The Arts

The American Psychological Association recently published an article that repeats what we already know: that, on average, music students perform better in their non-music classes than non-music students do. Arts educators and institutions have shared this article in droves recently. As arts educators, we know why music students perform better in their non-music classes than their peers. Music students have to think in multi-dimensional ways. They have to be able to take a chord and analyze and think about it and visualize it like Tony Stark was able to visualize holographic 3D models of his next invention. Music students have to learn perseverance; one can’t rehearse a four-measure phrase for an hour without some measure of stick-with-itness. But…