It’s always exciting for me to meet a new student for the first time. One of the first questions I like to ask is what they like to do outside of school. First of all, I’m genuinely interested in what motivates my students outside the classroom, and second, their avocations are much more related to success in school than they or their parents might even realize. Extracurricular activities are a key way to foster neuroplasticity, or the ability of our neural networks to reorganize and grow in response to a new stimulus that is repeated over time. Neuroplasticity – the literal rewiring of the human brain – is at the heart of the learning that we as educators foster in our students. Moreover, it scientifically validates Ralph Waldo Emerson’s statement that “the mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.”
The Music to Language Connection
I often reflect on the good fortune that I had when my parents signed me up for Suzuki piano lessons when I was 4. Shinichi Suzuki’s lightning bolt realization in 1933 – that all Japanese children speak Japanese and might learn music in the same way – led to his revolutionary method of musical education based upon careful listening to the same works of music for sustained periods of time every day. My love for challenging myself with learning piano stuck with me for life, in large part because of all the benefits that I could see developing within my own brain, sustaining my progress through school, and nourishing my love of learning inside and outside the formal setting of the classroom.
As Suzuki predicted, I can confirm that my early training as a musician inculcated an ear for detail that goes far beyond my Spotify playlists or the symphony hall: I began learning Spanish in sixth grade, and was fascinated by its different cadences and rhythms from my native tongue of English from an early age. (And no, speaking from personal experience, the age of 11 or 12 is still not quite early enough for most learners to speak a second language without a detectable accent.)
What is the role of foreign languages?
The street runs both ways, though. As long as I’ve been aware there was such a thing, I have possessed perfect pitch or absolute pitch, the ability to name a musical tone without hearing any reference pitch beforehand. Much like native-level fluency in a language, early training is key: in a 2004 study of conservatory students at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, around 12% of those who began musical training at age 4 or 5 possessed absolute pitch, whereas those who began musical training at age 8 or later had a rate of absolute pitch much closer to that seen in the general population, between 0.01 and 1 percent. Most of these students spoke English as their native language.
But, here’s the truly amazing finding from that study: at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, approximately 60% of students who began musical training at age 4-5 reported absolute pitch ability. The ability to understand and speak a tonal language – say, Chinese, Zulu, Thai, or Navajo – is foundational in developing absolute pitch. (The Beijing conservatory students’ rate of absolute pitch, like that of their American counterparts, dropped significantly for those who began musical training at ages 8-9, but still hovered around 40%, researchers hypothesized, due to their expertise in carefully parsing the music-like tones of their native language.)
The impact of neuroplasticity
Whether your child is a musician or not, she’s rewiring her brain for learning by the repeated stimuli of dedication to her passions outside school. By naturally following our senses and our curiosity as we make sense of our bewilderingly complex social and natural environments and the subjects we study, we rewire our brains daily, neuron by neuron, forging new and complex connections both microscopic and social.
Interested in learning more? Check out the 2004 study here
