Walk into a room where children are hitting buckets with sticks and the natural assumption is that learning has stopped for a while and will resume shortly. That assumption is wrong, and the evidence against it has been accumulating for well over a decade. Neuroscientists and education researchers have built a substantial body of work linking rhythmic training to cognitive development in children. The findings run across mathematics, reading fluency, executive function, atten

Walk into a great many classrooms today and you will see the same pattern. Structured assignments, clear procedures, predetermined answers. Follow the instructions correctly and the result looks like success. The work matches the key, the project looks polished, the score is good. It resembles nothing so much as a paint-by-numbers kit. The outlines are already drawn. Every space is labelled. The colours are preselected, and heaven help the child who gets a little yellow in th

Isn't it distracting? Not when applied properly. Here's how... Ask a room of teachers whether music helps students concentrate and you will get a fight. Half will tell you it is a distraction and the other half will tell you their students cannot work without it. Both camps are arguing the wrong question. Music is not one thing. The question is never whether to have music on. It is which music, at what volume, during which kind of work. Get those three right and the room se