If you want to excel in your math classes, think about adding a music or art class to your schedule.
The West Virginia Department of Education recently released a study revealing that high school students who took an extra art or music class scored better on reading and math tests than those who didn’t.
Simply put, art and music classes boost your math, reading and writing skills.
Even though this study was conducted using high school students, the principle translates to the college students. Plus, this isn’t the first study to uncover the hidden benefits of music and art education.
As someone who was in band from middle school through the end of high school, I can say this correlation is not one to brush off.
Early music classes teach students basic foundations of math: addition and division. These skills continue to develop as students progress through school.
As far as art classes go, they’re more involved than splattering paint on a canvas and calling it a masterpiece.
Basic drawing classes integrate proportion and scale, among a multitude of other math-related concepts.
The general consensus is that art and music majors are wasting their time and taking the easy way out, which is entirely false.
If someone doesn’t study physics or engineering, then he or she tends to be discredited and marked off as unintelligent.
This stereotype has a lot to do with salary levels after graduation, but money is not the primary focus for many students. Besides, creatively stimulating your brain helps prevent memory loss, another bonus of utilizing the right side of it.
Just like being a moderate is an effective way to approach politics, it is imperative to venture into both ways of thinking, whether critical or creative.
Plenty of facts enforce the importance of art and music education, but those don’t stop schools from cutting these courses before any others.
In 2011, MetLife surveyed American teachers and reported more than one-third of those teachers noted reductions or eliminations of arts or music programs in the course of that year.
This doesn’t make sense.
The National Association of Music Merchants Foundation’s Sounds of Learning conducted research that unveiled the cost for a comprehensive K-12 music education program was $187 per student annually.
As far as music education goes for the University, the LSU Music Department has suffered from budget cuts primarily in the form of tuition waivers to music recruits.
This can dip into the quality and prestige of the Golden Band from Tiger Land as well.
We have all seen the Studio Arts building — or rather, the dilapidated, broken-windowed mass behind Atkinson.
Even though funding for new buildings and renovations can take almost a decade to raise, it doesn’t look good for the University to build new structures intended for business and science majors while other buildings on campus are falling apart.
It’s confusing to think about how we idolize musicians, artists and actors, yet we want to cut the funding for their programs.
The University cuts music and dramatic arts funding, but if it prides itself on offering a wide range of quality courses for a plethora of majors, then it should treat every major as equal.
Next time you blow off a music or art major for choosing a cop-out career, just remember they are doing more with less, and they could be giving you business.
