Have any of you realized how much music affects a child's development? Do you know that some music can actually increase your child's IQ? Did you know that some music may cause major health problems? If not, you should find out! Just remember, you can be responsible for what kids these days listen to. The main question of this essay is "Does music affect a child's development, if so how?" The first paragraph tells about the classical music. The second paragraph presents the rock music. The third paragraph is on the controversy.
Classical music is an important genre of musical development. According to research such as wikipedia, classical music is one of the most familiar genres that have positive effects. Classical music can increase memory, mood, health, physical development, and mental development. It can also reduce stress, depression, and anxiety. A fairly popular belief is the Mozart Effect. The Mozart Effect is the theory that Mozart' music (or music with similar structure) can enhance a person's intellect. Since there has been much controversy around this topic, many experiments have been done to try and prove its existence. For example, Mozart's Piano Sonata in D Major (K.448) has been tested and proven to reduce the number of seizures that people with epilepsy have (citation two). The University of Illinois Medical Center tested on 29 patients with epilepsy. After 300 seconds of listening to that piece, 23out of 29 of those patients had a pronounced decrease in epileptic activity. That is just one of the examples. Another test involved giving the participants three tests of spatial reasoning (citation two). For the first test, they listened to a sonata by Mozart while taking the test. For the second test, they listened to repetitive relaxation music. For the last test, there was silence. The mean score for the first test were 8-9 points higher than the other two conditions. These experiments at least demonstrate that some classical music indeed has some positive effect on some people's intellect development. What is yet to find is the conditions when it takes effect so we can apply this more effectively in the music education program for children. Some people believe that classical music isn't the only type of music with a positive effect. According to Dr. Donald Salting, a computational lexicographer with a PhD in linguistics and a minor in psychology, "If one is afraid to howl, life will have no real color, if one can only howl, life will have no warmth." This means that listening to only classical music will not give you the best results. Dr. Salting believes that children should be able to explore all different types of music, and when they become interested in one type they should still be respected and encouraged of that (look on interview page for full interview).
Rock music is another important genre in musical development. Rock music is the type of music believed to have the most negative effects particularly heavy metal (citation three). Rock music can cause loss of concentration. Loss of concentration is caused by epinephrine being released. The chemicals that are released are similar to the way drugs relax you. Also, by targeting two distinct ways, directly on the cells and body parts, and on the emotions, it can cause numerous physical problems. For example, rock music can coagulate proteins, interfere with digestion, cause more driving accidents, change metabolism, affect muscle energy, raise blood pressure, cause musicogenic epilepsy (seizures that are directly caused by the rock beat), and hearing problems (caused by the loudness of the music). These observations have all been reported in citation three. To prove that rock music hurts digestion, several eggs were brought with teenagers to a rock concert, when the concert was over the eggs became hardboiled, which proves that rock music can coagulate proteins. Unlike classical music, rock music does not follow the heartbeat and causes stress to the heart. Some believe that extended periods of rock music can even cause violence of all types. Heavy metal is a subgenre of rock. Heavy metal is believed to be the main cause of the increased use of drugs, suicide, and violence. But this point is very controversial. There seems to some evidence but no scientific conclusions are reached on the music's effect on violence. One can argue that it is not the improper music that increases violence, it is the violent people who more likely choose the noisy music for themselves.
The main controversies are on the Mozart Effect and rock music's influence on children. Some researchers believe that the Mozart Effect is just an arousal of mood. While others think that it will actually make you smarter. For example, for one of the subquestions that were to be answered in the survey ("if so, how" part of the survey), was "Do you know the Mozart Effect, if so do you believe it is scientific?", one person answered maybe, four entered yes, six entered no, and one answered don't know. The people who answered no, argued that there was not enough scientific evidence to support the claim. Even if experiments were done, there was no hard evidence. While the people who said yes, said claims like, "Yes. I believe it is scientific because it is based on an experiment published in the privileged scientific journal Nature, claiming that those who listen to Mozart could boost their IQ by about eight points." The yes people often talk about the experiments that have been done. So technically, research shows that it could be possible that the Mozart Effect exists, but with a lot of controversy. The other controversy is whether rock music actually hurts people. Most people believe that rock music harms the body, causes stress, violence, etc. (see paragraph two), but some people believe that rock music is neutral. According to Salting, "I think any genre that limits itself to a narrow perspective / attitude / voice is not worth much time. A lot of metal music is limited to expression of adolescent impotent rage. This is an important dimension of the human experience, but it is only one. For me, any genre must be able to hold the totally of human experience - fun, compassion, sorrow, rage, excitement, vigor, tenderness, a sense of cultural identity, etc." Meaning that Salting believes that rock music is still important because it is important to experience all elements of life, fun, compassion, sorrow, rage, etc. Also, Wanglaowu from the Old Buddies Forum said, "Almost all kinds of music have positive effects." On the contrary, Judy Sue Christianson wrote most of her article (citation 3 ) on the bad effects of rock music. "Rock has been found to interfere with digestion, increase driving accidents, change metabolism, affect muscular energy, raise blood pressure etc." This means Christianson believes that rock music have many bad effects. There are also neutral claims to this statement. 阿福 from the Old Buddies said, "Again, don't know. But if I guess, classical positive, soft rock neutral, hard rock negative" So, in general, controversy for this topic still exists, and it has no definite answer.
The topic of music's effect on children's development is a very big and controversial topic. There is a general consensus that classical music is helpful for the children's development. Some believe that rock has negative effect. However, there are many things which require further scientific study for a clear picture, especially, the conditions for positive and negative effects. Since the topic is still controversial, it is difficult to design a music program using scientific knowledge.
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