Hello, my name is Rowan, & in today's essay—I’ll be telling you why I believe students should be allowed to listen to music during class. I’ll go over 3 main talking points. Of which one includes debunking a myth with a personal story. Also, as a disclaimer—this essay is likely biased in some way. So now—let’s get into why I believe students should be allowed to listen to music during class.
I think that music helps people focus & also blocks out distractions. If a student has headphones on & is listening to music, they wouldn’t be able to hear any potentially chatty students & would be able to simply just sit down & focus on their assignment. Music could also get them into a trance-like state of mind called a “Flow State”. A Flow State is where someone is so focused on a task that they forget about their surroundings & the only thing they think about is completing said task. Flow States are highly effective when doing work, as it gets the person essentially hypnotized, causing them to work faster & in most cases—more efficiently too. Some types of music are more effective than others in achieving a Flow State, but this generally varies from person to person. I find that genres like DnB & Breakcore typically help me focus more than for example—rap, due to the high energy captivating & stimulating breakbeats. But really any genre of music would work just fine in helping someone get into a Flow State.
Some could argue that the music itself would count as a distraction if it contains lyrics. But to disprove this point, I’ll use a personal example from my own experiences. I was in 7th period & wasn’t able to focus, that’s because I was incredibly understimulated & my mind was, for lack of better words, frozen. That was until I put my earbuds in & turned on my favorite album of all time—Hawaii Part II. Then I had something in the background, keeping me stimulated & helping me focus. It’s similar to how a lot of people will put on a video essay & play video games, as to have something stimulating helping them focus. Although, I do not believe that students should be allowed to listen to video essays during class as one could easily take advantage of this & only focus their attention on the video rather than their work.
Classrooms & by further extension Schools in general usually have high standards for quality & precision on assignments, creating a high stress environment with typically little to no reward. This can be hard on a student's mental health, especially if the student is neurodivergent in some way. Say for example: a student has ADHD, if they’re not motivated to do the task—they simply won’t be able to do it. It’s not a factor of them being lazy or simply not wanting to do the work, it’s that they can’t. So often for a student with special needs, the school would provide an exception for them yet expect the same highly stressful unrewarding work from everyone else. This could cause a neurotypical student without the exception granted by the school to feel as if the situation is unfair, demotivating them even more than what they already were. Although in a professional setting, the employee will typically be under the same high stress environment; yet many workplaces do allow their employees to listen to music while they work. So it would just be unreasonable to have a high stress yet rewarding environment allow music yet a high stress unrewarding environment not.
In conclusion, I believe that schools should allow their students to listen to music as it benefits their mental health, blocks out distractions, & helps them focus. I hope that one day, schools allow students to listen to music during class