Music makes you smarter. That’s the conclusion from a recent study of children who spent at least two years learning to play a musical instrument at The Harmony Project, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that provides free music lessons to low-income students from gang-ridden neighborhoods.
The Harmony Project’s founder, Margaret Martin, noticed several years ago that many of the program’s music students were not only graduating high school, but heading on to UCLA, Tulane, and other notable universities. They were regularly beating the odds compared to their neighborhood peers, and she wondered why.
Researchers at Northwestern University took a look at The Harmony Project’s students, analyzing their graduation rates and other markers of academic success. The study tracked 44 students over two years as they learned to play an instrument. The results, published this week in The Journal of...