Mathematical ability and musical ability may not seem on the surface to be connected, but people who have researched the subject—and studied the brain—say that they are. Research for my book Late—TalkingChildren drove home the point to me. Three quarters of the bright but speech-delayed children in the group I studied had a close relative who was an engineer, mathematician or scientist—and four—fifths had a close relative who played a musical instrument. The children themselves usually took readily to math and other analytical subjects—and to musiC、
Black, white andAsian children in this group showed the same patterns. However, looking at the larger world around us, it is clear that blacks have been greatly overrepresented in the development ofAmerican popular music and greatly underrepresented in such fields as mathematics, science and engineering. If the abilities required in analytical fields and in music are so closely related, how can there be this great discrepancy One reason is that the development of mathematical and other such abilities requires years of formal schooling, while certain musical talents can be developed with little or no formal training, as has happened with a number of well-known black musicians. It is precisely in those kinds of music where one can acquire great skill without formal training that blacks have excelled—popular music rather than classical music, piano rather than violin, blues rather than operA、This is readily understandable, given that most blacks, for most ofAmerican history, have not had either the money or the leisure for long years of formal study in musiC、 Blacks have not merely held their own inAmerican popular musiC、They have played a disproportionately large role in the development of jazz, both traditional and modem.A、long string of names comes to mind—DukeEllington, Scott Joplin, W.C、Handy, LouisArmstrong,Charlie Parker…and so on. None of this presupposes any special innate ability of blacks in musiC、On the contrary, it is perfectly consistent with blacks having no more such inborn ability than anyone else, but being limited to being able to express such ability in narrower channels than others who have had the money, the time and the formal education to spread out over a wider range of music, as well as into mathematics, science and engineering. Which of the following does the author most probably agree withA.Black college students excel in popular musiC、 Black college students can do well in mathematics. C.Blacks’ role in popular music seems overstateD、 D.The blacks have more chances for education in musiC、