PUPIL-TEACHERS' MUSIC.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11440, 2 August 1900, Page 4

PUPIL-TEACHERS' MUSIC.

Several correspondents draw our attention to the results in the recent third-year pupil-teachers' musical examination of the Auckland Board of Education. Certainly, the failure of 83 per cent, to obtain halfmarks would indicate the exi.;>nce of some incongruity between the standard required and the facilities for meeting it; since it would be impossible to think that such a large proportion of the rising generation of teachers is abnormally defective in the musical faculties or utterly unwilling to learn. We are liitle disposed to give undue weight to the prejudiced utterances of disappointed examinees or their partisans. For the duty to he Entrusted to the teachers is of such great importance that the most scrupulous care may well be taken in their selection, and the highest qualification may fairly be demanded of them. The slow and difficult task of establishing the great and universal art of music firmly among us, by means of the State school, necessarily demands that those absolutely defective in the musical sense should be debarred from further entrance into the Education Department. But these are few and far between. If few of English blood have that musical genius which is common to the Celt, as few are stone deaf to the harmonies of sound. And our German cousins prove to us the capacities which lie latent and undeveloped in our British natures. Yet wo must remember that a divine art, which has been almost as neglected among us as the study of Chinese hieroglyphics, cannot be evoked into sudden life by any magic of unreasonable examination. We are lamentably behindhand in New Zealand in this and other somewhat similar directions. But we must, nevertheless, go slowly and not punish the pupil-teachers for our past shortcomings. They have n difficult task to meet the musical standard required of them, not because the standard is unduly high, but because of our common musical ignorances, generally shared by the masters and mistresses who can otherwise assist and coach their pupil-teachers, leaving them to struggle along in this subject almost unaided. Tho extraordinarily low average of marks shows, wo think, that exceptional difficulties beset the working up to a satisfactory standard. And we would suggest to the Board that exceptional means be taken to meet these exceptional difficulties, that no pupil-teacher be "failed" where there is any indication of moderate musical capacity, but that spocial certificates be issued later for subsequent passings of the requisite musical standards.