	Music is good for kids! The Michael Morgan Effect OYO is about learning and it is about growth. Growth occurs at times of peak performance. Michael Morgan conducts an intense, sometimes ferocious and often electric rehearsal. With fire and humor and also critical confrontation he leads the young musicians to play their best and then to transcend their best to a new level of performance. The students are often astounded each week:-- impressed by the conductors, by each other, and, not the least of all, by their own playing. —Barbara Stack The Mozart Effect July 28, 2003 Letter to the New York Times from Henry Fogel American Symphony Orchestra League In May 2002, the Arts Education Partnership released a report called Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development. This report pulled together 62 different studies analyzing the academic and social impact of arts education on children. What this report shows is that in the very areas with which the school system is concerned, incorporation of the arts brings measurable improvement. Reading, writing, and math scores significantly improve for those students who also study music and other arts, as do problem solving abilities, collaborative working skills, and positive risktaking. Arts education has a documented and significant positive impact on at-risk youth – studying the arts has been shown to lower recidivism rates among young offenders and lead to increased self-esteem, the acquisition of better job skills, and the development of creative thinking (a critical societal need). These studies are there for all to see. New! http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/08/040820082332.htm -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Source: American Psychological Society Date: 2004-08-20 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- New Research Provides The First Solid Evidence That The Study Of Music Promotes Intellectual Development The idea that studying music improves the intellect is not a new one, but at last there is incontrovertible evidence from a study conducted out of the University of Toronto. The study, led by Dr. E. Glenn Schellenberg, examined the effect of extra-curricular activities on the intellectual and social development of six-year-old children. A group of 144 children were recruited through an ad in a local newspaper and assigned randomly to one of four activities: keyboard lessons, voice lessons, drama lessons, or no lessons. Two types of music lessons were offered in order to be able to generalize the results, while the groups receiving drama lessons or no lessons were considered control groups in order to test the effect of music lessons over other art lessons requiring similar skill sets and nothing at all. The activities were provided for one year. The participating children were given IQ tests before and after the lessons. The results of this study revealed that increases in IQ from pre- to post-test were larger in the music groups than in the two others. Generally these increases occurred across IQ subtests, index scores, and academic achievement. Children in the drama group also exhibited improvements pre- to post-test, but in the area of adaptive social behavior, an area that did not change among children who received music lessons. This study is published in the August issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the American Psychological Society. View a PDF (78k) of the full article. http://www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/ps/musiciq.pdf E. Glenn Schellenberg is currently with the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto at Mississauga. He can be reached via e-mail at g.schellenberg@utoronto.ca. Psychological Science is ranked among the top 10 general psychology journals for impact by the Institute for Scientific Information. The American Psychological Society represents psychologists advocating science-based research in the public's interest. Editor's Note: The original news release can be found here. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This story has been adapted from a news release issued by American Psychological Society.