Yet Another Way NCLB is Failing Kids

I'm always very pleased when I read something like this... then, of course, I'm immediately irritated, for the obvious reasons.

Music lessons help young child memories

(What an awkward headline)

TORONTO (Reuters) - Parents who spend time and money to teach their children music, take heart -- a new Canadian study shows young children who take music lessons have better memories than their nonmusical peers.

The study, to be published in the online edition of the journal Brain on Wednesday, showed that after one year of musical training, children performed better in a memory test than those who did not take music classes.

"(The research) tells us that if you take music lessons your brain is getting wired up differently than if you don't take music lessons," Laurel Trainor, professor of psychology, neuroscience and behavior at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, told Reuters.

"This is the first study to show that brain responses in young, musically trained and untrained children change differently over the course of a year," said Trainor who led the study.

Yet more proof that exposure to the arts is beneficial for children, which I'm sure isn't news to all of you. And yet, we're being governed by a group of people that have given us the No Child Left Behind act, which has not succeeded, and has caused a 22% decline in arts instruction.

Considering NCLB places so much emphasis on mathematics, it might do them some good to consider this:

"On the other hand, it is very interesting that the children taking music lessons improved more over the year on general memory skills that are correlated with nonmusicalabilities such as literacy, verbal memory, visiospatial processing, mathematics and IQ," she said.

Not only that, it gives you rhythm, baby.

I'm not going to do any "there's always money for sports" whinging; I just find it very frustrating that so many kids are denied access to the arts on a daily basis, simply because our government has their priorities all screwed up.

(I've got cross-posts, who could ask for anything more?)