A Message from the Administrative Team at "Xanthe Moon, Fine Arts Junkie"

Welcome to the "Xanthe Moon, Fine Arts Junkie" blog. Unlike Twitter and Facebook, blogposts will let us say all that we want to say about the importance of fine arts education for developing minds and bodies - including those which continue to develop throughout life!  We are pretty sure that if the artist herself were to start journaling about what she learns, a twitter feed wouldn't cut it. Somewhat accidentally, we've learned about what these activities could be doing for her, but without a cute kitten picture, they don't even belong on facebook:

The neuroscience of dance is in its infancy but it has the potential to unify several domains, including motor control, rhythmic timekeeping, body contact, imitative learning, gesture production, emotional expression, and theatrical role playing, among many others. (Steven Brown, Psychology Today, November 23, 2011)

We view dance as a marriage of the representational capacity of language and the rhythmicity of music. This interaction allows people not only to tell stories using their bodies but to do so while synchronizing their movement with others' in a way that fosters social cohesion. (Steven Brown and Lawrence Parsons, Scientific American, July 2008)

As for the positive effects of music on development, children of Xanthe's generation were guinea pigs in testing the Mozart Effect, which promised that listening to classical music before or shortly after birth would give them an edge in math and reasoning. We know intuitively that listening to music, of any kind and at any age, is good for us, and neuroscience is beginning to describe the benefits specifically (more dopamine, for one), although not supporting the Mozart Effect. It turns out that there is very good news regarding the study of music, especially in mastery of an instrument:

The strong association between gray matter differences and musician status in our study lends further support to the proposal that the brains of musicians show use-dependent structural changes. Amateur musicians showed an intermediate increase in gray matter volume when compared with non-musicians and professional musicians. (Christian Gaser and Gottfried Schlaug, The Journal of Neuroscience, October 2003)

For these reasons and many more, the Administrative Team at "Xanthe Moon, Fine Arts Junkie" is committed to facilitating Xanthe Moon's continued studies of piano and various dance forms. She has been very successful academically and attends school in a district with excellent college prep. Although we're not sure what college itself will prepare her for, we have come to appreciate the wisdom of this girl's passion.