“I’m not sure any of it mattered but all of it was music.” These words, from Kern Bergquist’s “Over The Rhine,” apply to most of the human population. I mean how many times have you had lyrics stuck in your head?

It could be your favorite song or even the trending tunes on the radio. You don’t even have to like the song! Music has an upper hand in memorization but it contains other benefits as well. Despite this, schools throughout the United States seem to be removing music classes from their curriculum to make space for other classes. 

Music taps into our brains in ways like nothing else. The simple melodies seem like they only serve for a pleasant pastime, but they exercise your brain in incomparable ways. Charles Limb, a head and neck surgeon at Johns Hopkins University explains “It allows you to think in a way that you used to not think, and  it also trains a lot of other cognitive facilities that have nothing to do with music.” 

Cognitive skills are defined as the core knowledge your brain taps into for thinking, reading, learning, remembering, reasoning, and paying attention. Raechel Park, a junior said “I used to play the piano in middle school and playing it helped my typing skills, and it definitely helped me with time management too.” All of these skills are essential for development and living. Which means it is important to nurture these skills in children and even teens.  

Playing or listening to music has been proven to release a chemical called dopamine in the human brain. This compound is popularly known to give us feelings of happiness and help with attention skills. Emily (BHS student) explained, “When I listen to music I feel a rush of  happiness and it even opens up feelings you may have never experienced before.” Besides providing students an outlet for releasing stress music can provide to other important traits. Performing whether if it is on stage or simply in a classroom can instill fear in a child or teen. But overcoming that fear can help students deal with risk taking in the adult world.

Hopefully recent and previous studies can help schools realize that music allows students to go places with their imagination and helps them excel in their studies.