Cecilia Keaveney (Fianna Fail)

I thank the Cathaoirleach for giving me the opportunity to raise this important and evolving issue. Recently there have been a number of reports on parents spending money on sending their children for mathematics grinds. However, the success of this action has not been very positive. I wish to extol the virtues of considering another approach which is not as effective if attempted from the age of 15 as it is from birth to six years.

It has long been felt that music plays a pivotal role in the development of children. As a musician, I am aware that performing music has an effect on social skills. Music teaches discipline because one is obliged to practise, and appreciation of others, especially when one plays in a group. It also leads to physical improvements such as those relating to hand-eye co-ordination and language development. Rhythm is the basis of all music and rhythmic patterns are the basis of speech. One need only consider the number of processes that are in train when a person sits down to play the piano and follow a score. His or her hands, eyes and feet are all active at once and music is produced.

Merely feeling that music is good for a child's developing brain has not been good enough to win the hearts of officials from the Departments of Finance and Education and Science. It is for this reason that I raised this matter. More information is emerging from research projects. Images have been taken of professional musicians' brain structures and this work has uncovered actual enlargement in the corpus callosum — the element that links the two hemispheres of the brain — and other specific anatomical phenomena relating to the auditory cortex, including increased volumes of grey matter. The latter was something to which Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot used to refer. Music develops elements of the brain which, for example, support the development of reasoning. Researchers have experimented on how this transcends into educational opportunities.

Experiences from an early age determine which brain cells will connect with other brain cells and which ones will die. Music training generates the neural connections used for abstract reasoning. By exposing children as young as possible, but preferably before the age of seven, to music, it develops their ability to understand and solve mathematical and scientific concepts, thus reaping long-term benefits for their future studies.

Neurological research has been extensive over the last decade in linking music to the development of the left hemisphere of the brain. According to Dr. Rauscher and Dr. Shaw of the universities of Wisconsin and California, respectively, music involves ratios, regularity and patterns, all of which parallel mathematical concepts. I could go into the details of a number of studies but I do not have enough time to do so. I will say, however, that in controlled situations, young children exposed to piano tuition realised that if they had 16 beats of music, they then had four sets of four beats. Music, therefore, enables students to learn multiplication tables and mathematical formulae more easily. They do not even realise they are learning in this way because it is part of the process of learning the piece. Rhythm students learn the concept of fractions more easily.

In the test carried out, students who learned rhythms were 100% more successful in fraction tests compared with those who had received no musical education. The results of the study found that children who had received private piano and singing lessons had performed 34% higher on tests measuring spatial-temporal ability. In a study carried out in Canada involving three to five year olds taking an academically appointed mathematical ability test which assessed concepts of relative magnitude, counting skills, calculation skills, knowledge of conventions and number facts, it was discovered that after six months the three year olds had higher test scores than four and five year olds who were not exposed to musical tuition.

Many people have disputed much of this research, which is sometimes called the Mozart effect. It is not specifically the Mozart effect but one of the greatest sceptics, along with Takako Fujioka, carried out a study in 2006 involving 12 children aged four to six. In this study, half the children were taught Suzuki violin for one year and the other half were not. Fujioka studied the brain activity of the children by measuring the magnetic fields in their brains. Analysis showed that across all children, larger responses were seen to violin tones than to white noise. This indicates that more brain resources were put into processing meaningful sounds. Testing continued for the year and concluded that the time that it took for the brain to respond to the sounds decreased over the 12 months. The latter means that as the children matured, the electrical conduction between neurons in their brains worked faster. It concluded that the memory capacity of children engaged in musical training also improved when compared with that of those who received no such training.

The older children get without exercising their musical aptitude, the more that will be lost and never regained. The reason for this is neurological. By the time a child reaches 11, the neuron circuits that permit perceptual and sensory discrimination, such as identifying pitch and rhythm, become closed off. In my view, this is why people who try to learn languages in later life find it difficult to do so.

Music will not suddenly turn all our children into masterminds. However, if musical education were made accessible to all young children it would enhance their overall learning capabilities, especially as the developmental brain is open to the lessons that music alone can teach in respect of subjects other than mathematics. Third level institutions continually complain that not enough children are interested in science and research. The research carried out proves that giving young children access to music will not only benefit their future but also ours because it might help form them into well-rounded individuals. In addition, it might also produce a few musicians.