A class of six-year-olds getting a special music lesson, part of a special arts program that researcher Martin Gardiner and his colleagues at the music school in Rhode Island designed for several elementary schools in the state.
They started out wanting to see the impact of arts training in some first-and second-grade kids. So, some classrooms had an extra hour of this special arts curriculum incorporated into their normal school week, and other classrooms getting the standard curriculum in the arts, which was pretty standard for Rhode Island and rather representative of the country as a whole. The standard curriculum gave students music lessons twice a month and art lessons twice a month. The typical music lesson tended to be somewhat passive. Students listened to tapes and concerts and talked about music in class.
建立六年之久的课堂，接受特殊音乐课程，这个课程是研究者Martin Gardiner和其同事在罗德岛音乐学校为该州的一些中学设计的。
他们开始想知道在一些一二年级的小孩中，进行音乐训练会产生什么影响。所以，有些课堂在正常学期之中就开设了额外的特殊艺术课程，还有的班级开设标准艺术课程，这对于罗德岛大学非常常规，也能代表全国的水平。标准课程给学生提供每月2次的音乐课程和每月2次的艺术课程。典型的音乐课程有点被动，学生听磁带和演唱会，然后课堂讨论音乐。
