Simply listening to classical music – the so-called ‘Mozart effect’ – does not make you smarter. I have presented the grounds for this conclusion elsewhere. In this article we take a look at the question, “Do music lessons make a child smarter? Do music lessons have ‘collateral benefits’ that extend to non-musical areas of intelligence? Do music lessons increase a child’s overall IQ level, making them better at reasoning, math and language comprehension?” How this question has been answered is as interesting as what the answer turns out to be.

Why is this question of interest?

Here is one answer. Children have limited free time to invest into extra-curricular activities, and parents have to make choices between activities for their children. If the choice is between, for example, ballet and music lessons, and music is known to increase intelligence but ballet is not, this might be reason enough to choose…