I don’t know if that’s true.
Research often shows a correlation, but I can’t find proof of causality.
And yet, this is an argument many, many of us lean on to advocate for arts education.
Here’s the truth. Music education is important because music is important. It’s important to our society, it’s important to our future.
There are lots of other reasons, but let’s start with that and stop saying we should teach music to improve math scores.
Because that approach leads to a couple major problems.
1. If we are meant to value music education because it improves math scores, the implication is that mathematics is more important than any of the intrinsic benefits of music. Do we value English classes because they makes you better at history?
2. If the value of music education is better math education, then you know what would be even better? To lay off the music teacher and hire another math teacher! Double math classes!
Music education is important because music is important.