Music in Schools

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21686, 21 January 1936, Page 8

Music in Schools

It was very -well observed by Mr Roland Foster, of the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music, in an interview published in "The "Press" yesterday, that New Zealand had formerly possessed a director of music in schools but now had none. The point is not, of course, that the lecturers in the training colleges are idle or useless, without a director, or that scores of individual teachers are prevented from doing good work. The point is

rather that the attitude of the Government and of the Education Department to music in schools was unhappily expressed in the speedy end of a short experiment and a short appointment; and that the attitude of the profession cannot fail'to be, if not fixed, at least strongly influenced accordingly. In the plainest words, music in schools is still regarded as a luxury, an extra, a "frill," as a former Minister described every part of the curriculum that might not have been prescribed by Mr Gradgrind; and it follows inevitably that there will not be enough music in the schools, that music in the schools will not be good enough, taught well enough, or enjoyed well enough, until its importance and value - are quite differently estimated. There are no " frills » in education, properly understood; there is nothing, properly part of the educational process, that can be subtracted or neglected with an expectable gain through closer concentration on the rest

or without direct and derived loss from the subtraction or neglect. The only question is whether music is or is not, in a true definition, properly a part of normal education; and that is a question which has been too clearly answered by the best educational thinkers and the best educational practice to be in dispute. The simple fact is that the Dominion's system of free education has been more impoverished by neglect of music—in vocal and instrumental instruction, appreciation, and speech-training—-and by constricted musical views and bad instructional methods, than by any other single cause. Anyone who knows much of New Zealand schools, primary or post-primary, will be able to name one or several against which such criticism cannot be levelled or where the work of an enthusiast or two must be remembered and set off against it; but the broad fact is that in most or many schools music is nothing but a weekly period or so of singing, the singing is a unison bawling of musical rubbish, and neither voice nor taste is developed towards anything but ugliness. If Mr Foster prevails on Mr Frascr, the Minister for Education, to find a few hundred pounds for the advancement of the least costly of the arts, and the richest and widest in benefit, he will have been a most valuable missionary.