Are There Any Downsides to Learning an Instrument?

On the 12th of December, around 9pm, the mother of a chinese middle schooler received a call saying her daughter had been accepted to the conservatorium high school of Sydney. The entry auditions for the music school had been very competitive and her daughter was thrilled to have gotten in.The conservatorium high school of Sydney is an australian selective school and like most selective schools, tests are required to be accepted. One being the audition and the other being the WISC IQ test. This reporter was startled to find the well known music school was also in 15th place for the HSC (high school certificate) results the previous year, a surprisingly good achievement for a school not very academically focussed.

Does this show the learning an instrument develops the brain as well? A better questions is, if learning an instrument is only beneficial for the brain why doesn’t everyone do it?

Research shows that in a study in 1993, college students got better results on a spatial reasoning test after listening to mozart, although the reason unknown. Nowadays, this result doesn’t really stand up to scientific scrutiny. Nevertheless more and more schools both private and public schools are including music programs in their schools. New research shows that learning a music instrument from a young age improves reading skills, logical and mathematical reasoning, spatial reasoning, self motivation etc. According to a father to the middle schooler “Learning to play an instrument for a long time and well takes diligence and loads of self motivation. After a certain point most people quit, but those who continue are likelier to succeed later on because of self motivation and being hard working in general.”

According the the stereotype, Asians are smart and exceptional at academics and music.  Even though this is a stereotype, it is somewhat true but not because asians are asians.

The actual reason comes embedded into their culture. As written Amy Chua’s article “Why chinese mothers are superior”, ‘In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mothers said either that "stressing academic success is not good for children" or that "parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun." By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead, the vast majority of the Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be "the best" students, that "academic achievement reflects successful parenting," and that if children did not excel at school then there was "a problem" and parents "were not doing their job.".

According to her book “The hymn of the Tiger Mother”, her two daughters were not allowed to have a sleepover, have a playdate, be in a school play, play anything other the violin or piano, not play the violin or piano, get anything less than an A etc. Most of these typical “rules” make it quite hard for her daughters to interact with people socially as studying and playing an instrument to a high level requires a lot of time. Having rules like not being able to have a playdate or a sleepover prevents getting to know fellow students well. Another thing is many of the suicides in China, Hong kong, Singapore and other Asian countries have been caused by academic pressure. The University of Nottingham study of “The mental health support needs of international students (with particular reference to Chinese and Malaysian students)” shows that Chinese and Malaysian students make up the majority of the depressed students and in Yale university, 45% of Asian students had depression symptoms and another 27% suffered from anxiety.

This data proves being extremely competitive and high performing in academics does have problems. Likewise, if one were in a community where everyone participated and competed in high performance music, around the same amount of social pressure would be applied.


All in all, Music is still beneficial for the brain as is learning instruments, but excessive practice can lead to empty social lives, anxiety and possible depression. Next time parents, check if your child is simply whining about not wanting to practice, or expressing hate. It may be expressed in similar words, but the difference can mean a happy child or a miserable one.

Written by Jasmine