Director of Music | Mr Derek Rose
Middle School Musical
Good luck to all boys performing as part of the Middle School Musical production Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Experiencing rehearsals firsthand last weekend, all boys should be immensely proud of their achievements. With a relatively young cast this year, the energy on stage is contagious. Opening Night is tonight. Tickets are hot property, so be sure to purchase yours now.
Can learning a musical instrument help your son?
Over the years, there has been much debate regarding the benefits of learning a musical instrument. However, an article published by Matthew Lorenzo earlier this year raised some pertinent questions surrounding this issue.
Educator Martin Bergee from the University of Kansas set out to bust the myth that music contributes to student’s success in key learning areas and was surprised by his findings.
Martin studied 1000 middle school aged students (Years 5 to 8) to establish if there was any link between music education and increased performance in other disciplines, i.e. numeracy and literacy skills. Martin made allowances for demographics, environmental influences, socioeconomic and educational influences, assuming that the link between music and broader academic performance would decrease.
After a lengthy process, Martin concluded to his surprise that learning music still improved students’ performance in other disciplines. The data from these studies has since been published in the Journal of Research in Music Education.
Martin says:
that not only are these areas related but there's a cause-and-effect relationship - that as you get better in one area, you will, per se, get better in another area. The more you study music, the better you're going to be at math or reading. That's always been suspect with me.
I've always believed that the relationship is correlational and not causational. I set out to demonstrate that there are probably a number of background variables that are influencing achievement in any academic area - in particular, things like the educational level of the family, where the student lives, and so forth.
My intention was to show that the relationships are probably spurious, meaning that background influences are the main drivers of the relationships, and once those outside influences, like demographics, etc., are controlled for, the relationship essentially disappears.
Much to my surprise, not only did they not disappear, but the relationships are really strong.
Martin acknowledges that recent research has focused on the correlation between music education and the broader academic performance of young people. While Martin does not say that learning a musical instrument will automatically provide for a better mind, he does say that it can contribute to developing a more generalisable learning process.
Open Day
Next Monday afternoon, various ensembles will be providing musical entertainment at Open Day. Students will be performing at multiple locations, including Duhig Place, Treacy Court, The Chapel of the Holy Family and Waterford Place. Please come along and support the boys as they perform a range of music throughout the afternoon.
Term 2
- Thursday 6 - Saturday 8 May - Middle School Musical
- Monday 10 May - Open Day
- Saturday 15 May - Pep Band performance
- Tuesday 25 May - TPA Meeting
- Saturday 5 June - Pep Band performance
- Sunday 6 June - Norman Clarke Concert