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Do We Need Better Music Education?

A guest essay argues that we are teaching music the wrong way. Do you agree?

By Jeremy Engle

Do you play any musical instrument — or have you ever? Do you think music should be an essential part of every child’s education?

In “ We’re Teaching Music to Kids All Wrong ,” Sammy Miller, a Grammy-nominated drummer and the founder of a music education company, writes:

Each fall, as school starts up again, music educators witness a familiar ritual: Eager first-time students squeak on a clarinet, suppress giggles at the noises coming from the tubas and zealously hit a bass drum a little too hard. It’s a moment characterized by excitement, enthusiasm and the anticipation of new beginnings — which is why it’s so disheartening to know that many of those kids will eventually quit their instruments. The fact that many children don’t stick with music is bad news not only for the state of self-expression and joy but also for education. Studies show that students who play an instrument do better in science, English and math and are more likely to want to attend college . They also may have less anxiety and be more conscientious — they are the kids you want your kids to be friends with. I have never met an adult who is expressly thankful to have quit music as a child, but I’ve met many who have regrets. So why haven’t we, as parents and educators, been better able to encourage our own kids to continue? In my 15 years as a musical educator, talking to countless teachers, I’ve learned one thing: There is no magical fix. Making music education more successful doesn’t need to involve expensive digital accessories or fancy educational platforms (and I say that as someone who developed an online educational platform). There’s no technological or financial program that will convert children into lifelong music lovers. Instead, we need to start by rethinking how we teach music from the ground up, both at home and in the classroom. The onus is on parents and educators to raise the next generation of lifelong musicians — not just for music’s sake, but to build richer, more vibrant inner personal lives for our children and a more beautiful and expressive world.

Mr. Miller urges parents and educators to take a new approach to musical education:

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How Music Education Sharpens the Brain, Tunes Us Up for Life

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When Amy Richter was a little girl, her father often traveled for work. He often came home bearing gifts of music and record albums. They bonded while poring over all that vinyl, she recalls, exploring the world of music from classical and rock to bluegrass.

Richter’s love of music only grew as she got older and studied voice and piano. Diagnosed with dyslexia, she also found that music helped her cope with her learning disability. It helped her gain focus and confidence. That’s why she studied music therapy in college. She knows the power of music to supercharge our brains.

“Music really became the guiding force in my education and helped me to connect with other people, helping build confidence through performance, also helping with my mental health,” said Richter, who founded  Music Workshop , a free music curriculum designed to cultivate a love of music from a young age, that can help schools beef up their arts offerings on the cheap. Schools across the country, including hundreds in California, from Yuba City to San Diego, now use her program. “It really became a tool in my life to better myself.”

To be sure, aficionados of the arts have long argued that art transforms us, but in recent years, neuroscience has shown just how music can shape the architecture of the brain. This cognitive research illuminates the connection between music and learning and gives heft to longstanding arguments for the power of music education that are newly relevant in the wake of California’s Proposition 28, which sets aside money for arts education in schools.

“The K-12 grades are the years in which brain function is most rapidly evolving and information from all different types of learning and subjects is being processed and absorbed, including connections across what we might think of as different school subjects, but they are all connected in our developing brains,” said Giuliana Conti, director of education and equity for  Music Workshop , which is particularly popular at schools that often tap substitute teachers in an era of high teacher absences.

“Music education provides physical and auditory experiences that work like bridges for brain structures. As the brain processes musical sounds and body movements, neural pathways across different regions of the brain grow and strengthen. The more those pathways are activated, the more usable they become across time and other skill sets or learning experiences.”

Amid the ongoing crises in literacy and numeracy plaguing our schools and the enduring sting of pandemic learning loss, many arts advocates are pointing to music education as a way to boost executive functioning in the brain. This enhanced cognitive function, often coupled with a surge in well-being, may be the secret sauce that makes music education such an academic powerhouse, research suggests.  Music may prime the brain to learn.

“Music is this wonderful, holistic way of engaging almost everything that is important for education,” said Nina Kraus, a noted neuroscientist at Northwestern University who studies the biology of auditory learning, in a  webinar. “First of all, we know that the ingredients that are important in making music and the ones that are important for reading and literacy are the same ingredients. So when you’re strengthening your brain by making music, you’re strengthening your brain for language.”

Kraus, who grew up listening to her mother play the piano, is passionate about the impact of sound, ranging from the distracting to the sublime, from noise pollution to Puccini, on the brain. The gist of much of her research is how thoroughly sound shapes cognition. Music training, for example, sets up children’s brains to become better learners by enhancing the sound processing that underpins language, she said.

While we live in a visually oriented world, our brains are fundamentally wired for sound, she argues. Reading, for example, is a relatively new phenomenon in human history, while listening keenly for a sound, say a predator, is a primal impulse deeply embedded in the brain. Put simply, what we hear shapes who we are.

“Music really is the jackpot,” as Kraus, author of “ Of Sound Mind ,” puts it. She has conducted extensive research showing that music education helps boost test scores for low-income children.

Music also helps us manage  stress.   Perhaps that’s one reason that offering more music and arts classes is also associated with lower chronic absenteeism rates and higher attendance, research  suggests . Think of music education as lifting weights with your brain. It makes the whole apparatus stronger and healthier.

“Music is therapeutic because it helps us to regulate our emotions,” said Richter, who adds that a culturally relevant music curriculum can help engage a diverse student body. “It helps us to lower our cortisol levels. It helps promote relaxation. It helps us with focus and concentration. It also helps us with connection. Now more than ever, we know how important connection is, especially among our youth.”

In the post-pandemic era, these insights may well fuel the uptake of music classes in a state struggling with low test scores, but the implications for brain health actually go far beyond academic prowess and social-emotional well-being in childhood.

Indeed, early musical experiences may impart a lifelong neuroplasticity, Kraus has documented. Studies suggest that a 65-year-old musician has the neural activity of a 25-year-old non-musician. A 65-year-old who played music as a child but hasn’t touched an instrument in ages still has neural responses faster than a peer who never played music, although slower than those of a die-hard musician.

“What I would say to everyone who thinks about picking up an instrument: It’s never too late,” Richter said. “Even just practicing scales can help with cell regeneration. So I encourage adults to continue to learn music along the way, whether that’s picking up an instrument or listening to music, it’s always really important for brain development.”

Music pricks up our hearts and minds, as well as our ears. Children must persevere to master a piece of music and collaborate to perform it in the spotlight. They must learn focus, patience and grace under pressure. That kind of electrifying shared experience, working as a community, is something new to many of them, experts say.

“When music is more regularly incorporated as part of children’s everyday lives,” Conti said, “it can move the needle in their learning and development more effectively across many different parts of their lives: socially, emotionally, musically and academically.”

It’s the intangible effects of music education, the elements that can’t be reduced to data points and parameters, that strike Kraus as the most profound. Music builds a feeling of joy and a sense of belonging between musicians and their listeners, which is something that little else in our age of digital background noise can do.

“Music connects us, and it connects us in a way that hardly anything I know does, so it’s very, very important,” Kraus said. “We live in a very disconnected world. Depression, anxiety, alienation, the inability to focus, all of that is on the rise. Intolerance is on the rise. Music is a way to bring us together.”

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Articles on Music education

Displaying 1 - 20 of 46 articles.

‘How a healthy community should be’: how music in youth detention can create new futures

Alexis Anja Kallio , Griffith University

Learning music the informal way some popular musicians do could inspire more school students

Anna Mariguddi , Edge Hill University

Hallelujah, it’s school concert season. A music researcher explains why these performances are so important

Kathleen McGuire , Australian Catholic University

Microphone check − 5 ways that music education is changing

Clint Randles , University of South Florida

How video games like ‘Starfield’ are creating a new generation of classical music fans

J. Aaron Hardwick , Wake Forest University

NZ music schools under threat: we need a better measure of their worth than money

Dugal McKinnon , Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

US music education has a history of anti-Blackness that is finally being confronted

Philip Ewell , Hunter College

If you want your child to be more resilient, get them to join a choir, orchestra or band

William James Baker , University of Tasmania ; Anne-Marie Forbes , University of Tasmania , and Kim McLeod , University of Tasmania

We studied the ‘bibles’ of jazz standards – and found sexism lurking in the strangest place

Wendy Hargreaves , University of Southern Queensland and Melissa Forbes , University of Southern Queensland

An 11-year -old Prince spoke out in support of his striking Minneapolis teachers – a historian of the city’s music scene explains why

Rashad Shabazz , Arizona State University

‘Just as important as English or maths’: how mentoring is bringing music alive for primary school students

Margaret S. Barrett , Monash University and Katie Zhukov , Monash University

You’re not tone deaf and you know more about music than you think

Alexander Albury , Concordia University and Virgina Penhune , Concordia University

Music can help lift our kids out of the literacy rut, but schools in some states are still missing out

Rachael Dwyer , University of the Sunshine Coast and Anita Collins , University of Canberra

Teaching music online in the pandemic has yielded creative surprises, like mixing ‘Blob Opera’ and beatboxing

Robbie MacKay , Queen's University, Ontario

Why improvisation is the future in an AI-dominated  world

Rich Pellegrin , University of Florida

‘We need each other’: Black classical musicians are building supportive communities

Gloria Blizzard , Dalhousie University and Gillian Turnbull , Toronto Metropolitan University

Music education has a race problem, and universities must address it

Jacqueline Warwick , Dalhousie University

Young musicians can perform on virtual stages when schools are closed

Christopher Cayari , Purdue University

How using music to parent can liven up everyday tasks, build family bonds

Lisa Huisman Koops , Case Western Reserve University

Steve Martin’s banjo and other music played from coronavirus isolation show how the arts connect us

Roberta Lamb , Queen's University, Ontario and Robbie MacKay , Queen's University, Ontario

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• Classical music
• Musical instruments
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Top contributors

Lecturer in Musicology, Dan School of Drama & Music, Queen's University, Ontario

Professor of Music, Australian Catholic University

Principal Fellow and Professor of Music, The University of Melbourne

Professor and Head of Music Therapy, The University of Melbourne

Associate Professor at the School of Social Transformation, Arizona State University

Adjunct assistant professor, University of Canberra

Senior Research Associate, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Professor of Music, City, University of London

Head of School, School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds

Professor, Thompson Rivers University

NRF Accredited & Senior Researcher; Lead Coordinator of the South-South Educational Collaboration & Knowlede Interchange Initiative, Cape Peninsula University of Technology

Professor of Music Education, Northwestern University

Professor of Education Research, School of Education, University of Birmingham

Associate Professor, Music Education, University of Missouri-St. Louis

PhD candidate, University of Newcastle

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Using Music During Instruction to Support Cognition

Teachers can incorporate music in their classrooms in a variety of ways to enhance the cognitive processes that are essential to learning.

Why is it easier to recall lyrics to a song than to memorize a poem? What is the power of emotional connections to some songs we remember years later? How does awareness of making progress in a musical instrument sustain academic learning effort? 

In exploring the impact of music on learning, we find that when music is included and embedded across the curriculum, it can promote positive impacts on learning. 

Music Provides Motivation and Improves Mood

Music can promote buy-in to topics of study, opportunities to recognize the power of effort to progress when learning a musical instrument, boost moods, provide memory-enhancing tools, and even expand the brain’s creative potential. We’ll explore some of the ways that incorporating music across the curriculum can impact mood, motivation, and memory:

• Music gives opportunities for students who are having a hard time in school to experience the emotional highs of progressive achievement.
• Knowing from the start that they will produce representations of the learning creatively can alleviate boredom in students and prevent them from giving low effort.
• Information acquired with positive expectation and then mentally manipulated through the symbolic representations of music can link into expanded neural networks for creative insights. 

Dopamine Increases Pleasure in Learning

The dopamine-reward system enhances the experience of pleasure, satisfaction, and increased motivation and memory. The desire to seek the pleasurable response to dopamine release can be enhanced by music to facilitate motivated learning and enduring memory .  

Teachers can promote positivity and perseverance by tapping into the power of the dopamine reward cycle. Incorporating dopamine boosters such as choice, optimism, movement, positive interactions with peers, being read to, acting kindly, expressing gratitude, humor, and listening to or playing music can keep brains engaged and receptive to learning.

There is evidence that dopamine activity in the brain’s reward areas increases with the pleasure of listening to music .

3 BENEFITS oF Music Incorporation

Music can boost interest about what is to come and bring greater enthusiasm to activities in which students participate. 

1.   Engagement/motivation. Incorporate music for joyful and powerful learning. 

• Playing music that students enjoy as they move through many activities (such as creative writing, art, collaborative projects) encourages greater dopamine-enhanced experiences.
• As students enter the classroom, provide music related to the upcoming topic, such as a Strauss waltz as they are about to study Austria or jazz before a discussion of The Great Gatsby .
• Provide theme music from a game show, such as Jeopardy , before reviewing for a test. 

2.   Practice makes progress. Share with your students the following concept: “A process called neuroplasticity is ready to work for you to make your learning stronger and more useful. Every time your brain practices a skill or reviews new learning, the memories and actions strengthen.”

Awareness of their capacity to change their brains can be exemplified through past successes. Encourage students to reflect on their progressive success, such as when they learned to ride a bicycle, rapidly type on a computer or phone, or play a musical instrument. Explain that they actively practiced and that doing so improved their skills. 

Teachers who understand the power of learners’ awareness of their abilities can incorporate this insight and use appropriate corrective measures and supportive feedback to recognize gradual, ongoing progress to desired goals and musical skill building. These experiences promote their connections, competence, and confidence that they are capable of  building their understanding and skills—and that they are changing their brains in positive ways!

From their awareness of progress in playing an instrument to recognition of increasing skills in remembering a song, students experience the dopamine-reward satisfaction and sustained motivation from recognizing that their effort supports goal progress. For example, students can learn to play the recorder for appropriately leveled tunes with increasing difficulty. 

3. Extended memory and creativity. Just as it’s easier to recall lyrics to a song than to memorize a poem and easier to recall those lyrics when you hear the music, students can increase their memory by putting information into a familiar tune, rhyme, or song. When movement, such as gestures, dance movements, or body position (turn left/right or moving to another place in the classroom), are used, they add another storage locker for the new information and further increase access to memory. 

A study about the brain’s increased interconnectivity during musical improvisation is compelling: Skilled musicians were placed in a brain scanner and given a keyboard with the request to improvise new music . When they did so, their fMRI scans showed wide-ranging activation and extensive interconnectivity during periods of improvisation far beyond that displayed when performing known melodies.   

Additionally, multisensory experiences that include music can extend wider-ranging brain connectivity. When information is learned, practiced, or applied through different senses (hearing, seeing, touching, moving), the memories are stored in multiple regions of the brain. This extended network of the information can then be accessed by way of any one of the sensory experiences through which it was incorporated. Incorporating musical experiences as part of learning may increase memory and potentially extend the brain’s interconnectivity of knowledge, promoting recognition of relationships that might not have otherwise been recognized—and in doing so promote creative insights. 

What a wonderful opportunity we have to encourage students’ engagement, memory, and even experiences of delight from moments of insight. Including music across the curriculum can enrich the pleasure of learning and enhance memory. Music can also motivate students to engage with learning more joyfully and successfully, potentially expanding their learning into creative discoveries and innovations.

Frontiers for Young Minds

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Music and Learning: Does Music Make You Smarter?

What is music and why do people think it is important for learning? Musical sounds fill our lives: from the music you share online to the songs playing in shops and restaurants, we are rarely far from music. Playing music gives the brain a multisensory “workout” that can strengthen memory, help us pay attention, and perhaps even improve reading ability. In this article, we highlight how various brain functions, including hearing, sight, movement, and social awareness, are impacted by music training. You do not have to be a Mozart to get the brain benefit of playing music, because music is so accessible and is more than just songs. Whenever you communicate without words (the way you say something instead of what you say) you are engaging in musical behavior. In this article, we explore research on learning and music to help us understand why music promotes brain development and how music can be a central part of our lives, in and out of the classroom.

Mind the Melody

What is music and why do people think it is important for learning? While people of every culture around the world make something that could be called music, not so many of them give it a name or think of it as separate from other activities, like dance or storytelling [ 1 ]. Because of this, we can only define music in a general way, as a form of communication through sound. Unlike speech, however, music is not generally considered semantic . This means that music does not use words to explain things. Think how difficult it would be to say something relatively simple like, “your left shoe is untied,” using only melody and rhythm . At the same time, music can convey profound emotions that would be difficult to describe in words. In addition to music being an art form, any form of communication is partly musical and can be said to have musicality . Think of the different ways that you might say “huh.” Each of those ways communicates something different. That is musicality. It is not a musical performance, but a musical aspect of communication. While not everyone is a master of the violin, everyone is a master of their own communication style.

At first, some scientists thought that the brain could benefit just by listening to music. They showed that people’s scores on IQ tests improved when they listened to classical music by Mozart [ 2 ]. This led people to believe that listening to music makes you smarter. But this was an oversimplification and an overstatement of the results. Subsequent studies showed that listening to music does not actually make you smarter, but rather raises your level of enjoyment and decreases your feelings of stress, which sometimes result in better focus and improved test scores. This means that, while music in your home or classroom would not automatically improve your performance, it could be useful to help you to focus on a new task or in situations when increased attention and decreased stress are necessary. Further, just listening to music may have a different, or perhaps smaller, effect than actually playing music. This is much the same as the way that playing sports will improve your physical condition more than simply watching sports. Therefore, the focusing power of music could be amplified by playing along.

Music for Brain Power

Just like your muscles, your brain gets stronger the more you exercise it. The process of changing the brain through our experiences is called neural plasticity , because the brain is easily shaped, like plastic. Scientists measure neural plasticity with special brain-imaging techniques, like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or electroencephalogram (EEG), to find out exactly how playing music changes the way our brains work. Research with these machines, as well as studying the brains of people who have died, shows that auditory (hearing), visual (sight), and motor (movement) areas of the brain are specialized in expert musicians [ 3 ]. The specialization includes not only increased size of each brain area, but also the way each area functions. The science tells us that music is so much more than just a source of entertainment; it is an important part of our lifetime of learning. Here are some of the important things that happen in the brain when we play music (for review, see Zatorre [ 4 ]):

Auditory : The auditory system processes sound more effectively after musical training. People can detect smaller differences in frequency (the number of sound waves per second), making both speech and music easier to hear [ 5 ].

Motor : Brain areas that control instrument-related muscles and body parts (such as the fingers, the mouth, etc.) grow in size. More neurons in the brain are devoted to fine-tuning muscle movement in these areas.

Reading : Studies show that better musical ability is related to higher reading scores, suggesting a link between how well we hear speech and how well we can map speech sounds to letters.

Socio-emotional awareness : Playing music together can enhance socio-emotional awareness, which is the ability identify, manage, and express emotions constructively. A good example of this is that very young children are more likely to interact positively with people they play music with.

Making the Musical Connection

How can music change anything other than what you hear? The reason music can reach so many parts of the brain is that the auditory system is highly interconnected with other sensory areas [ 6 ] ( Figure 1 ). Think of your earliest school days and you will probably remember singing songs. Many of us still sing the alphabet song when trying to remember the position of a given letter. If you do not believe us, what letter is four letters after “M”? Now tell us you did not hear the alphabet song in your mind as you looked for the answer! Songs, with repetitive melodies and rhythms, help us memorize lists, stories, and even processes.

• Figure 1 - Other sensory areas of the brain provide input to the auditory (hearing, in blue) area.
• Multisensory areas, such as the pre-frontal cortex (cognition), motor cortex (movement), and complex auditory cortex are shown in gray and contain small boxes colored to show the senses they interact with. Strong connections to and from auditory and visual areas are considered to be two-way highways, because sensory information is shared between brain areas in both directions (dashed orange lines). Similarly, somatosensory (touch) areas are shown in green and also have two-way connections that share information. Adapted from Musacchia and Schoreder [ 6 ].

Figure 1 shows the pattern of connections between the main auditory area in the brain and the other areas of sensation and perception. When we learn to play music, our senses actively interact, including sight, touch, hearing, balance, movement, and proprioception (body awareness). There are two things that make music fairly unique in this process. First, when you play music, you are using all of your senses. For example, you feel the instrument in your hands, hear the sounds you play and see the notes on the music sheet. Since each different type of sensory information reaches your brain at a different time, your brain must work to synchronize all of this information. Second, when playing music, things happen at different speeds and time scales and must line up precisely. For example, a guitarist must know where s/he is on a beat, in a rhythm, in a melody, in a song, and in a concert, precisely lining up all of these things. While our understanding of how the brain keeps track of all these things remains unclear, it is likely that there are different timekeeping mechanisms (“clocks”) for different timescales (speeds). Some of our research is based on the idea that synchronization between these brain “clocks” could help us analyze other sounds streams like speech.

A Lifetime of Music

Music is also a way that we express our identities: the music we play, or even listen to, can be a way of telling the world, our peers, our parents, and our friends something about who we are. In cultures that do not use writing, singers often hold an important place in society, because they memorize important things like history and family relationships. While musical expression of identity is usually positive, there have been times when one group of people found another group’s music threatening, or even dangerous [ 7 ]. For example, in the late 1980s rap music artists were arrested for performances that authorities thought were hostile and disrespectful.

While you might think of singing a song or playing an instrument as a special activity that you do only at certain times, you should also notice that music and musical sounds fill our lives. Music is played on speakers and sometimes played live, and we can hear music in most public places, on buses, in elevators, and in restaurants. Many of us listen to music through our phones or in our cars as well. Our lives are truly full of music, and so our relationship to music can have a big effect on a lifetime of learning.

Semantic : ↑ Relating to meaning in language or logic.

Melody : ↑ A sequence of single notes that is musically satisfying.

Rhythm : ↑ A strong, regular, repeated pattern of movement or sound.

Musicality : ↑ Musical talent or sensitivity.

IQ Test : ↑ Intelligence quotient, a standard measure of an individual’s intelligence level based on psychological tests.

Neural Plasticity : ↑ The capacity of the nervous system to modify itself in response to experience or deprivation.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank those who assisted in the translation of the articles in this Collection to make them more accessible to kids outside English-speaking countries, and for the Jacobs Foundation for providing the funds necessary to translate the articles. For this article, we would especially like to thank Nienke van Atteveldt and Sabine Peters for the Dutch translation.

[1] ↑ Merriam, A. P., and Merriam, V. 1964. The Anthropology of Music . Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

[2] ↑ Rauscher, F. H., Shaw, G. L., and Ky, K. N. 1995. Listening to Mozart enhances spatial-temporal reasoning: towards a neurophysiological basis. Neurosci. Lett . 185:44–7

[3] ↑ Schlaug, G. 2009. “Music, musicians, and brain plasticity,” in Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology , eds S. Hallam, I. Cross and M. Thaut (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 197–207.

[4] ↑ Zatorre, R. J. 2003. Music and the brain. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci . 999:4–14. doi: 10.1196/annals.1284.001

[5] ↑ Musacchia, G., Sams, M., Skoe, E., and Kraus, N. 2007. Musicians have enhanced subcortical auditory and audiovisual processing of speech and music. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 104:15894–8. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0701498104

[6] ↑ Musacchia, G., and Schroeder, C. E. 2009. Neuronal mechanisms, response dynamics and perceptual functions of multisensory interactions in auditory cortex. Hear Res . 258:72–9. doi: 10.1016/j.heares.2009.06.018

[7] ↑ Binder, A. 1993. Constructing racial rhetoric: media depictions of harm in heavy metal and rap music. Am. Sociol. Rev. 58:753–67.

Music’s power over our brains

Armed with more interest and funding, researchers are investigating how music may enhance brain development and academic performance and even help people recover from COVID-19

Vol. 51, No. 8 Print version: page 24

• Cognition and the Brain
• Neuropsychology

One of the most poignant early images of the coronavirus pandemic was of Italians playing music and singing from their balconies even as the virus ravaged their cities. Others soon followed suit, including pop stars streaming live performances from their homes and choirs sharing concerts via Zoom—all trying to provide connection during a frightening and uncertain time.

Of course, music has been bringing people together for millennia, and not just during crises. And in the last few decades, investigators have been training their attention on the so-called universal language of music—how it affects our brains and how it might be used to facilitate health and healing. That interest is now being fueled by new research attention and funding: In June, the Global Council on Brain Health, an independent science and policy collaborative devoted to understanding brain health, released a report concluding that music has “significant potential to enhance brain health and well-being for individuals of different ages and different levels of health” and making recommendations for future study. And last year, Sound Health , a program launched by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Kennedy Center, in association with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), awarded $20 million over five years to support its first 15 research projects on the topic, including several headed by psychologists.

“Why is music so captivating for us?” asks Thomas Cheever, PhD, staff assistant to NIH Director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, for Sound Health and a program director at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. “The more we understand about that, the more fascinating it’s going to be, and the more we are going to learn about how the brain works in general.” Psychologists and neuroscientists are particularly interested to find out which neural pathways are affected by music, how music influences children’s development, and how music interventions may help people with a range of physical and mental health conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, delirium and Parkinson’s disease.

And they are adding COVID-19 to the conditions they are trying to ease. Babar A. Khan, MD, assistant professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, for example, is using a Sound Health grant to test a music intervention with patients who have delirium, including those with COVID-19. Delirium—an acute, short-term condition marked by confusion and emotional disruption—afflicts as many as 80% of patients who are in the intensive care unit for respiratory failure, including those with COVID.

If the intervention proves helpful, says Khan, “it will be used immediately during the course of the current pandemic.”

Enhancing child development

One ongoing research interest is how music may affect youth in terms of language development, attention, perception, executive function, cognition and social-emotional development. Psychologist Assal Habibi, PhD, an assistant research professor at the University of Southern California Dornsife’s Brain and Creativity Institute, has been investigating these topics for the past seven years in collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, known as YOLA, an after-school program that brings low-income youngsters together to learn, play and perform music. Now in its final year, the study has been tracking brain and learning outcomes of 75 children who are either participating in YOLA, a community sports program or no after-school program.

Data published from the first few years of the intervention show that YOLA participants gradually develop auditory and cognitive advantages over youth who aren’t involved in music. After the second year of the study, the YOLA participants showed greater ability to perceive pitch, rhythm and frequency of sounds, as well as enhanced development in the auditory pathway, the neurological route that connects the inner ear to auditory association areas in the brain ( Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience , Vol. 21, 2016). After the third and fourth years in the program, they also began to perform better on tasks unrelated to music, including on executive function tasks involving working memory and delayed gratification—likely because of the discipline required to patiently learn pieces of music, Habibi says. In addition, youth involved in YOLA showed greater development in brain areas related to language and auditory processing, and greater neuronal connectivity in the corpus callosum, the nerve bundle that connects the brain’s right and left hemispheres ( Cerebral Cortex , Vol. 28, No. 12, 2018).

“We obviously expected their musical skills to get better,” she says, “but it seems a broad range of other skills are also impacted by music.”

Habibi now has a grant from the NEA to follow these same children into adolescence to see whether the brain benefits they derived early on translate into real-life behaviors and decisions as teens—choice of peers, for example, or whether they show up to class. She also has an NIH Sound Health grant to compare differences in executive functioning among bilingual youth who are learning music and those who are learning music but only speak one language.

“As a developmental psychologist, I don’t think there’s just one pathway to better executive function in children,” she explains. “So, it will be interesting for us to identify different mechanisms and understand how each one works.”

Music and mental illness

Researchers are also exploring whether music may prove to be a helpful therapy for people experiencing depression, anxiety and more serious mental health conditions. A study of 99 Chinese heart bypass surgery patients, for example, found that those who received half an hour of music therapy after the operation—generally light, relaxing music of their own choice—had significantly lower self-reports of depression and anxiety than those who rested or received conventional medical check-ins in the same time frame ( Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery , Vol. 15, No. 1, 2020). Meanwhile, in conjunction with the Global Council on Brain Health’s strong endorsement of more research on music and brain health, an AARP survey of 3,185 adults found that music has a small but statistically significant impact on people’s self-reported mental well-being, depression and anxiety.

Others are examining whether music interventions could benefit those with serious mental illness. Yale experimental psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist Philip Corlett, PhD, for example, will use a Sound Health grant to test an intervention in which people with schizophrenia come together to write and perform music for one another. The work builds on Corlett’s developing model of schizophrenia, which maintains that people with the disorder have difficulty revising and updating their views of self and reality based on newly emerging events, considered a central feature of the healthy human brain. Making music with others—which involves both positive social interactions and a type of expression with predictable outcomes—could allow participants to experience more realistic predictions and hence foster their sense of predictability and security, he hypothesizes.

“If we can show that music-making changes the mechanisms that we think underwrite these symptoms [of schizophrenia],” Corlett says, “then we can figure out its active ingredients and ultimately come up with ways to deliver this to people who need it.”

Therapy for older adults

The impact of music on older adults’ well-being is likewise of keen interest to researchers, who are looking at how music therapy may help verbal fluency and memory in people with Alzheimer’s disease ( Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease , Vol. 64, No. 4, 2018) and how singing in a choir may reduce loneliness and increase interest in life among diverse older adults ( The Journals of Gerontology: Series B , Vol. 75, No. 3, 2020). Music even shows promise in preventing injury: A study by Annapolis, Maryland–based neurologic music therapist Kerry Devlin and colleagues showed that music therapy can help older adults with Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders improve their gait and reduce falls ( Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports , Vol. 19, No. 11, 2019).

Still others are investigating how music can help people recover from serious illnesses and conditions, including, now, COVID-19. In a pilot study, Khan of Indiana University showed that patients with delirium on mechanical ventilators who listened to slow-tempo music for seven days spent one less day in delirium and a medically induced coma than those listening to their favorite music or to an audio book ( American Journal of Critical Care , Vol. 29, No. 2, 2020). Now, with his Sound Health grant, he is comparing the effects of slow-tempo music or silence on 160 participants with delirium, including COVID-19 patients on ventilators in hospitals in Indianapolis.

Studies like these underscore music’s potential as a safe and effective medical intervention, as well as the importance of conducting more research on which kinds of music interventions work for whom, when and how, including during this difficult time, adds Cheever.

“How do we get [music therapy] into the same realm as other interventions that are the standard of care for any given indication?” he says. “The answer to that, I think, is a solid evidence base.”

Further reading

NIH/Kennedy Center Workshop on Music and the Brain: Finding Harmony Cheever, T., et al., Neuron , 2018

Effects of Music Training on Inhibitory Control and Associated Neural Networks in School-Aged Children: A Longitudinal Study Hennessy, S.L., et al., Frontiers in Neuroscience , 2019

Decreasing Delirium Through Music: A Randomized Pilot Trial Khan, S.H., et al., American Journal of Critical Care , 2020

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Millions of U.S. Students Denied Access to Music Education, According to First-Ever National Study

In this article:.

Despite significant progress made in recent years to keep music and the other arts in U.S. public schools, millions of U.S. public school students still do not have access to these programs. This is according to recent findings by The Arts Education Data Project (AEDP), which provides the first-ever review of the status and condition of music and arts education in U.S. public schools based on large-scale student participation data.

A joint effort between State Education Agency Directors of Arts Education and its longtime partner, Quadrant Research, the AEDP studied actual student participation data reported by school districts to their state education departments data from the 2019 school year. The result is the National Arts Education Status Report Summary 2019 , a comprehensive look at access to and participation in arts education in public schools in the United States.

The report’s release coincides with NAMM Music Education Advocacy Hill Day on September 14, when members and arts education advocates join the industry association in Washington, D.C., to carry a message of support for music education to Members of Congress and their legislative aides.

It is also timed to National Arts in Education Week (September 11-17), when the field of arts education joins together in communities across the country to tell the story of the impact of the transformative power of the arts in education.

It’s a Matter of Equity in Education

The new AEDP report reveals that, while 92 percent of students in U.S. public schools have access to music education in school, 3,609,698* of students do not have that same opportunity. In addition, 2,095,538* students do not have access to any arts education (defined as dance, music, theatre or visual arts).

The new data also reveal that a disproportionate number of public-school students without access to music and arts education are concentrated in schools in major urban communities; have the highest percentage of students eligible for free/reduced price meals; and are either majority Black, Hispanic, or Native American. In addition, many of these students without music and arts education attend public charter schools.

Research shows that learning music results in educational, cognitive, social, emotional and physical benefits. For example, pioneering research conducted by neurobiologist Nina Kraus1 offers insight into how musical experience affects brain function across the lifespan. Findings to-date indicate that tapping into the brain's potential for music learning supports overall learning, and is most critical for disadvantaged and under-served students.

To advance access and equity for all students, federal education law as defined by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) recognizes music and the arts as part of a well-rounded education.

Contrary to reports of a decline in the number of music and arts programs, the AEDP report confirms that music and arts education is widely accessible to students across the various grade spans, with participation at its highest in elementary schools because many states require participation at this level.

Music and visual art are the arts disciplines most available to students and therefore have the most significant participation. Most schools (80 percent) offer two or more of the arts disciplines.

Yet, despite this positive trend, there is room for improvement.

“Equity in education determines whether students can learn and grow with music and arts,” said Robert Morrison, CEO of Quadrant Research. “Before our new AEDP report, we had no large-scale national-level visibility into the actual status and condition of music and arts education in U.S. public schools. For the first time, we have a clear picture and can provide advocates, administrators, parents and policymakers with critical data to improve student access where it’s needed.”

More than 120 state agencies, arts councils, advocacy organizations, funders, and professional arts education associations are involved in this collective impact work.

The information in the AEDP report is from 30,633 schools in 7,015 districts from 17 states, representing 18 million students or 36 percent of the total public school student population in the United States for the 2018/2019 school year. States included are Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Georgia, Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.

National funding for the Arts Education Data Project has been provided by the CMA Foundation, The Music Man Foundation, The NAMM Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council. In addition, various state agencies and state-based philanthropic organizations have provided individual state funding.

To learn more about the Arts Education Data Project, including links to individual state dashboards, visit the National Arts Education Status Report 2019  

* Projections are based on a mathematical weight applied to the NCES list of schools from states not included in the list above to calculate the number of students and schools without access to either arts or music education. 

1 https://brainvolts.northwestern.edu/music/

Contact:         Peter Giles/Giles Communications  (914) 644-3500 ext. 700 ([email protected]) 

About Quadrant Research

As the pioneer of state-level arts education data reporting, Quadrant Research is a nationally recognized leader in research, analysis, and market intelligence serving the fields of culture, commerce, government and education. Quadrant Research specializes in arts education and serves the four major arts disciplines: music, dance, theater and visual arts. Quadrant Research provides data, analysis, and market intelligence to give clients an accurate picture of current market conditions plus the knowledge needed for future growth.

About SEADAE

State Education Agency Directors of Arts Education (SEADAE) supports the professional effectiveness of its individual members and provides a collective voice for leadership on issues affecting arts education in order to achieve quality, comprehensive, sequential, standards-based education in the arts for all students PreK-20. The membership consists of those persons at state education agencies whose responsibility is education in the arts (Dance, Media Arts, Music, Theatre and Visual Arts).

The National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) is a not-for-profit association with a mission to strengthen the $17 billion music products industry. NAMM is comprised of over 15,000 member companies and individual members located in 104 countries and regions. NAMM events and members fund The NAMM Foundation which promotes the pleasures and benefits of music and advance active participation in music-making across the lifespan.

NAMM Foundation Website © 2024, NAMM Foundation and its parent (or licensors). All rights reserved. This site and its content or materials may not be reproduced, displayed, modified, or distributed without the express prior written permission of The NAMM Foundation. Show more...

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The NAMM Foundation provides you only with a revocable, limited, non-exclusive, nontransferable license to access and view on a remotely accessible basis a single copy of The NAMM Foundation Site (and its available materials or content) solely for your personal purposes. The NAMM Foundation reserves all rights not expressly granted. Moreover, The NAMM Foundation Site (and its available materials or content) cannot be further copied, modified, or excerpted; used, displayed, transmitted, or distributed with or to third parties; or offered for resale or use, without the prior written consent of The NAMM Foundation.

THE NAMM FOUNDATION WEBSITE AND ITS CONTENT AND MATERIALS ARE PROVIDED ON AN "AS-IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. YOU ASSUME THE SOLE RISK OF MAKING USE OF THE NAMM FOUNDATION WEBSITE. MOREOVER, IN NO EVENT SHALL THE NAMM FOUNDATION (or its parent or licensors) BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, PUNITIVE, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY WAY CONNECTED WITH YOUR USE OF THE NAMM FOUNDATION WEBSITE.

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The Importance of Music in Education

Welcome to our guide to the importance of music in education, which highlights the vital benefits children get from receiving musical instruction from an early age.  

Music is arguably the most life-enriching academic subject of them all. A universal language that triggers emotional responses and kickstarts creativity like no other, music is a fundamental pillar of arts education.

This article outlines the far-reaching benefits of music that stretch way beyond the subject itself and why music is an indispensable part of any academic programme.

13 Benefits of Music in Education  

Music can bring a series of important benefits to your child’s education, many of which you may not have considered before.

1. Improve language capabilities

Music and language have a deep and profound relationship. The link between musical instruction and better language development in young children has long been established.

Musical training stimulates and trains the same part of the brain that deals with understanding language. Children who have some exposure to musical education will, therefore, have a greater understanding of tone and how different segments of speech align. It can also be incredibly useful if your child is learning a second language.

2. Better cognitive abilities

Playing an instrument increases the use of your neural network. When compared to those who don’t play an instrument, there is some suggestion that musicians have a larger growth of neural activity.

A 2009 study in the New York Academy of Sciences showed how children who received musical instruction showed improved sound discrimination and fine motor tasks, with visible changes in those networks showing during brain imaging.

3. Better maths skills  

Children who undertake music in education are also enhancing their maths ability. A link between music and better control of spatial-temporal tasks, as pointed out here in the Journal of Aesthetic Education , means children are better equipped to learn key mathematical skills.

One theory says that learning rhythm is responsible, as maths involves picking up patterns and how visual elements go together.

4. Better test scores 

With better maths ability comes the potential for better test scores. A 2007 study from the University of Kansas found that students in primary schools with better musical programmes scored 22% higher in English and 20% higher in maths when compared to those in weaker musical programmes. This was regardless of the socioeconomic factors between the different schools.

5. Inspire creativity

Music is one of the most creatively stimulating tasks any person can undertake. If you want to spark your child’s creativity, there are few better things you can do than to encourage them to create their own unique music by picking up an instrument or engaging in their music class.

6. Refined hand-eye coordination

Learning an instrument to an elite level is no easy task. It takes considerable hand-eye coordination to learn almost any instrument. Those who master their craft are blessed with a unique skill; it’s something that can be applied to other areas of academia and general life.

Hand-eye coordination is important in many sports, especially bats or racquet sports like tennis or cricket. It can also help elsewhere in education, as writing skills and art require the hands and eyes to work together.

In adulthood, your child will find them relying on their hand-eye coordination to do any number of tasks. Practical things like DIY are easier with good coordination. Allowing your child to improve it with music will benefit them for a lifetime.

7. Better memory

Improved memory is another well-established benefit of music in education. Learning an instrument, the language of music and the notes and lyrics that make up songs all require a flexing of memory.

Music is also one of the easiest things to store in your memory, often to our frustration. Songs get stuck in our heads, sometimes for days; a perfect display of how music can stick in our minds.

8. Encourage teamwork

Music is often considered a solo effort, but it’s unlikely your child will go through their musical education alone. In class or as an extracurricular activity, music is one of the best ways to learn vital life skills like teamwork. Be it in a band or singing group, teamwork is vital to creating good music.

9. Relieve stress

School is such an important time for children and at times it can be stressful – especially during tough examination periods.

Music has become a proven remedy to relieving stress, with research from Stanford University linking this to the beat of music. At 60 beats per minute, music can cause our brain to synchronize and cause alpha brainwaves – which are present when we are relaxed. Over a period of 45 minutes or so, it can help induce sleep too.

After a long day studying, a musical session is an easy way to relieve stress and take your child’s mind off of deadlines and exams.

10. Develop social skills

As an extension of improving teamwork, music is also a great way for your child to meet new people and create lasting friendships. Music is a great way to bring people together. If they decide to take up music as an extracurricular activity, they’ll be bonding with likeminded children who share their passion.

In a time when children are increasingly interested in communicating online and focusing on digital skills, music is a refreshing return to face-to-face contact.

11. Instil perseverance

Speak to anyone who has mastered a musical instrument or played in a successful band; musical excellence is hard to come by. It requires plenty of practice and a willingness to keep going.

To continue to improve and progress requires perseverance. A child understanding they have to work hard to achieve something is incredibly powerful and something they will lean on for the rest of their lives. There are few better ways to instil perseverance than through music.

12. Bring about a sense of achievement 

When your child does achieve a musical goal, they get the incredible satisfaction that comes from working hard to attain something. In that sense, music is a great confidence builder. Creating something as expressive and loved as music and seeing audiences on stage or family members at home enjoy it can be an incredibly rewarding experience.

Confidence is one of the most valuable skills a child can have and music is one of the best ways to allow it to flourish in your child.

13. Learn an enviable life skill 

How many times have you met an adult who says their biggest regret is not learning a musical instrument as a child? Musical skills they didn’t learn as a child become some of the most sought after in adulthood. Help your child to develop their skills in music from an earlier age and you’ll be giving them a gift that will bring them, and others, joy for the rest of their life.

At Nord Anglia Education, we understand the importance of creative arts like music, harnessing the subject to bring benefits that span our entire academic programme. Find out more about our music curriculum, or head to our schools page to a Nord Anglia Education school near you.

Want more of the latest insights into education?  Read our INSIGHTS publication here !

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Rhythm and Reasoning: Music in the Classroom

Janelle cox.

• August 28, 2024

Imagine students walking into your classroom while music plays in the background, instantly setting the tone for the day. Music in the classroom isn’t just about adding some background noise, it’s about enhancing students’ learning, boosting their mood, and creating a learning environment where students thrive. Here we’ll explore the science behind music in the classroom, its benefits, and specific ways you can incorporate music into your classroom.

The Science Behind Music in the Classroom

Before we discuss how to incorporate music into your classroom, we must first discuss the science behind it. Research has shown that music can have a profound impact on your brain. It can also act as a catalyst for mood changes. It can boost your energy when you’re tired, lift your spirits when you’re sad, and help you relax when things are stressful. It can also affect your memory. Understanding these benefits can help you create a more effective learning environment.

Benefits of Music in the Classroom

Music offers many benefits in the classroom, including enhancing memory, reducing stress , and improving concentration. Have you ever wondered why you can remember lyrics from a song you haven’t heard in years? This is because music stimulates the hippocampus, which helps with long-term memory, making background music a great tool for retaining information. Additionally, school can be stressful for students, but playing soft music in the classroom can help students relax and feel better, especially before a big test. Furthermore, music at a moderate tempo can improve students’ concentration making it beneficial for students when working independently.

Incorporating Music in the Classroom

Now that we understand the benefits of music in the classroom, let’s explore a few specific ways you can incorporate it into the classroom.

Morning and Afternoon Routine

Start the school day with a cheerful, upbeat song to welcome students and help them transition from arriving at school to focusing on learning. Then, end the day the same as you started the day to get students excited about going home. Encourage students to help you choose songs, making it a fun and collaborative way to start and end the school day.

As Background Music

Playing soft, instrumental or classical music in the background while students work independently is said to help improve concentration and make them feel more relaxed. Try to find a classical version of your students’ favorite songs to play in the background to keep them focused and on task while they work.

Using Songs for Learning

In recent years, music has been linked to memory and retention. If you’ve ever wondered why it’s easy to memorize lyrics to a song, that’s because research has shown that your brain looks for patterns to understand, recall, and process information. You can use this to your advantage by integrating songs into your lessons to help students remember information. For younger students, you can create a catchy tune to help students remember the alphabet, and for older students, you can use songs to teach historical events or scientific concepts.

During Transitions and Breaks

Music isn’t just used for welcoming students or helping them learn important concepts, you can also use it for signaling transitions between activities or when students need a brain break. Playing a specific tune can signal it’s time to switch tasks, which can help for a smooth transition between one activity and another. Additionally, music can be a great tool to help manage student behavior and keep the flow steady throughout the day. This can help keep the classroom atmosphere calm and help students stay focused and engaged.

Using Music for Stress Relief

Music can be an excellent tool to help manage stress levels. Research shows that music can boost the immune system and reduce stress. Notably, one study found music more effective than medication in easing anxiety. Consider calming music to help stressed students feel calm before a test. Research has also found that music can help your brain maintain attention. So, you can even play it in the background while they take the test as long as it’s not distracting for all students.

Music in Writing

It is well known that students who study music have a larger vocabulary. When children use their creative skills, they can better express their emotions, which can enhance their emotional well-being. Challenge students to incorporate music into their writing. For example, give students a photograph to inspire them to write a song or have them listen to a piece of music and write about the emotions it evokes when they hear the song. By integrating music into writing, you are tapping into your students’ feelings and emotions and allowing them to articulate their feelings more deeply.

Integrating Music into All Subjects

Music can be seamlessly integrated into all subjects to create an interdisciplinary learning experience for students. For example, you can help students understand mathematical concepts like fractions and patterns through music. Make history lessons more engaging by using music to teach or reinforce concepts or important dates and enhance students’ comprehension skills by analyzing song lyrics for language arts class. By integrating music into all subjects, you are deepening the students’ learning experience.

Incorporating music into the classroom can be a powerful tool to enhance learning, reduce stress, and create a positive learning environment for students. By understanding the science behind music’s impact on the brain and finding creative ways to interact with it throughout the day, you can create a dynamic learning atmosphere where your students thrive.

• #music , #MusicInTheClassroom , #TeachingStrategies

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Lessons from the COVID pandemic in music education the advantages and disadvantages of online music education

Affiliations.

• 1 Music Faculty, University of Debrecen, 4032, Debrecen, Nagyerdei krt. 82, Hungary.
• 2 Doctoral School of Human Sciences, University of Debrecen, 4032, Debrecen, Egyetem tér 1, Hungary.
• 3 Doctoral School of Human Sciences, University of Debrecen, Faculty of Music University of Debrecen, 4032, Debrecen, Nagyerdei krt. 82, Hungary.
• 4 Károli Gáspár University of Reformed Church, Faculty of Pedagogy, 2750 Nagykőrös, Hősök tere 5, Hungary.
• PMID: 39170398
• PMCID: PMC11336562
• DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e35357

The COVID-19 pandemic had far-reaching effects on various areas of everyday life. In several countries, singing, the most accessible form of musical expression, was banned, as was the use and teaching of wind instruments. Nevertheless, innovations in music education combined with teachers' dedication and creativity introduced several elements into the teaching process which are worth using in the future. The aim of our study is to explore the experiences of this novel form of music education among teachers at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels in Hungary and abroad. The respondents in our survey answered open-ended questions on the advantages and disadvantages they had experienced with online education. The MAXQDA software was used for the qualitative analysis of the data collected. Music teachers highlighted the disadvantages of online education. As for positive responses, teachers mentioned the improvement of digital competencies and the development of students' autonomy.

Keywords: COVID-19; Innovation of music education; Music education; Music teacher; Online education.

© 2024 The Authors.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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• Imran M., Liu X., Wang R., Saud S., Zhao Y., Khan M.J. The influence of digital economy and society Index on sustainable development indicators: the case of European union. Sustainability. 2022;14(18) doi: 10.3390/su141811130. - DOI
• Banhidi Z., Dobos I., Nemeslaki A. A. What the overall digital economic and society Index reveals: a statistical analysis of the DESI EU28 dimensions. Reg. Stat. 2020;10:42–62.
• DESI . European Commission; 2019. Digital Economy and Society Index. https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/document.cfm?doc_id=5989
• DESI . European Commission; 2020. Digital Economy and Society Index. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/digital-economy-and-soc...
• European Commision Educational inequalities in Europe and physical school closures during Covid-19. 2020. https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/sites/jrcsh/files/fairness_pb2020_wave04_covid_...

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