By Frede V. Nielsen (fvn@dpu.dk)

'Music makes you smarter' and 'Wer singt, prügelt nicht'. These are just a few of the fairly blunt sayings that tie into a belief in the beneficial effects of teaching music to children. The sayings are born of the popular assumption that music and musical activities can improve learning in other fields and have a comprehensive positive effect on our personal and social competencies as well.

Paradoxically, the music teachers themselves often call for more music classes with the argument that the children will improve their skills in academic subjects and their social competencies. One can even observe a certain irritation when you ask about the basis for the argument, or its validity.

This is maybe not so surprising, since it is a deeply rooted conviction. Plato himself considered music a critical element in education, and throughout the twentieth century, the development in educational theory and practice relied heavily on the assumption that music was vital for a good upbringing. Musical education was not only training in music, but also training through music. Which, incidentally, is a problematic statement in Germany, since this was once practiced with the approval of the political authorities during the Nazi regime.

Birth of a legend
One of the most frequently mentioned educational experiments in Denmark, and one which is claimed to demonstrate the positive transfer effects to learning in other subjects, was conducted in a primary school in Copenhagen between 1960 and 1965, where pupils in the first five grades were given much more musical training than other children.

After repeated assessments of the scores in mathematics and Danish, the Copenhagen School Board concluded that the pupils had "?adequate test scores in these subjects" despite a lower number of taught lessons in these subjects. Furthermore, the conclusion read that "familiarity with the arts enriches the individual substantially, which make the pupils more susceptible to learning other subjects than just music, but for obvious reasons the available material does not allow us to produce an actual proof of this." And finally that "without a doubt, the children has enjoyed five fun years in a school focused on the children."

In Denmark, this four decades old experiment has become something of a legend, although it must be noted that the results are somewhat meagre, when they are supposed to support the claim that musical training has an effect on the learning of other subjects. The question is, then, whether the claim about the transfer effect of music is  reliable. Do we have any recent research that can shed light on this?

What the evidence shows
A group of researchers from Harvard University's Project Zero decided to examine this question through a meta-analysis of relevant research from the second half of the twentieth century. The result was published in the year 2000 in a lengthy special edition of The Journal of Aesthetic Education titled: "The Arts and Academic Achievement: What the Evidence Shows".

A vast amount of material was analysed. Widespread electronic searches in a number of databases and manual searches through forty-one relevant journals published between 1950 and 1998 were conducted. Furthermore, the researchers communicated with a number of other researchers to uncover unpublished reports, research data, conference papers et al. although only in English. Finally, the material was filtered until what was left adhered to strict scientific criteria for evidence. And this material was then subjected to deep analysis.

The conclusions can be summed up as the title of one of the first articles in the special edition about teaching that include several arts: 'Mute Those Claims: No Evidence (Yet) for a Causal Link between Arts Study and Academic Achievement'. Upon close examination, of course, the results are much more complex and ambiguous, but the overall conclusion is what the title says, and this includes the studies that concern music. Although some studies have shown an effect on spatial understanding following listening to e.g. Mozart, the effect is generally small, short-termed and less reliable than what was found in  an investigation published in the article 'Music and Spatial Task Performance' in Nature in 1993, which eventually gave rise to the term 'the Mozart-effect'. The same result was found in the survey published in Nature in 1999 'Prelude or requiem for the Mozart effect', which was about follow-up studies.

The effect of music
The Harvard researchers emphasise one important distinction: Even if pupils who have to take music classes in school score better in mathematics than other pupils, there is no proof that the two are connected. Only causal studies can tell whether there is in fact a causal link between the two. The Harvard researchers were unable to identify more than a few causal studies. The vast majority of research turned out to be 'correlation studies', that prove nothing about cause and effect. This should be a cause for concern, but in fact the statements by experts and politicians about the transfer effects of music teaching are by and large based on correlation studies – insofar as there is any scientific merit to the quoted research at all.

The current state of affairs is that it can not be said to have been demonstrated that music has a significant transfer effect on academic achievement, and therefore this transfer effect is not a valid argument for increasing the number of music lessons in primary school. At best, the current research allows us to say that we know very little about this (so far).

This is not merely disappointing; it is also surprising because of the numerous testimonials from teachers about their personal experiences with focused teaching. If we look beyond teaching, most of us have probably had strong experiences with music, whether as performers or merely as listeners. This is confirmed by valid research. It seems likely that these experiences may play a role when you are engaged in something else. Musical therapy can be considered the ultimate argument that music has an effect on us.

Hypothesis or reality?
Why this discrepancy between the general assumption about the transfer effect and the findings in strictly controlled scientific evidence-based research? One possible cause for the discrepancy is the rigorous requirements to scientific methodology and documentation that may obstruct a useful approach to the very complex field that we are dealing with here. Research that take into account the complexity in teaching- and learning situations tend to show more successful results for transfer effects. One example of this is a long-term project conducted at seven primary schools in Berlin between 1992 and 1998. This survey struck a note with the general public, but was, on the other hand, also heavily criticised in scientific circles.

The nature of the German survey can be gleaned  from the underlying hypothesis:
"To learn to play an instrument, to play in ensembles and to participate in music training can have a beneficial and improving effect on children's cognitive (intellectual), creative, aesthetic, musical, social and psycho-motor skills (abilities), as well as on motivational and emotional dispositions such as learning- and performance readiness, concentration, commitment, self-reliance, tolerance and stamina, criticism of others and oneself etc."

Not everything in this hypothesis has been confirmed (the social effect seems the most convincing). And certainly one must ask how a single survey can examine so many factors all at once. Despite these reservations, many laymen have read this as if the hypothesis was actually the summary of the research findings. Perhaps one paradoxical side effect of the survey and the ensuing discussion is actually an increase in the gap between the general population's and the experts' view on the educational effects of music. Which almost brings us back to the Danish experiment from the 1960s.

The lesson to be learned here is that the notion of the music's transfer effect and usefulness in educational terms is firmly rooted, and the urge to use this as an argument for musical training in school remains unchallenged. If we take the research mentioned here into account, however, we have to say: Mute those claims.

You might get caught on the wrong foot when you have to demonstrate your results. What if the results do not support the claims? The logical next step supposedly would be to cancel music training in schools? Of course not, because there are other, more relevant, reasons for keeping it on the curriculum than that music improves the pupils test scores in mathematics, language and other 'core subjects'. That, however is quite another story.

Further reading
If you want to read more about the benefits of and quality criteria for music and musical activity, please refer to the following books and articles in various languages:

• The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 34(3-4), 2000. Special Issue: 'The Arts and Academic Achiement: What the Evidence Shows'.
• Frede V. Nielsen: 'Quality and value in the interpretation of music from a phenomenological point of view – a draft'. (= Skolefag, Læring og Dannnelse. Arbejdspapirer No. 38, DPU 2000). Also in: 'Zeitschrift für kritische Musikpädagogik' 2002: http://home.arcor.de/zf/zfkm/home.html
• H. Gembris et al. (Ed.): 'Macht Musik wirklich klüger? Musikalisches Lernen und Transfereffekte'. Augsburg: Wissner, 2003.
• H.G. Bastian: 'Musik(erziehung) und ihre Wirkung. Eine Langzeitstudie an Berliner Grundschulen'. Schott, 2000 og 'Kinder optimal fördern – mit Musik', Atlantis Musikbuch-Verlag, 2001.
• Frede V. Nielsen: 'Musik og transfer: Hvad siger forskningen?' i 'For skolen og for livet', DPU's Forlag, 2004.

Frede V. Nielsen
Frede V. Nielsen is a professor of Music Pedagogics at the Department of Curriculum Research at Danish School of Education. Frede Nielsen manages projects concerning music teacher training in Denmark, the didactology of music, and the science of and research methodology in music education. 

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Punchline

"The current state of affairs is that it can not be said to have been demonstrated that music has a significant transfer effect on academic achievement."
-Frede V. Nielsen