04/30/2024
The arts are under attack in every possible educational environment. While anything concerning STEM, including manual coding is getting funded and pushed while the arts are getting decimated.
Not to mention AI is going to make much of manual coding obsolete soon enough. all you will need to be able to do is tell AI what you want to code and it will code it all for you and debug it. Faster than any human being ever could. Will people code in the future by hand for pleasure? I’m sure there are a few super nerds out there who will. But if we’re talking, reaching the human heart and organizing the Brain, there will be people playing piano for pleasure much more than there will be those writing C++ For for that dopamine hit by hand.
Manipulating a musical instrument for self satisfaction of the artistic heart will never be replaced. That relationship is often formed in primary schools. In public education.
Every study everywhere forever has always given us this data. Children who play musical instruments score better and do better on every test imaginable. Their brains are organized at a higher level and what they learn playing an instrument makes everything they do academically stronger. We’ve seen the data forever on this.
 A lot of people will say why can’t it be “and” instead of “or” and it’s because only one side of this equation is getting ripped out of schools. And it is not tech and coding. We’re going to have an apple to Apple discussion about accessibility let’s not pretend the arts are not being cremated right in front of our eyes. 
And this is coming from a nerd who loves everything to do tech.
But It won’t matter, because the adults jagoffs of today who run our education system - have turned the primary schools of today into college recruitment programs. They were the exact same anti art bollards of 30 years ago who weren’t in band then and they don’t advocate for band now. These are the people making decisions where the money goes.
They don’t understand and they never will because if they did, we wouldn’t be where we are right now—with band programs on life-support more and more every single year.
*** this post has gone viral (unfortunately) and some people do not understand that I expect you to be able to do some of your own research but since some of you can’t just say into your phone “show me the MIT study on how music affects a child’s brain“ I’ll have to do the work for you. here is a link to an article that has even more associated links within it.
 you’re welcome.
https://awarenessact.com/if-you-want-smarter-kids-teach-them-music-not-coding-according-to-mit/?fbclid=IwAR3C3Pv6giFV9zpgZOyPJYjk4HBVCGb0MTj_dKhQ078C_2XooetcY7QoJwM
