Читать книгу Teaching Piano to Students With Special Needs - Mary Ann Froehlich - Страница 9

The musical brain begins functioning in the womb during the last three months of development and continues for a lifetime, making the case for lifelong musical stimulation and learning. Sound is one of the major sources of brain stimuli that maintains mental vitality. The nucleus basalis is the part of the brain that gives affective meaning to auditory input and codes it in our memory. Music plays a significant role in the development of memory storage and emotional intelligence.

Don Campbell, in Introduction to the Musical Brain, claimed that music stimulation increased intelligence. His book, The Mozart Effect, made the topic of music’s impact on human development popular with the public. In journals and popular magazines, we often read that music experience improves reading and math skills and even raises SAT scores. Other researchers warn that these effects are correlated but not necessarily causal. Ralph Spingte, respected researcher in the field of music medicine, finds the “music makes you smarter” statements to be dangerous and misleading exaggerations, doing more harm than good to his field.

In The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle warns: ..studies show that baby-brain DVDs don’t make children smarter. In fact, they make them less smart. ….Baby-brain DVDs don’t work because they don’t create deep practice—in fact, they actively prevent it, by taking up time that could be used for firing circuits.⁴ Music DVDs for young children are no substitute for deep practice and active music experience.

Eric Jensen warns that the arts are not a quick fix for struggling students and low test scores. Arts experiences change the brain slowly over time and offer benefits for a lifetime. They are valuable for the overall development of a young person and should not be dismissed when current academic performance does not significantly improve. We must look at the bigger picture, realizing how music experiences can change neural connections and reorganize the brain.

Idiot savants have superior abilities and memory recall in one specific field. These skills do not transfer to other life areas. Idiot savants with expert musical or mathematical abilities fascinate us. Researchers speculate if these abilities result from unusual neuron connections in only one specific site in the brain cemented by intense constant practice. Musical idiot savants are a rarity. For most students with special needs, music making does not come easily but they can make progress through daily concentrated practice.