The Department of Education and the unions signed an agreement in May from the 2023-24 and from the earliest ages, to reduce the number of children in classrooms, to start teaching English from the age of 3, and to strengthen the school hours of physical education. In this way, ratios will be reduced to improve educational quality. The reinforcement of physical education hours aims to mitigate the effects of sedentary lifestyle, which is currently being generalized among children and young people due to the bad habits of the new technologies.

These measures seem to me to be very appropriate and will certainly help to improve the quality of education. On the contrary, teaching English from a lower level raises serious doubts. According to various studies, the most important thing is immersion in the mother tongue or in the native language, and the late incorporation of the foreign language, at least until they know how to read and write. Moreover, the early introduction of the foreign language does not offer any guarantee for better results in the future, and the fact that science and/or mathematics are conducted in English only reduces competition in these subjects, as students do not have a sufficient level of deepening in the subject. This is the direction taken by the Department of Education, because it cannot be forgotten that the draft of the New Law of Education aims to convert both Spanish and English into teaching languages, multiplying its hours.

Analyzing all these conclusions, it is clear that for a 3-year-old to express his emotions, enjoy songs or respond to his needs, it would be more important to integrate music in the 3-year-old classrooms and not English. Music contributes to the development of child motor skills, rhythmic abilities and body expression. Also expressing their feelings. All of them are of vital importance in the early years of school.

That's the main idea I want to underline today, which is to raise awareness of the importance of music in education. The teaching of music is repeatedly undervalued both by politicians and by all educational laws. In most European territories music is more important, they have twice as many hours as in Hego Euskal Herria and, in addition, they obtain better results in student evaluations in all areas. Musical education cannot be classified as a single competence, as its contribution to the development of each and every one of the basic competences is demonstrated.

In the same vein, music not only develops musical competence, but also has a very positive influence on the cognitive development of the child. When listening and interpreting music, the brain and intelligence are activated, awakening emotions, imagination and feelings. With music, we're able to activate the two cerebral hemispheres and create more connections between them. The left hemisphere deals with the logical aspect, reasoning, numbers, language, etc. On the other hand, the right hemisphere manages intuitive, imaginative and creative functions.

What happens when we hear or play music? The right of our brain will help us fly with our emotions and the left, analyzing the works, looking for the meaning of the lyrics of the songs or building images and musical rhythms.

Music is a pure science, mathematics and physics, as well as language and art, and it is not common for a single subject to have so many aspects izatea.Onura, so it is incomprehensible that music has little importance in society. In case this is not enough, music should share the area of Artistic Education with the plastic arts. Music and plastic have different languages, so they should be separated. At the same time you can create beautiful projects, but each with its own area and evaluate them as different capacities.

Let us briefly comment on the main positive effects of music in students:

1.- Enhances memory, learning, concentration and creativity.

2.- Helps reduce stress and anxiety.

3.- Increases the ability to learn a new language.

4.- It is very useful to deal with neurological problems. Especially for children with special needs in the classroom.

5.- Helps transmit emotions.

Research by the University of Münster (Germany) or Harvard Medical School continues to show the benefits of music in the development of children and adolescents, and the European Union has for years been calling for a more determined commitment to music education in its Member States. In Hego Euskal Herria and in the Spanish State, at the moment, they do not seem to have been cared for.

The geneticist biologist David Bueno makes an interesting reflection: “It is terrible to limit the hours of music, plastic and physical education because they are the most transversal learnings that exist” To take advantage of these benefits, he basically proposes to break with the current scheme of primary education, instead of being structured around subjects such as mathematics, science, language…, to create a new backbone structure of the three.

According to Well, “music is a brain gymnastics, it is one of the few activities that simultaneously activate the whole brain, rather than solving a product.” Neuroscience has been researching in this direction for 20 years.

Two decades ago, Martin F. Dr. Gardiner, director of the Providence School of Music (Rhode Island), in the scientific journal Nature (1996), noted that specially designed musical and artistic education could bring great improvements in reading and mathematics.

He credited it through an experiment with children between the ages of 5 and 7 with poor academic results, as after receiving music classes, they were comparable to the best in reading and the best in mathematics. Since then, as Bueno says, several studies have been published in this line.

Therefore, it is time for those in charge of the education department to value music once and for all, because the future of our students is at stake.