Some food for thought

We will be covering this in class this year, but I thought it would be very powerful to share with our blog followers - parents and students alike.

I am always struck by how many people keep discrediting what we have known all along that studying an instrument is a very valuable skill as part of human brain development. However, consistently, I still hear people referring to Band as a "fluff" course or not on par with academics.  It's not that playing "f" on the clarinet is the valuable skill (unless of course you are going to be a professional clarinetist), it is what your brain is doing while you learn this skill.  Learning and instrument is a "full body work out" for your brain as opposed to other skills that are centered on one or two specific areas of the brain.   It's nice that there is now more and more hard data to lay some of these myths to rest.