An article on Mental Floss magazine's website revisits the oft-debated question of whether listening to classical music can make you smarter.The theory is better known as "The Mozart Effect" and has spawned a mini-industry of recordings and videos for parents to play for their infants in the hope s of boosting their intelligence. Sounds promising, doesn’t it? Enough so that educators and legislators jumped on the bandwagon in a big way.
According to the article, "in 1998 Georgia mandated that new mothers be given classical CDs, and not about to be left behind in the great Southern baby brain race, the same year Florida required day care centers to pipe symphonies through their speakers."
I'm all for the idea of exposing young children--and adults for that matter--to classical music. But I don't buy the idea that listening to it necessarily makes you smarter. Rather, I think listening to it helps one recognize patterns, themes and variations that can be applied to other instances. I believe playing chess or a video game, listening to jazz or even watching great films, no matter what the genre, can achieve the same effect. So it isn't that the music makes you smarter in a grade-point-average kind of way, but it helps you see relationships between things and how they work together. By that measure, honing those inherent skills could make you "smarter" in a different way. Call it “street smart” if you want. Other than that? Not so much.
But what I thought was most interesting about the article was the comment section that followed it, where the readers add their two cents about the music they listen to while working.
What's on their playlist? The answers include
• Techno/trance music (Thievery Corporation)
• Classical music
• Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here
• Radiohead (The Bends or OK Computer)
• Gaming FM (a station that played classic videogame soundtracks),
• Scottish music (Old Blind Dogs, Tannahill Weavers)
• Joshua Bell
• Complete silence
• TV on as background noise
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