One question that is commonly asked is the question of if students should be allowed to listen to music in school and specifically study periods. Many students are given the easy opportunity to put on headphones during study periods and worktimes. And even though I am talking about students specifically, the topic applies in other areas too. Understanding this topic can help you achieve more as a working adult. Is more work accomplished by listening to music or not? Should anyone even be allowed to listen to music in workspaces? Many research stations around the world like the University of Wales, the University of Johns Hopkins, and the University of Birmingham, England have done studies on this question, and plenty have come to my conclusion: that listening to music should not be allowed in schools.

Listening to music should not be allowed in schools. One reason why this is true is this: music affects the way your brain memorizes information in a bad way. Researchers conducted a study on this fact at the University of Wales Institute, a highly regarded institute in Cardiff, the United Kingdom. In this study, which appeared in the September 2010 issue of Applied Clinical Physiology, tested 25 participants on their ability to recall a series of letters correctly. When music was played during their study period, their test scores of remembering the letters were lower than their test scores when music was not played. Because people do not memorize information as well with music playing, listening to music should not be allowed in study periods. So, of course, listening to music should not be allowed in school.

What follows is another reason why listening to music should not be allowed in schools. It is that music takes away focusing energy from your brain. Everyone knows that it is much easier to pat your head or rub your belly than to do both. Multitasking is hard. So why is not harder to do both schoolwork and listen to music at the same time than to do one at a time? “There are few things that stimulate the brain the way music does,” says an otolaryngologist from Johns Hopkins University Hospital. “It provides a total brain workout.” Since music takes up much of your brain’s energy by listening to it, it distracts a lot of energy from students’ schoolwork, making students less productive in school. That is why listening to music should not be allowed in school.

There is still a final reason that listening to music should not be allowed in school. Because of the music that people will tend to listen to, learning is hard. According to several experiments by Maria Witek and colleagues at the University of Birmingham in England, in our day in age, the music that people tend to like is in some form syncopated or makes you want to get up in class. Because students like music that they want to dance to, it creates a natural distraction. Dance music will either distract the students with the urge to dance or make them do stifled dance moves which can distract not only the student listening to music but other students who see the dancing. Because of the distractions caused by listening to syncopated or upbeat songs, students should not be allowed to listen to music in school. By this evidence, listening to music should not be allowed in school.

It is definite that students should not be allowed to listen to music in school. But that is not all we know. People should not only refrain from listening to music as students but as workers too. Memorizing information is not just for students. Adult workers cannot multitask any more than students. And adults listen to the same music as students most of the time. Therefore, this answer applies to everyone. People should know and make decisions on the extremely popular opinion that not only students but everyone else, should not listen to music in school or work.