IS THE MUSIC MANIFESTO OFF - KEY FOR PARENTS OF
PRE SCHOOLERS?
Jo Jingles has launched a call to action to get families with pre-school children singing in the home and for both parental and child participation in music groups to be seen as of equal importance to swimming classes and gym tot activities.
This move is in direct response to comprehensive research into the music and singing habits of 1000 UK families with pre-school age children, which shows that many are being bombarded with a cocktail of advertising jingles, TV theme tunes and pop music, whilst parents’ knowledge of far more beneficial traditional nursery rhymes is declining to such an extent that there is a serious risk  that this cultural heritage may die out completely.
MUSIC MANIFESTO & SING UP!
http://www.musicmanifesto.co.uk/
http://www.singup.org/
http://www.singup.org/news/articles/The_Power-of_Music.jsp
http://www.singup.org/news/latest_news/How_to_Sing_the_January_Blues_Away.jsp
The Government is pouring vast amounts of money into its Music Manifesto and Sing Up campaign, but it can only succeed at the critical pre-school stage with parental support. And the Jo Jingles survey shows that music is just not a priority for parents.
Nearly a third of those who took part in the Jo Jingles study believe music is already given enough priority in pre-school and primary provision. Significantly, 32% don’t know if there is enough priority given to preschool and primary music provision, suggesting they have not even seen the need to find out.
‘It is widely accepted that the first three years of a child’s life are vital for development,’ says Jo Jingles MD and founder, Gill Thomas. ‘In the seventeen years that I have been running the company, I have witnessed first hand the benefits of music in the young, in terms of improved confidence, language, numerical and social skills.’
This is borne out by swathes of research such as the three year long Youth Music funded study by Northumbria University which explored the effect of music making on 400 under 5s who attended Sure Start Nurseries in two Youth Music Early Years Zones. It found that children as young as two are able to memorize and learn long sequences of words, phrases and sentences when they are attached to music long before they can master the same skill in speech. The study concluded that though there is no proof that passive listening to music can affect a child’s intellectual capacity, active participation in a progressive, expertly delivered music curriculum can greatly improve a young child’s capacity to develop skills in language, communication, mathematical skills and a range of social, musical, physical and cultural areas.
 And the Music-One-to-One study by Exeter University concluded that mothers report the value and purpose of musical activity for the regulation of mood and physical state and described the under 2s as responding actively to music.
The Government’s Sing Up campaign does target pre-schoolers as well as primary school children, but while children are required to attend school by law, they are obviously totally dependent on their parents and carers to take them to music groups or Sing Up activities and to back this up with singing in the home.
And herein lies the problem, according to the Jo Jingles study. Despite leading busy lives, many parents make the effort to take young children to classes such as swimming and Tumble Tots, which they believe will benefit their development and equip them with life skills, yet 40% do not include music on this list of priorities, saying it is either not necessary, they don’t have the time, or it is not their kind of thing.
Pop and chart music, TV and radio now take predominance over nursery rhymes amongst young children, with 41% mainly exposed to these forms of music, compared to 18% who are listening to chiefly to traditional nursery rhymes.
According to the Jo Jingles study, only 5% of children in the early years are exposed to musical instruments and over 1 in 10 (12%) of those questioned say they sing to their children rarely or not at all.
If the Sing Up campaign is to succeed with pre-schoolers, their parents need to sing along with them. But in an ‘X Factor’ culture it seems that parents are increasingly self-conscious about doing this. Amongst those parents that do not sing, by far the biggest barrier is that they don’t think they can sing very well (58%). More than one in ten (12%) go so far as to say they feel embarrassed about singing.
 As a result, knowledge of the most popular traditional nursery rhymes is extraordinarily patchy. 83% believed they knew the second line of ‘Incy Wincy Spider,’ but when put to the test a quarter of these respondents could not recite it correctly. Only 68% of parents with pre-schoolers who took part in the survey even thought they knew the second line of ‘Three Blind Mice’ and again a quarter of them got it wrong. Even when it came to the old favourites the results did not improve that much. 85% were confident they knew the second line of ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ but a fifth of them got it wrong. There were similar results for ‘Humpty Dumpty.’
A reflection on modern society, around 1 in 10 think that traditional nursery rhymes are too old fashioned for modern children and a similar number feel their children lack the concentration for a music and movement class. As such, children are not being exposed to the sort of music that will have the most impact and benefits.
Most nursery rhymes adhere closely to the pentatonic scale (a musical scale with five notes in an octave) and it has been shown by countless studies that children all over the world, no matter what their language or culture, respond innately to this time-honoured structure. Across the continents children can be heard singing out the instantly recognisable pentatonic ‘na, na, na-na na.’
While many pop songs are based loosely around the pentatonic scale they do not follow it so closely and so do not generate the same innate response in youngsters.
‘Today’s children are surrounded by noise, but it is not constructive noise that will provide beneficial stimulation and aid learning and development,’ comments Gill Thomas. ‘Any music is not necessarily good music.
 ‘Music and singing was an integral part of the lives of previous generations. This is unlikely to be because they were more knowledgeable about its many benefits, but simply because life in the past was more geared around music. But we do not gather to sing around the piano anymore or sing in church choirs. Music has been squeezed out of modern life and despite efforts by the Government, today’s busy parents are not making the effort to squeeze it back in again.
‘The real tragedy is that singing is something that can be done at no cost in the home. Unlike many other activities, there is no mess, no fuss and no preparation or equipment required. You can sing to kids while you are waiting for a bus or having a bath.
Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Ed Balls has made it a priority to create a ‘musical culture’ in primary schools.
‘What we really need to do is create a musical culture in UK homes too,’ concludes Gill Thomas.
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