“Life without playing music is inconceivable for me. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music… I get most joy in life out of music” — Albert Einstein In multiple studies conducted and reports published around the world, it’s been clearly established that music education greatly aids the cognitive development of children. Children who learn music have higher IQs and this is because music engages the left and right brain simultaneously. A study conducted jointly by the University of Wisconsin and University of California at Irvine in 1997 indicates that three-four-year-olds with eight months of music instruction, including singing and keyboard lessons, averaged 43 percent more in IQ tests than children who didn’t sign up for music lessons. Similarly, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study reveals that the cerebral cortex of concert pianists is 30 percent larger than of acknowledged intellectuals without music education. Likewise, a research study conducted by Susan Hallam in 2010 at the Institute of Education, University of London, concluded that students with formal music education tend to have higher academic scores in primary, middle and high school years. Yet despite the obvious creative and disciplinary benefits of music education, this discipline is not mandatory in the majority of India’s 1.40 million schools. At best, singing is encouraged in pre-primary and primary years with a dedicated period set aside for this activity. By the time children reach secondary school, music as a subject and even singing classes, are dropped with a small minority left to acquire music education on their own. Even though CBSE and the CISCE boards offer music as an elective at the secondary level, very few schools actively encourage music traditions. On the other hand, in schools affiliated with the Geneva-based International Baccalaureate Organisation, music is an important element in children’s education and is taught as an integral subject of the curriculum from primary years onwards. It’s not coincidence that since it was founded in 1968, IBO — which offers four education programmes (primary, middle years, careers-related and diploma (class XII)) is emerging as the world’s most preferred school board with 4,375 affiliated schools in 147 countries. Although in India, government policy tends to ignore formal music education, progressive governments around the world have introduced compulsory music education with defined goals and objectives into their school systems. Following the lead of the UK and US, a growing number of countries are providing access to music instruction in public and private schools through the formal curriculum. Countries such as Hungary, The Netherlands, Japan and China, whose students consistently fare well in international learning measurement and assessment tests, have made music a mandatory curriculum subject in primary-secondary school, and an optional subject with academic credits in higher education. Although Hungary until the 1990s was a member-nation of the Soviet controlled Warsaw Pact, one of the few benefits of communist dictatorship was a robust education system in which music learning was compulsory. This tradition continues, and today music education is compulsory…
