Writing this introduction I was listening to the popular song “The Box” by `Roddy Rich, I can’t say that listening to Roddy Rich talk about his riches and drug abuse really helped me to develop creative or thoughtful ideas but I would certainly like to think that listening to music helps me to concentrate. However, if I actually think about it, when I work in silence I am almost always more motivated and produce better ideas (even if my motivation only comes from wanting to get the assignment done). It can be shown that having moments of your day in silence and even working in silence makes you the most productive and successful, especially in school. So for that reason, let’s all take a short moment of silence.
*pause for an awkward amount of time.
Now don’t get confused, I’m not proposing some weird hipster zen time during your day to do the ohms and stretch in completely unnatural ways that I’m still convinced aren’t good for your body, but really just an environment in your school day that is silent during your work or just the suggestion that you take moments of silence throughout your day to recenter yourself and get ready to focus and be productive. According to Art of Education University writer Kelly Phillips, giving a time of silence after lessons can allow for students to think at their own pace and not the teacher’s or other classmate’s, along with this, silence can give students access to their non-verbal right brain which opens them up to greater functions of creativity, imagination, intuition, insight, and holistic thought. Better access to your right brain gives you an entire new variety of resources to choose from when working on assignments and projects in school. Now, I’m stating this as if you could just pick a quality from your right brain and enforce it into your life and the work you produce, but you get the point overall, with silence, more functions are available for your brain to use, because of their increased function from the lack of sound.
So now let me address some of the supposed benefits of music on productivity and work. According to studies done in the 1990’s at Bryan Memorial Hospital listening to “healing and tranquil” music lowered heart rates and calmed the blood pressure of patients having recently undergone surgery. This could be useful for the school environment to help with stress in students preparing to take a big test or give a stressful presentation, however, it has been shown that listening to music during the assignment or exam doesn’t improve performance but that is actually a misconception based on what’s called the Mozart effect which is the popularly referenced study where listening to classical music supposedly improves cognitive ability. But this study actually shows results that improved cognitive function is only from listening to classical music BEFORE doing the work and not during. Therefore, listening to calm and tranquil music BEFORE a test or assignment may prove to help calm us and reduce our stress but listening during the work would not be the most efficient choice.
Another counterargument against silence is that listening to music helps improve work ethic and is overall more enjoyable than plain silence. This most clearly evidenced by Robin Lloyd’s article, who is a writer for live science, about how runners use music as a form of a legal stimulus in place of illegal drugs during races to improve their times. It is shown that music, especially upbeat pop music, boosts mood and energy. However, listening to this type of stimulating music during assignments often decreases productivity because its the type of music that encourages activeness, not the sit down type of motivation to focus and “grind.” Listening to music takes up more cognitive function of your brain which also decreases productivity because your brain has to process the music along with trying to form ideas about the task.
Overall, it can be seen that to reap the most reward by using music, we should listen to it before our stressful assignment, perhaps this could be in class change. For those of us who use music to block out distractions, awesome! You’re on the right track. However, just think, if we didn’t have those distractions in the classroom our brains wouldn’t need the noise to cancel them. Simply put, our brains in a classroom environment function at their highest capacity when surrounded by silence. If we want to listen to music, my proposal is that we do it before our work and not during, because there is no doubt it inhibits our full potential and focus of our brain on what we are doing. Listening to music while working is just like the last lyrics of one of Roddy Rich’s songs “turning the static up” for your brain.
Works Cited
Admin, ERN. “The Use of Silence in Teaching.” Educational Research Newsletter
and Webinars, 31 Dec. 2008, https://www.ernweb.com/educational-research-articles/the-use-of-silence-in-teaching/.
Busch, Bradley. “Drowned in Sound: How Listening to Music Hinders Learning.”
The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 14 Mar. 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2018/mar/14/sound-how-listening-music-hinders-learning-lessons-research.
Council on Communications. “Impact of Music, Music Lyrics, and Music Videos
on Children and Youth.” American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Pediatrics, 1 Nov. 2009, https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/124/5/1488.
“How to Use Silence as a Teaching Tool.” The Art of Education University, 4 Nov.
Lloyd, Robin. “Amazing Power of Music Revealed.” LiveScience, Purch,
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