Music does not make your children smarter

There are many claims around the internet that learning instruments make your children smarter.

I think there are much higher incentives for researchers to draw that conclusion because there is market demand for such paper from music institutions and commercial markets. (eg. Music makes your children smarter! Buy instruments from us / enroll in our courses.)

Then I found this article by E. Glenn Schellenberg from University of Toronto. I haven’t read the article yet, but from the preface, I could see that many studies are drawing conclusions from insufficient evidence. This makes sense because authors want their papers to be popular and ones that are more favourable to the market will be shared more.

To me, it seems like smart people are drawn to music and because they like music, they tend to spend more time listening and practicing instruments, and it is more likely that they will become good at the instrument faster than average because of their intelligence and discipline.

This type of marketing for music education is much like the fashion industry putting their product on a pretty model and saying “you’ll look this good if you buy our product”. Also, I see no evil in this because after all, it makes people spend money on music and helps our economy to put food on tables for many families. It’s just that I personally wouldn’t buy my kids $8000 cello and make them practice 2 hours a day for the RCM exam.