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brain of these college-trained high-school teachers may be to us a wellspring of information and instruction. Their meetings for self-help should be our meetings as well. We need pedagogy, psychology, Herbart as well as they. If any of them desire to study German or French, we need it too. We need to identify ourselves closely with the life of the high school in all its phases, not only as a matter of policy, but of selfimprovement.

It is not criminal if circumstances compelled us to begin our work with insufficient preparation, but it becomes so if we continue to draw our salaries from year to year without strenuous effort toward progress that leads to power. We cannot draw sustenance for long from the same fountain we ourselves are feeding; the pool becomes stagnant, and decay is the result. We all long for power. Power in a teacher comes only by growth. Learning more of music and all kindred subjects, doing the old things better each year, is progress that promises power. Power is spelled with personality, opportunity, work, enthusiasm, and righteousness. The initial personality counts for much in one's success. The years of experience are a rosary of gleaming pearls of opportunity. They may mean a cross of sacrifice and toil, but if improved for actual growth must bring the crown of reward. The whole turns on the pivotal center-work. There is the key; just work; work with all our soul and strength; then set it on fire with enthusiasm, and expect the blessing of God, which will come if we try to do our best in his name and for the bettering of humanity.

THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL MUSIC

THOMAS TAPPER, TEACHER OF MUSIC, BOSTON, MASS.

There are said to be about fifteen millions of children in the United States who sing every day in school. It costs annually millions of dollars to train this monster chorus.

The training of this chorus, the character of the music it sings, the character it sings into the music, the music it sings back into the character, the knowledge gained in it by every individual, the spiritual strength awakened by it in every individual-these are a few of the forces the responsibility for which rests with the people in this room.

The size of this responsibility, when compared with the size of this audience, establishes a proportion that may seem amusing, yet none the less is it clear and unmistakable in what it suggests.

Even a brief moment of clear vision shows us that what men think and put into books; what men think and put into the act of teaching; what men think and manifest in attitude; what men think and express as the fruit of the faith that is in them, be it force or weakness, positive purpose or makeshift lack of purpose- on the character and potency of

these thoughts the little children of the great chorus are being fed, and the food is nourishing them after its kind.

And the kind of food is no secret. What we know, what we think, what we manifest as we teach a child to sing, all these he sings back to us, telling justly what he receives. The children are telling in the very tones of their songs how we conceive them, how we provide for them, after what manner of heart we look upon them. In their singing they are telling the simple truth that as a man conceives himself so he conceives others; as he conceives the value of his work to himself, that very value and no more goes out with it when he teaches others.

We learn this slowly. We believe this unwillingly. It dawns upon us late that the story of the creation, in Genesis, is a man's personal history in his every action. Let us not forget that, having created, the creation looks up to us, as a child to its mother, to smile in the joy of its perfections or to cry in the pain of its imperfection. Thus a child's voice and a child's love for music you create, and at the close of the sixth day they look up to you and you see in them-yourself.

As a profession we are given to the discussion of sight-reading; yet of all the ready readers of symbols where is there a readier or more accurate reader than a child of a man's actions and intentions? That is a matter of "sight-reading" that is worthy of discussion at an annual meeting.

They know this great chorus of fifteen millions of children—whether it is your intention that out of death shall come life; out of darkness shall come light; out of oppression shall come freedom. They know whether or not it is true that in that day even the children of Abraham shall teach the brotherhood of man.

There may be dirt

A man teaching a child is in a great presence. on it. That is explained in this: that God had to send the child over a hard path to bring it and the man together. We must take no risks, we must conceive the child loftily. And equally loftily let him conceive his music. Out of it is the strand woven by which he shall show the child how to fasten himself to the realities of life; these realities making for the brotherhood of man in the name even of the children of Abraham.

With school music you are not dealing with a part of education, you are dealing with the very soul and life of it; with school music you are not filling in a little here and a little there, you are supplying the spirit of it all; with school music you are not merely a toleration in the school faculty, you are its inspiration; with school music the curriculum is not only made complete, but all is quickened. The youth sent out into life with some years of school music mingled with the rest is not merely polished a little brighter in one spot, he is alive farther in. There is more of him. All the rest has come to its true value with the music that is present. Without the music there is not that mingling of harmony

which comes when the sounding-board gathers up the message of the strings and throws it off like a tonal rainbow; something beautiful in itself, but even more so as an earnest of the reality of that from which it springs.

Is this placing music too high? Is this overstating the case? Any man who thinks less of his music than I have hinted at should know it better. This does not overstate the force and place of music; it merely suggests some of its possibilities.

Music's power, it seems to me, lies in its deep stimulation of the individuality. It reveals a man to himself no less truly than it reveals one man to another. We seem to know Mozart and Schubert more intimately than we know Rembrandt and Turner. With all men the former touch more that is deeply responsive.

Every member of

Man works with his hands, forming a rude symbolism in which he tries to tell of the real world within him. And music is the symbolism most commonly understood. To some it conveys knowledge; to others comfort; to others wonder; but it moves them all. We do not comprehend its force as an individual factor in education. the great chorus of fifteen millions can be lifted into higher, into more vibrant life if we keep our wits about us and never forget the great factors in the case: The wonderful power of music; the wonderful power of individuality; the wonderful opportunity one has who teaches.

Thru my conviction that we do not yet begin to realize the force and value of music in the public schools I am compelled to ask if what is being done for music thruout our country is a fair tribute to its deserts. Are we paying in full the debt of responsibility we owe to the great chorus of fifteen millions? Or may we bring them yet a little more intimately into relation with the life of rare moments which, as one grows older and becomes more immersed in the affairs of bread and butter, grows less and less brilliant, and by and by threatens to pass like the fading of twilight?

Comparatively few studies in the school curriculum are not taught with a fair degree of uniformity in all communities. Of comparatively few studies is it true that each year's work is not a definite quantity. It is usually stated by lecturers on education that the subjects now forming the curriculum have entered one by one in the order of their utility. A thoughtful man might question the utility of the curriculum as it is, but he cannot question the fact that it is possible to estimate with a fair degree of accuracy how much reading, penmanship, and mathematics an average boy of fifteen will have, practically irrespective of the community from which he comes. This fact is a business asset of value to authors, teachers, superintendents, and boards of education. But this statement has not always been a fact. Once upon a time the unevenness in thirdgrade arithmetic, for example, over a large geographical area was greater

than it is now. The difference lessened more and more as men interested themselves in the subject, discussed it, made known their experiments and results, and related with what success they worked according to a definite schedule; changed the schedule and worked again, and again, and still again, always simplifying and naturally always progressing. Thus everything in our personal history moves or has moved thru various stages, passing up from the period of just getting along to the period of getting the best there is.

This scheme of transition is particularly true in education. Once arithmetic was taught very unevenly, because the exigency of the situation demanded action first, discussion afterward. After a while, when things began to move somewhat smoothly, men began to take a day off now and then to study their surroundings and to observe the work of others. This process produces skilled thought, which is the better name for skilled labor.

Many musicians who have been in schools little or not at all have spoken forcibly of the inutility of school music, charging that it produces neither singers nor sight-readers; that it does not increase the musical status of the community; does not help the choir nor the choral society — all of which is accepted as true by another man of the same opinion, but by no one else.

Any man who will go into schools of all kinds, in all parts of this country, and ask to hear the music lesson, will get a knowledge of some facts, if he keeps out on the road long enough. He will learn that the country is extensive and the conditions vary enormously; that in many communities there are skilled professional men whose teaching is remarkable; that in countless other communities children are crying out for help, like sick men in a mining camp, and are being assisted, with wonderful results, in some cases by skilled people who have come away from large cities, in other cases by a class who are either possessed by a spirit of good luck in their treatments, or else are natural healers; he will learn that the children in remote corners of the United States often sing in a manner to surprise and delight, and that every day is a busy day in school. He will deduce no little from what he sees. Some of his deductions might run as follows: There is unevenness in music teaching; the best teaching is not always done in large cities; the supervisor usually wastes himself by doing work that should fall to a subordinate; the grade teacher who is not learning the music work is to be set down as an opportunity wasted by the supervisor; nothing in all the field varies so much as the equipment of the supervisors themselves.

I once observed a good man led into exceeding embarrassment by his own generous impulse. He arose to address a meeting of music supervisors. He was a distinguished man, accustomed to speak before audiences of specialists. His first words were his Napoleonic Waterloo. They

were these: "Whence comes the music supervisor as a scientifically trained educator ?" The question sounds innocent enough, but, like many nervous, insistent men, he threw such energy into it that most of the audience stiffened perceptibly and assumed the defensive. That puzzled the speaker. A few, however, smiled; that seemed to comfort him. These, he evidently concluded, are with me. They were, but only in the interest of amusement. At the end there was a period of twenty minutes for discussion. In that time the innocent but well-meaning gentleman learned whence the music supervisors come. He learned that some supervisors are well trained, there having been an opportunity at hand; that some are untrained, no adequate opportunity having been at hand; that a demand often forces a man into the work before he has thought of preparation; that when fifteen millions of children arise to sing, there are places all along the line where any "natural healer" may fall to and help. The row of boys and girls is long, and extends from the heart of the cultured city to the remoter confines of civilization.

A man addressing a gathering of physicians can readily infer what intellectual experience is common to the various individuals in his audiWhether they come from London, Vienna, or New York, they have been familiarized with much that is the same. They have enjoyed a fairly uniform training.

ence.

A man addressing a gathering of music supervisors is less positive of the educational course pursued by each individual before him. This will lead him to inquire what training they receive, and where they secure it. He will be surprised to learn that many, instead of going to schools specially designed to give such training, find themselves immersed in the work ere they have investigated it in detail. They are compelled to learn it as they go on. When the investigator returns to the question of special training schools for music supervisors what does he find? You all know what he finds. He finds that: (1) There are but few schools in the country devoted to supervision; (2) geographically, they are so unevenly distributed that they may not deal fairly with the just and the unjust; (3) there is no commonly accepted standard on which these few schools base their courses of study, hence there is nothing for the student to pursue that is definite.

These conditions demand remedies: (1) That the principles of training schools for music supervisors meet the representative supervisors and agree upon a course of study; (2) that this course of study should be carried out in all schools uniformly; (3) that the growing importance of school music as a special professional career should be made evident to young men and young women of ability, in the expectation that they will. pursue it; (4) that the number of training schools should be increased.

The subject of school music has reached that point in the history of its development where these changes are demanded. It presents itself

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