English, the Arts, and Common Core Education

Common Core. a non-profit advocacy group founded in 2007, aims "to bring exciting, comprehensive, content-rich curriculum to every classroom in America."  The group believes that a child who graduates from high school without an understanding of culture, the arts, history, literature, civics, and language has in fact been left behind. To improve education in America, Common Core creates curriculum tools and also promotes programs, policies, and initiatives at the local, state, and federal levels that provide students with challenging, rigorous instruction in the full range of liberal arts and sciences.

The organization has produced several free curriculum tools for teachers in all disciplines.  Here's their terrific lesson plan guide, arranged by grade level, K-12, to show how the visual arts can enhance English and Language Arts instruction.  The lessons link texts and/or literary genres to art, music, and film, and are aligned with Common Core Standards.

Neuroscience and Music--Pierce Howard, The Owner's Manual for the Brain

Pierce Howard's Owner's Manual for the Brain, 3rd Edition, concisely summarizes several important points about music and the brain:

• Music doesn't activate a distinct part of the brain, but rather is a "by-product of other evolved areas for audio discrimination, muscular coordination, rhythmic sensitivity.  While there's some genetically-evolved basis for music, we know that people who aren't able to detect pitch changes in melody can in languages that are tonal, e.g. Chinese.
• Music is processed in the auditory cortex and extension to the thalamus, but doesn't possess unique processing areas.  In fact, some areas of the brain share overlapping functions for both music and language.  However, there's probably some separation of functions, as evidenced by the fact that people can lose linguistic, but not musical abilities, and vice versa.
• In regard to plasticity, individuals' brains are more aroused by sounds associated with their particular instrument specialties.  There are more pronounced electrical responses that're instrument-specific in individuals who received musical training prior to the age of 10.
• The much touted Mozart Effect, reported by Rauscher and Wright (1994) is bogus: any benefits of listening to music disappear after 10-15 minutes.  Chabris (1999) analyzed 16 musical effect studies and documented negative effects based on measurements of total traditional IQ.  But before you toss the Baby Mozart CDs, music may "warm up" the neural circuitry of the brain associated with spatial reasoning.  While research findings are mixed regarding the benefits of listening to music, there's more conclusive evidence that actively playing an instrument has a positive effect on cognition.
• There may be a possible sensitive period for high musical skill achievement, e.g. mapping of sound frequencies in the auditory cortex requires normal experience.  Harmonic structure is easier to acquire before the age of 8.
• Pitch perception is more easily learned, and absolute pitch more common in people who have tonal first languages (L1s), e.g. Mandarin Chinese.
• There are anatomical differences between professional musicians and non-musicians, but this may be attributable to genetic differences, vs. environmental exposure.
• There's a difference between passively listening to music and active music instruction/learning to play instruments.  Rauscher (1993) noted that second graders who received four months of piano keyboard training had a 27% score increase on math tests dealing with fractions and proportions.  A similar study with 5-6 year old subjects, where the experimental group played songs, learned to read music, and received training in understanding pitch and rhythm, yielded "marked improvement in abstract and spatial reasoning."
• Music does not necessarily have a positive impact on cognition.  In fact, listening to music interferes with complex tasks, especially verbal tasks, in comparison to verbal+spatial tasks.  In Germany, Wagner and Tilney (1983) studied a language learning method called "Accelerated Learning" where music is integrated into instruction.  The experimental group who learned language via Accelerated Learning ironically learned 50% less than the control group.  Bush, of the Monterey Institute studied learners in a 10 week Accelerated Learning Russian program vs. students in a 15 week traditional language-learning program, and found the so-called Accelerated Learners learned 40% less information than students in the traditional program.
• Music competes with other tasks for attentional focus.  Crawford and Strapp (1994) studied music listening on verbal and visual-spatial performance.  Their research noted the following:

1. Those who choose to listen to music while studying were generally much more extraverted.
2. Extraverts self-report being less bothered by noise.
3. Self-perceptions of what's bothersome are notoriously unreliable: music had a negative effect on attention.
4. Vocal music interferes more with attention than instrumental music.  Regular patterns of sound are less disruptive than irregular ones.  Also, playing the same piece over and over again is less distracting, as "well-established schema are less likely to interfere with learning."
5. Music interferes more with complex cognitive tasks, as opposed to simpler verbal tasks, with visual-spatial tasks being the least affected. 
6. Quiet is best for study/academic learning environments.  Music should be limited to "transitional uses", otherwise, it's competing for cognitive attention.  It isn't merely "white noise." 

• Gardiner (1996) conducted a seven-month study of Gr. 1 and Gr. 2 students who received Kodaly structured, sequential music instruction.  25% more students scored at grade level or higher in mathematical aptitude.  Sequential methodology seems to spur advancement, not merely exposure to art.
• Music has therapeutic value.  In an NIH Office of Alternative Medicine study led by Rohrbacher, music aided brain-injured patients by increasing emotional empathy, luicidity, and improving recovery and rehabilitation.  Mellow music seems to enhance immune function, by boosting production of immuglobulin A (IgA).
• Music can improve mood and spur positive emotions.  Generally, higher pitches have more beneficial effects.  Minor keys and slow tempi warm the brain, fostering cortical and limbic awareness.  Major keys and faster tempi cool the brain, fostering better moods.
• Across the world, regardless of culture and musical exposure, humans have the ability to distinguish music that conveys specific human moods and emotions.  See table below for common qualities that characterize joy, sadness, and excitement:

Musical Trait	JOY	SADNESS	EXCITEMENT
Frequency	High	Low	Variable
Melodic variation	Strong	Slight	Strong
Tonal course	Moderate: up then down	Down	Strong up, then down
Tonal color	Many overtones	Less	Barely any
Tempo	Rapid	Slow	Medium
Volume	Loud	Soft	Highly variable
Rhythm	Irregular	Regular	Very irregular

• Wilson (1994) found that repetitive rhythms induce a trance-like state in humans.  The body's rhythms also can adapt to music. 
• The Allegro Foundation did a year-long study where special needs students were provided weekly 30-minute dance and music workouts.  The workouts improved compliance with directions, increased participation, helped regulate emotional outbursts, and notably improved handwriting.

Amanda Chan, "Music and Health: 11 Ways Playing and Listening to Music Help Both Body and Mind"

In her April 12, 2012 article, "Music and Health: 11 Ways Playing and Listening to Music Help Both Body and Mind", Amanda Chan outlines 11 benefits of music.  The article also features a short slideshow documenting the findings.  Overall, music has excellent stress-reducing properties and may also enhance overall neural fitness.  The data, synthesized from various academic and medical sources, are summarized below:

1. Eases anxiety, lowers blood pressure, and enhances mood in cancer patients.
2. Daily doses of music reduce stress and enhances mood.
3. Music--specifically melodic, as opposed to rhythmic music--lowers stress in surgical patients.
4. Protects sound-processing abilities: lifelong musicians, both amateurs and professionals, who'd started music training by age 16, had at least six years of formal lessons on a musical instrument and were continuing to practice at the time the study did better than non-musicians on a battery of hearing tests which tested the ability to detect short gaps in otherwise continuous sound, hear sound variations in a noisy environment, and distinguish words in the presence of background noise. The more musicans practiced, the greater the benefit.
5. Improves heart health by dilating the inner lining of blood vessels by 26%, promoting blood flow.  Caveat: listening to anxiety-producing music, as opposed to happy music, reduced blood vessel diameter by 6%.
6. Music is an effective distractor in anxiety-prone patients, reducing pain.
7. Music training in childhood increases verbal memory and recall on tests: benefits that can't be explained by age, education level, or one's family's socioeconomic level.
8. Protects mental sharpness in old age: people with the most musical training in their lives had the best mental sharpness and also scored highest on brain functioning tests. 
9. In mice who'd been given heart transplants, those who listened to music had a better survival rate.
10. Improves stroke recovery: patients who listened to music showed improved verbal memory and attention.
11. Decreases anxiety as well as massage therapy.

Bringing Words to Life: Reflecting on "Read Across Punahou" and Hawaii's Poetry Out Loud Contest

Have celebrated two literary successes in the past four days.  

On Friday, March 1, 2013, to commemorate Dr. Seuss' birthday, Punahou celebrated "Read Across America" day, featuring faculty, staff, and student readers all day in Cooke Library.  Was delighted to find out that 5 out of the 8 featured student readers were alumni of my Speech: Art of the Spoken Word class, sharing their original work with the larger community.  Unfortunately, due to teaching and other schedule conflicts, I could only attend 2 of the presentations, but what delightful presentations they were!  My student Kayla '13 presented, from heart, a 10 minute Original Oratory piece about the perils of reality TV, a script she'd first started in Art of the Spoken Word.  Her presentation was superb: dynamic, humorous, and audience-engaging, delivered clearly and expressively, and it was wonderful to see how much the piece had evolved since last December.  Yesterday, Kayla emailed me to thank me for assisting her with her Oratory.  Read Across America had been a dry-run for a speech tournament the following day, and at said tournament, she earned first place in the Original Oratory category, thus triple-qualifying for the Hawai`i State Speech and Debate Tournament.

The second success came yesterday, when Emma '16, was named State Champion at the Hawai`i Poetry Out Loud State Competition, held at Tenney Theatre, St. Andrew's Cathedral.  She recited John Berryman's "Dream Song 14", ee cummings' "i carry your heart with me (i carry it in]", and Emily Dickinson's "Much Madness Is Divinest Sense." Emma won $200 and an all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C., where the National Competition will take place on April 28-30, 2013. In addition, Punahou was awarded $500 for the purchase of poetry books.  The competition was quite stiff, comprising mostly juniors and seniors, several veteran competitors, as well as ones who'd been clearly coached, and many students chose to tackle longer, more sophisticated poems. Emma's performance stood out, however, for several reasons, namely her ability to intelligently think her way through the sequence of thoughts in each poem, and her unaffected, honest performance.


While obviously the external victories are sweet, both of these events reminded me of the larger value of literature and the arts in education, namely

• Arts can serve as a medium for self-expression, allowing one to share one's thoughts with a broader audience.  It can act as an impetus for change, helping move, inspire, and persuade listeners.
• In both these cases, a real purpose and a real audience helped spur genuine engagement and motivation. 
• Literature helps us develop empathy and compassion, helping us understand our world and others, by enabling us to view things via others' perspectives and experiencing viewpoints which may be vastly different from ours.  I'd be curious whether any neuroscience research has been done on the performing of literature, and whether bringing words to life strengthens that salutory aspect of learning.  Actors and poetry reciters, in order to be effective, must be able to imagine themselves fully as someone else, and believably embody that person, channeling his/her world view, foibles, and overall personality.  If empathy and compassion arise by being able to understand others, might voicing and/or acting out literature, both literally and figuratively, transform us and expand our capacity for feeling?  Obviously, if performers are skilled, they also provide opportunities for their audience members to share that "virtual" experience and fully engage in the world of the story, play, or poem.