In defense of the Music.

San Isidoro said that "without Music there is no perfect discipline, since no one can exist
without it".

The debate on the Reform of the Humanities has revived the concern about the role of Music
in Secondary Education. From the time of the Villar Palas Law no one had dared to question
the importance of Music within a coherent plan of general education. The Constitution states
that "education shall aim at the full development of the human personality." The organic laws
of 1985 and 1990 that develop this right confirm it and add that the educational activity will
have, among others, "the acquisition of intellectual habits and technical work, as well as
scientific, technical, humanistic, historical and aesthetic knowledge ". These provisions are
more than a formal and decorative enumeration: they express political will. Other institutions
such as the Ombudsman or UNICEF have stressed that to be efficient, education has to be
comprehensive and must necessarily include Music. Today's pedagogy confirms, from strictly
scientific perspectives, the need to design multidimensional educational models, according to
Howard Gardner, that contribute to the parallel development of all the powers of the human
being. Education limited to the intellect has proved sterile, while education that addresses
both the affective, procedural and interpersonal dimensions yields qualitatively superior
results.

In this context is situated the teaching of Music, which is the only discipline that
simultaneously covers all the dimensions of the human being. As Edgar Willems asserts,
"musical education, not instruction, awakens and develops human faculties." The
universalization of music education in Hungary a few decades ago led to an experiment that
showed statistically how students improve their average score in all subjects when they spend
more time on Music. It was verified that Music develops attention, concentration, memory,
tolerance, self-control, sensitivity; Which favors the learning of language, mathematics,
history, aesthetic and social values; Which contributes to intellectual, affective, interpersonal,
psychomotor, physical, neurological, etc. development.

Other more recent research that has followed the steps of Hungarian model have come to the
same conclusions about the spectacular educational effects of Music: Alfred Tomatis in Paris,

Martin F. Gardiner in Rhode Island, Frances H. Rauscher in California, Josef Scheidegger and
Maria Spychiger in Switzerland, Hans-Gnter Bastian in Germany, John Sloboda in the UK, Don
Campbell in Colorado, etc. It is demonstrated that Music is more than a simple matter: the

Music is the instrument of learning and the transmission vehicle of the know for excellence. It
is the most universal didactic resource of the people.

The language, history, mathematics, work, play, have been always learned singing and, as
Maria Zambrano once said, "It is Music that teaches without words the right way to listen".
Music must reinforce its presence in the teachings of regime to compensate for our shameful
musical illiteracy.

Historical (and of which some even feel proud and proclaim it without modality), in order to
guarantee the efficiency and quality of the educational system in together and to guide us
towards a better future. He understood this in this moment, the Commission on Humanities,
which "urges to promote musical training, the corals and instruments, auditions and concerts,
knowledge direct of the works of art and the learning of the dance ". For all this, and in for the
full development of the basic capacities of the human being, the department of Music rejects
any proposal that aims to reduce the presence of Music in Secondary Education.

It may be necessary to remember that Music, as an element cultural identity, has played in the
past and continues to play in the present in many more complex and industrially advanced
countries.

Fundamental role for the integration of the various communities that compose the modern
states, and that collaborates with its practice and study to preserve traditional legacies and
strengther attitudes of respect and coexistence with other cultures.

"Music makes you smarter", this is the slogan of those who advocate musical education in the
public schools of United States, according to Doug Goodkin. The same author states that after
twenty-four years of teaching children is convinced that Music acts in a positive way in those
children who sing, dance, recite, touch, explore, improvise, vary, imagine and compose. Orff
himself

Speaks of it when he says that "through Music you can wake up talents in children who
otherwise are difficult to flourish, and can to be buried in a non-productive musical education.
"According to Howard Gardner, the most correct would be to say that Music Stimulates the
totality of our intelligences: musical intelligence, which Develops the ability to think in sound
and rhythm, and at the same time Perceive and give meaning to the organization of sounds
and rhythms, and Develops parallel to the language, since both originate in the ear;

Linguistic intelligence, which thinks, speaks, perceives meanings and creates Through a
medium, the word, and whose signs include the Ability to listen to the language, its rhythms,
rhymes, sounds, its metric, etc; Logical-mathematical intelligence, which filters the world
through Schemes, models, numbers, concrete operations and ideas, and their intention

Is to order our experience, looking for designs and structures that unify The apparent chaos,
Music is sonic mathematics, dividing time into Units with a precise relationship to each other,
creating order from the chaos of Sound unifying structures, creating motifs and doing
operations With those (canons, fugues, counter-themes, variations ...), of

Here everyone knows that musicians are often good Mathematicians and vice versa; The
visual-spatial intelligence, of thinking in Images, to perceive and create meaning in color, shape
and form, of To orient oneself in space, listening to music helps the development of

Spatial perceptions in children; Kinesthetic intelligence, which is Characterized by the ability to

handle objects with skill and direct the Own body movements, see meaning in the gesture, and
perceive and Imitate the dance; Intrapersonal intelligence, related to growth

personal; Interpersonal intelligence, which focuses on other people, Activating our ability to
perceive, react and empathize with Moods, feelings and needs of others and develop a
Sense of community; Spiritual intelligence, which refers to the belief Of being connected to an
invisible world, of internal songs and Feelings, memories and sensations that are beyond
explanations And only belong to the most intimate and private world of each

person. Music makes us smarter, but not because it Labyrinth of multiple intelligences in which
the human being is involved, Because his ultimate goal was to get better scores on

Mathematics or high reasoning skills, but because their Ultimate goal is, among many other
things, to cultivate the totality of being human.