Argumentative Essay On Music Therapy

1638 Words4 Pages

Music, whether it be playing on instruments or singing a song, has a very powerful way of reaching down into the human soul and inspiring minds. Some may say that music is a common language spoken by all people. For students with mental disabilities, music therapy is a way to boost the abilities that they lack. It has been proven that music therapy is effective for children with varying disabilities such as Down syndrome, autism, moderate mental retardation, cerebral palsy, and traumatic brain injury. Music therapy promotes development of communication skills motor skills, academic skills, and social skills in exceptional adolescents. All of which are essential life skills in which special needs students can use to lead an independent life, …show more content…

By learning how to play an instrument improves attention, impulse control, concentration, self-esteem, social functioning, self-expression, motivation, and memory (Sze & Yu, 2004). “Music integration provides children with concrete, hands-on experiences that are essential to developing each child’s ability to reason, think, solve-problems, analyze, evaluate, and enhancing creativity (Sze & Yu, 2004).” Music therapy fosters their ability for creativity, tolerance of change, flexibility, and variability in order to create a balance for the more structured and behaviorally driven education that is required of the school setting (“Music therapy”). Through singing songs based on basic knowledge exceptional students are actually demonstrating key academic skills. These skills are the ability to organize information, retain information, and also memorize information. Special needs students who are enrolled into music therapy classes significantly show growth in their academic skills (“Benefits of music”). Studies have shown that when a students with disabilities is exposed to classical music on a regular basis their mathematical skills are increased. Music therapy is able to increase literacy skills is special learners. Cues in music are an effective way to improve logo identification, word recognition, prewriting skills, and print concepts of students (“Music therapy”). In addition, social skills are able to increase in special needs learners through music

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