Reducing the Cost of Effective Music Education

Traditional music education has a low Return On Investment (ROI) compared to alternative activities. These alternative activities return lower ultimate benefits, but do so at much lower cost, making their ROIs higher than music education’s. Because taxpayers demand the highest possible ROI from their tax dollars, music education budgets are under pressure in many regions of the United States and elsewhere, and many individuals who might previously have pursued music education now pursue alternative, higher-ROI activities instead.

Music education advocates have fought back by attempting to raise the perceived value of the returns gained from music education, thereby increasing music education’s perceived ROI.

Consider, for example, the Twelve Benefits of Music Education, a list which was apparently written up by the Music Educator’s National Congress (MENC) and which is included in many music advocacy websites, suggesting that it is an accurate indication of the music education community’s perception of the benefits of music education.

Four things strike me about this list.

1. No musical skills or abilities – such as “reading music fluently,” “composing music knowledgeably,” or “performing music expressively” – appear on the list.
   
2. Many of the listed benefits are clearly obtainable from non-musical activities, such as learning “the concrete rewards of hard work,” “teamwork,” and “to conquer fear and take risks.”
   
3. Music education is may not be the most-efficient way to gain many of the listed benefits. For example, participation in team sports may be a more efficient way to gain the benefits listed in Item #2 above.
   
4. Some of the most interesting benefits, such as the claimed “causal link between music [education] and spatial intelligence” (also see here), have no indication of their being unique to music education. They, too, might be more-efficiently gained through participation in other activities.

The claims on this list are perfectly valid – music education really does deliver all of the claimed benefits – but so may other activities. Music education advocates seems to be claiming every benefit under the sun to make music education’s returns appear to be as high as possible, to justify the high investment required to acquire those returns. Desperate times require desperate measures, apparently.

So…why not consider reducing the cost of music education?

If the cost of delivering an effective music education could be lowered sufficiently – to perhaps a third or a quarter of its current cost – then music education’s ROI would become highly competitive. Taxpayers would continue to demand the highest possible ROI from their tax dollars – that’s never going to change – but a less-expensive means of delivering effective music education would meet that demand.

Furthermore, lowering costs increases access. If an effective music education could be delivered at a quarter of today’s cost, then four times as many students could receive one, all else being equal. If music education does indeed deliver important benefits – which I take as given – then it is morally imperative to share these benefits with as many people as possible. An increase in music education’s perceived benefits cannot, in itself, broaden access to music education. A dramatic decrease is its cost can.

Therefore: I submit that anyone who is serious about music education advocacy has a moral obligation to seriously consider any proposal that has the potential to significantly reduce the cost of delivering an effective music education.