Why study music?

Abstract

Cognitive neuroscience is identifying neural networks in the brain that support multiple ways of knowing. This notion is also supported by evidence from psychology, anthropology, sociology, and other related disciplines. These human knowledge systems provide a means for sharing, expressing, understanding, knowing, and gaining insights into one’s inner and outer worlds. Considered alongside other knowledge systems such as language and mathematics, what unique contributions can music make? Music provides unique and invaluable insights into the human condition. Music allows us to know, discover, understand, experience, share, or express such aspects of the human condition as feelings, aesthetic experiences, the ineffable, thoughts, structure, time and space, self-knowledge, self-identity, group identity, and healing and wholeness. If the purpose of an education is to systematically develop the mind and capabilities of every child, it is clear that music has a unique and necessary role to play.