During the past several months, COVID-19 has been a roadblock for the educational system. This spring, school classes went virtual, and a lot of extracurricular activities were halted in their tracks.
For parents with kids who are learning to play an instrument, the uncertainty with school bands and lack of in-person classes has been an ongoing challenge. One local music teacher is Glen Friedman from the G-Clef Music Academy in Parkland.
Glen has been teaching his students virtually throughout the summer. As schools open, he is planning to continue to teach virtually as this is key to ensuring his students keep up with their curriculums and not fall behind due to this year’s pandemic limitations.
Music strengthens the mind
Why is music education important for developing minds? A study by Professor Hudziak from the University of Vermont College of Medicine found that the “more a child trained on an instrument, it accelerated cortical organization in attention skill, anxiety management, and emotion control.”
According to Professor Hudziak, in an interview with the Washington Post, music is like an exercise for the brain. “What I was surprised by was the emotional regulatory regions. Everyone in our culture knows if I lift 5-pound, 10-pound, 15-pound weights, my biceps will get bigger. The same is true for the brain. We shouldn’t be surprised we can train the brain.”
Music helps with math
Much of Science, Engineering, and Math is built on the principles of harmonics. One key principle, the Fourier Transform, expresses the world in terms of musical chords. Joseph Fourier, in 1822, first showed the usage of infinite sums of harmonics to describe a signal, which the mathematical transform is now named after. Recently, our modern mobile communications mostly rely on the concept of harmonics to transmit information over the air.
Learning music has been shown to benefit students’mathematical abilities. Researchers from the University of Texas, in a peer-reviewed article for the Journal of Learning through Arts, found “the students who learned through the various music-integrated instructional settings demonstrated increased mathematical ability levels over the intervention period in the present study.”
According to Glen, the best way to learn music is through one-on-one sessions. The individual feedback is important to help develop and improve a student’s skills.
During the pandemic, it hasn’t all been virtual lessons. Glen is part of some virtual big band recordings, too. You can find some of those sessions on YouTube’s “Glen Friedman Music”channel.
If you are deciding how best to keep your child busy after school, improve their focus and emotional control, or just want better grades in math, enroll them in music classes. This is where the arts and sciences intersect.
By Li Pan