The Mystery of Music- The Song of Success

Amanda thought that her child would never learn how to read.  Pat was already nine years old and barely sounding out three-letter words. Amanda was ready to give up. Her daughter was called ADHD, ADD, DHDD- whatever the latest acronyms were. While nobody could decide on an exact diagnosis, Pat floundered through school, miserably. Then came help from a completely unexpected source: Music.

Music is the language of the soul, the song of the heart, the melody that crosses all barriers. Music is our natural language, one that is equally understood by every human being on the planet. Yet, it is interesting how little we exploit music. Unfathomably, we teach precious little through song.

Linda Stones knows. She has spent years studying, perfecting, and teaching the art of music to enhance and integrate the learning and development if special-needs students. Though she has taught mainstream children too, it is the special needs child that has brought the most surprising results.

                "She can actually sit!" Amanda told me. Suddenly, she saw her daughter focusing, relaxing, and actually learning. She was participating in complicated rhythm exercises, enriching her vocabulary, and most importantly, learning happily.

                For music teachers and therapists, this is not news. Back in the 1980s, The Center for New Discoveries in Learning, located in Windsor, California, conducted experiments in conjunction with the University of Texas, studying groups of subjects being taught with or without music. They found that music affected learning and memory in a powerful way.

                Listening to certain types of classical music while studying activates both the right and left hemispheres of the brain, maximizing learning and retention of information. The information being studies and the focus needed activate the left brain, while the actual music activates the right brain. Also, activities which engage both sides of the brain at the same time, such as playing an instrument or singing, cause the brain to be more capable of processing information.

                Albert Einstein is recognized as one of the smartest men who has ever lived. His mother bought him a violin, and music was the key that helped Albert Einstein become, well, Einstein. He played violin for many years using music as an emotional outlet. He loved the music of Mozart and Bach the most, seeing a parallel between the music of Mozart and his own work in physics. "Whenever he felt that he had come to the end of the road or into a difficult situation in his work, he would take refuge in music," recalled his older son, Hans Albert, in an article in The New York Times. "That would usually resolve all his difficulties."

                The power of music, to those who know how to use it, is clear. Linda Stones doesn't only use music to teach specific things. As she explains, "it's an overall issue. In a classroom there are different levels, music unifies. In a private room with a tense, closed child, music relaxes.

                "You cannot ignore music. It hits people in the most personal way. For children with emotional difficulties, learning disabilities, or traumas that fester, music is a way to open them up, to allow them to more easily express themselves and think more clearly."

                Using a variety of teaching methods, Ms. Stones has developed teaching techniques and rehabilitation methods that equip children with music as a long-term tool, whether in a classroom setting or one on one. And whether one is an Einstein or your average Jack, the mystery of music opens up the mind in the most neurologically specific way, stimulating the brain the way nothing else can.

                But most of all, it is just plain fun. The relaxing waves of beautiful sound and hypnotic rhythms, the discovery that you can create music with your own fingers, allows this one area of learning to be a joyful one for every child.

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