What if every child had access to music education from birth? | Anita Collins | TEDxCanberra

Anita Collins shares how learning music influences our brain development and what this means for musical education.

Anita Collins was handed a clarinet at the age of nine, and it changed her life. This single event dictated her future career as a musician, music educator and academic.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx.

What if,

what if a large number
of scientific studies

had found that there was one activity
that could improve our cognitive function,

help our memory systems to work,
help us to learn language,

help us to moderate our emotional states,
help us to solve complex problems

and help our brains
to be healthier into later life?

What if that activity,

while beneficial if undertaken
at any time during our lives,

was actually found by the scientists

to be most beneficial if it was undertaken
before the age of seven?

What if that activity,

unlike the momentary pain
of a vaccination needle,

is actually enjoyable
for everyone involved?

Now, you might be expecting me

to reveal a new superfood
we could eat some more of,

maybe a pill we could take every day
or an exercise regimen we could start,

But actually, this activity is as old
as our cultures and societies itself.

And that activity is music education.

Now, I may well be biased.

I am a music educator,

and I understand the world

through the twin lenses
of being a musician and being a teacher.

But even before I became a teacher,

I used to look around at all the people
I was doing musical activities with

and I used to wonder why
they seemed to be good at everything,

why they seem to do well
at all of their studies,

why they fit more into a day.

And while many of them, most of them,

never went on to be musicians
in their professional lives,

the careers they did choose
were incredibly diverse

and they were so successful in them.

and they continue to be so.

What, if anything, did music education
have to do with that?

So when it came time for me
to choose a topic for my PhD study,

it became pretty clear pretty quickly,

I wanted to know if music education
benefited brain development.

What I found was a huge amount
of research, now two decades worth,

conducted by neuroscientists.

And the neuroscientists had stumbled
on something kind of by accident.

They were looking at the brain functions
and structures of musicians,

and, literally, their brains
looked different

and they function differently
and in many cases, far more effectively.

So the neuroscientists
started to do experiments

that compared groups of musicians
with groups of non-musicians

doing all manner of tasks.

Now, it's important at this point

to share the definition of musician
that the neuroscientists use.

They believe it was someone
who learnt a musical instrument

and had learnt it formally,

meaning they'd had lessons
from an expert every week.

They'd learnt how to read music,

most of them had been involved in
ensemble music-making experiences,

and they'd done it for a reasonably
long period of time,

two years at the very least.

Now, to help me explain
some of this research,

I'm going to use, I hope -

There we go! Thank you.

I'm going to use some animation
from a TED Education film

that I wrote and I helped to create
earlier this year.

Now, the technology
that helped the neuroscientists

allow them to see our brains
working in real time.

And what they did is they used
fMRI machines and PET scanners

to watch what was happening.

They would get the participants
to do all sorts of tasks -

reading, maths problems -

and they would see
certain areas of the brain light up.

But when they asked the participants
to listen to music, they saw fireworks.

They had never seen so many areas
of the brain light up at the same time.

So why did music education
have this impact on the brain?

Well, what they found

is that music education
works three areas of the brain at once:

the motor, visual and auditory cortices.

If we think about it,
it's like a full-brain workout;

it's like our legs,our arms and our torso
doing an exercise at the same time.

Music education is exercise for the brain.

And among many, many other things,

they also found that musicians had
a larger bridge, a larger corpus callosum,

across the two hemispheres of the brain,

which allowed the messages
to travel far more quickly

and in very, very creative pathways.

So what did this brain exercise mean

for how musicians' brains
actually functioned?

Again, among many,
many other things they found,

they found that musicians

were able to solve puzzles and problems
far more effectively and creatively.

They found that musicians
had higher levels of executive function.

Now, executive function is a complex
group of activities in our brain

that solve those really complex problems

that have logical, strategic, conceptual,
emotional elements to them.

They also found that musicians

had very highly developed
memory systems in their brain.

And that they thought
this might have happened

because when a musician makes a memory,
they actually put tags against it -

an emotional tag, a visual tag,
a conceptual tag, a contextual tag.

And overall, so far with these two decades
of research that we now have,

they have found that music education

raises the general cognitive capacity
of anyone who undertakes it.

And even further to that,

they've found that music education
helps us be comfortable with discomfort.

Now, learning is uncomfortable:

we're asking our brains and our bodies
to do things we've never done before.

So music education actually helps us
be comfortable in that state.

It helps us to feel
comfortable with learning.

Now, I'd like to share with you

two studies which, to me, highlight
some of the many applications and impacts

that music education could have.

First one involves babies.

I've seen very trusting mothers

allow their beautiful babies
to be put into fMRI machines

so the neuroscientists
could monitor their brain functions

as the mothers spoke to them,

along with many other tasks.

Now, I say "trusting mothers"

because these babies
were between one and three days old.

What the neuroscientists saw

is that the babies were using
their music-processing networks

to understand their mother's voices.

Literally, they were hearing music
in their mother's voices.

And this confirms something

that the neuroscientists
had been thinking for a while,

that music and language processing
are very closely connected in the brain,

that, indeed,

at birth we need our music processing
to understand our language:

at birth, we are musical.

The second study involves IQ points.

And I know we could have
a whole other TED Talk about IQ points,

but they are a well-used measure
of intellectual capacity.

And in this study comparing musicians
with non-musicians,

they found that those
that had undertaken music education

before the age of seven

had around about 7.5 IQ points higher
than those that had not.

Now, 7.5 IQ points
doesn't sound like much,

but if we put it in context, an IQ of 100
is said to be average or normal,

an IQ of 130 is said to be genius
or entry into Mensa.

So 7.5 points is huge.

It's over 20%.

And even further to that,

another study looked
at the economic capacity vs. IQ point,

how much more we would earn
per year, on average,

per one IQ point that we had higher.

What they found in today's dollars

is that for every IQ point higher we have
is equal to about $700 per year.

Let's take our 7.5 IQ points
for music education.

That's about $5000 per year.

Now think of that across 10 years,

and suddenly we start to see
that music education

could have an enormous impact
on every part of our society.

Now, in every area of scientific study,

it is incredibly important
to ask big questions

and to look at the myths
that exist in that area.

And there are two big ones in this area,

and they are that to play music
we need to be smart

and to play music we need to be talented.

Neuroscientists have now done
a large number of randomized studies

that have showed that music education
impacts everybody who undertakes it.

You don't need to be smart to start with.

And if we think back to that study
about babies, we're all born musical.

We have to be to understand language.

It is the experiences
and the opportunities that we have in life

that realizes that talent.

And this gets me thinking
even more about the fact

that music education could be the glue

that could bring together so many things
that we are dealing with

in our educational systems
and our societies today.

Let me give you some examples.

Learning disorders.

At the moment, many of them understood
to be a miscommunication

between the left and the right
hemispheres of the brain.

And as we saw earlier,

music education actually makes
those two sides of the brain

work together really well.

ADHD, again, at the moment understood

to be a mistiming between the motor,
visual and auditory cortices.

And again, we saw before,

music education actually makes
the three areas of the brain

work together incredibly well.

If we take it another step further,

music education has been found to help us
acquire and understand language

and to solve complex problems,
many of which involve numbers.

How might universal music education
change literacy and numeracy

in this country and in many
countries around the world

where it's a very hot topic?

Now, I think about all of these issues
in light of my own daughter,

who's just turned four.

And I think about her and her generation.

I wonder what could universal music
education do for an entire generation?

I think of in 10 years' time,
when she's 14,

what might learning be like
in her classroom

if the general cognitive capacity
has been raised of an entire generation.

If literacy and numeracy levels
have been raised,

if many of the learning
and behavioural disorders

that we deal with today in classrooms

have had the benefit of music education,

how might our schools change?

I jump again to 30 years' time,

when she's 34.

She could be doing
absolutely anything with her life.

But again, if we raise the cognitive
capacity of an entire generation,

how might that change our social,
cultural, economic, political landscape?

Dare I say it, how might
the focus and quality

about political debate
in this country change

if that's the generation of voters
that they're trying to impress upon?

I jump again to 70 years' time,

when she's 74.

I wonder about the quality
of her physical and mental health

if we'd invested before the age of seven
in her brain health into later life.

How might that impact our health budget?

How might we be spending
our money differently

if we've made an investment
back here in her generation

that will impact in 70 years' time?

And this gets me thinking
about a much larger issue with education.

Too often, we play
the short game with education.

It is a political football
that gets hit back and forth

with every change in government.

What if we played the long game?

What if we invested now
in my daughter's generation

before the age of seven

in ways that now
the science has showed us

we can absolutely
predict to the benefits,

and in so many ways, we absolutely
cannot predict the benefits.

Now, music education
is not the only answer,

it's not the silver bullet
that we've heard of earlier.

There is no single answer.

But I know it was the answer for me.

When I was seven or eight years old,
I was struggling to read.

I could not untangle words and letters.

And it wasn't through a lack of trying.

My mother was a specialist
reading teacher.

And at the age of nine,

someone handed me a clarinet by mistake -
I was meant to get a flute.

There was none left, so they said,
"Here you go. Have a clarinet."

And I learnt how to play,
and I learnt how to read music.

Within about six months, I'd untangled
those words and those letters.

I have no proof that those two
are interconnected,

but from all the research
that I have read

and from the works I continue to see
the neuroscientists undertake,

I'm sure they are connected.

So now, with all of this research
and all of this knowledge,

what can we do?

I think the first thing we can do
is think differently.

Music is a beautiful
and wonderful art form

that almost every human being
on the planet enjoys

in so many different ways

every single day.

But maybe we are missing
an opportunity with music education

that could change our world
in ways we have no idea of.

I think we could listen differently.

When we hear that scratchy,
out-of-tune sound of a beginner violinist,

don't think about how it offends our ears.

Think about the fireworks
that are going off for that young child

as they try so desperately
to get the right note.

Think of the learning
that is going on for them.

I think we could act differently.

Instead of just going along to our child
or grandchild's end-of-year concert,

ask the music teacher if you can go
to the rehearsal beforehand.

See the learning happening.

See the learning to be comfortable
with discomfort going on.

See the fireworks.

And if you have a child or a grandchild

who's been playing trombone
for about six months

and doesn't feel that
they're really getting anywhere

and they ask you if they can give up,

don't let them.

Make a choice for them

that they will thank you for
in the decades to come.

Music education should be essential

for every child.

And if you look at our national curriculum

and many national curriculums
around the world,

it is a core part of it.

And yet in a research a study recently,
relates to here in Australia,

1.4 million children today do not have
access to a music teacher in their school.

Music education is not for the talented.

It is not a luxury, it's not an add-on,

it's not a bonus, it's not a nice thing
if we had some extra money.

It is essential.

We take deliberate steps to teach
our children how to care for this planet

so that they may enjoy it in the future.

We take deliberate steps to teach
our children how to eat well, exercise

and look after themselves
and make good choices

so that they may live a full life.

Why can't we take deliberate steps

to raise the cognitive capacity
through music education

of the next generation

so that they can build
a better world for themselves?

Thank you.

(Applause)