My wife has this completely unsupported notion that listening to classical music will make you smarter.  She’s a doctor … ok, so she’s a dentist … but she’s got more medical, scientific know-how than I do.  In fact, thirteen years of medical training in dentistry, aesthetics, prosthodontics, masters, blah blah blah.

So with all of this training, I have high expectations when she makes this type of a statement.  I’m expecting a detailed explanation of the inner workings of the psychology of the mind and physiology of the brain, references to case studies and medical journals, or colleagues that have written theses and discovered evidence.

When I ask her what evidence she has to support the classical music-smarter hypothesis, her response is “everybody knows its true.”  Oh, everybody.  Silly me.

As part of her belief in the tie of intelligence to Beethoven, she bought six CDs of classical music specially designed for babies.  For babies?  Yep.  The idea is that the mental stimulating properties of certain composers is ideal for developing, young minds.  So we’ve got 3 CDs of Mozart, 1 CD of Beethoven, and 2 mixed tapes of Mozart and Beethoven.

I’ve actually heard it before, but how do I know that there is any truth to this or its some BS marketing invention that actually has no impact on the development of your child of any degree.  The great thing about this product is that there is no way to prove or disprove the theory.  If my son grows up to be a complete moron, everyone (meaning my wife and her family) will blame the father.  Me.  If my son grows up to be a super genius, then its a combination of my wife’s great genes and these miracle CDs.

This is one of the results of the Dr. Phil generation combined with the Internet.  Armchair psychology.  If it sounds like it might be true, or people would like it to be true, then it will appear one million times on the Web.  Then some 14-year old girl hacking together her English paper will find it and report it as fact.  And there you go – Everybody knows.

Just because this music is old – does that mean that its mind altering?  Let’s say the children of the future, 2700 AD, start listening to Devo and Violent Femmes.  Wiley Coyote super geniuses all of them!  Or is the style of music?  I’ve seen and read documentaries that Heavy Metal has its antecedents in opera.  So instead of Devo, the next Einstein is rocking out to Judas Priest.  I almost said Stryper, but then I’d have to kick my own ass.

When I worked as a consultant, I’d develop and manage online marketing campaigns.  Part of this is optimizing the campaign for better results, lower cost, and bragging rights to the client for more money.  With online marketing, you’ve got tons of data which means 47 different levers and knobs that you can toggle and adjust to change the results.  Change, measure, optimize.  Repeat.  So its only natural that my mind starts thinking this way all the time.

What I’d love to do is take a test sample of children.  Genetically engineered, identical children.  Like Star Wars storm troopers, but we’ll pretend that they are not as ugly as Jango Fett.  Take each child and expose them to a select artist in a Clockwork Orange bombardment of the senses and psyche.  Just to cover the full range of musical genres, here’s our test group: no music (control), Mozart, Tupac (late Tupac – the angry Tupac, not the early, social sensitive Tupac), Barry Manilow, Technotronic (Pump Up the Jam), and the Beatles (for the benefit of law & order, we’ll skip the entire White Album).

I wonder how each child would develop differently.  Would there be noticeable differences?  Would the Barry Manilow subject become a mixed martial artist or an interior designer?  Well, I know how the Technotronic kid would turn out.  He’d have a dentist wife … a genius baby … and write a stupid blog everyday.