I'm not going to go into my thoughts about "The Mozart Effect" here except to quote from 'This is Your Brain on Music' (Levetin) page 9 - you can see I'm whipping along, folks! - where he says:

"Music listening, performance, and composition engage nearly every area of the brain that we have so far identified, and involve nearly every neural subsystem. Could this fact account for claims that music listening exercises other parts of our minds; that listening to Mozart twenty minutes a day will make us smarter?"

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Robinia, I'm sure you're right! That's how I wish I'd learned French in school. For some reason the Latin seemed easier - maybe because the Latin teacher was my music teacher?!

Ah, Kat, darlin', some day I will meet this fabled Morgan of yours.

Questions come to my mind...does deafness inhibit literacy skills? How does someone like Helen Keller come to be not only literate but a wonderful author? Certainly music is not a necessary step to literacy. Is it possible to put too many eggs into this basket?

I used to teach English and Music in high school. Now I teach early childhood music and lead workshops for teachers, librarians and parenting groups....but sometimes I feel like such a rank beginner in this whole field! There is so much to learn. Thanks all - there are so many branches to look into - Fantasma's Waldorf suggestion, for instance. I love reading your personal stories here too!!

~b.w.