CHAPTER XXIV

THE FINE ARTS

SINGING

ARE not the fine arts too fine for the common schools? Do they not belong to that army of fads that have been so vigorously and wittily and frequently denounced as corrupting our youth, turning the course of education into useless channels where it can turn no mill wheels of arithmetic or grammar?

Value of Fads. Yes, truly they are fads; to the "practical" materialist, anathema, to all the Gradgrinds, maranatha. But how about the boy and girl who are to be the dominating forces in the free nation of the morrow? One is almost tempted to paraphrase and say, "Let me teach the fads to the rising generation and I care not who teaches them the essentials.' Let us remember that boys and girls in school are just people, not unlike those out of school. "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" They stand in the same need of ideals, of cultivated feelings, of illumination and inspiration, as their elders; and more, for they are more sensitive to influences, more easily turned toward materialism or idealism.

The fine arts are among the chief means of combating the much-preached-against tendency to low material aims. They are the principal reliance of the wise teacher

in training the feelings, cultivating that neglected area of the mind.

The feelings are the key to character, furnishing the solvent for the hard intellectuality of mere learning, and supplying the motive to the will. Keep thine heart (feeling) with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life."

If good character, showing itself in self-control for good ends and in a wise altruism, is the chief end of education, the feelings must be trained. Knowledge of good and evil is not enough. Adam and Eve acquired that through sinning a marvelous parable. It is necessary to add to knowledge taste, a love for the good, the true, and the beautiful. No effort is wasted that brings into the lives of boys and girls a desire to taste the joys that come from the appreciative contemplation of this trinity of emotional appeal. Therefore let us have in the schools all the fads that may lift the eyes of the children "to the hills from whence cometh our help," even if arithmetic and formal grammar must move up a bit to make room for them.

Functions of Fine Arts. The function of the fine arts in school is to open the minds of children to the higher meanings of life, to spread before them a feast of beauty and of joy that will keep their senses from noting with pleasure the vulgar, the coarse, the selfish, the evil of any sort, and will stimulate them to strive for attainment in the world of worthy ideals.

The fine arts that have found a place in our schools are literature, music, drawing, and painting; to a very limited degree, modeling and the finer aspects of the constructive crafts. Happily they have gained such

a foothold that we may safely assert that they have come to stay. Of these arts the one which, with the possible exception of literature, makes the widest appeal, is music. It would be supererogatory to descant on the influence of music in general. But its function in school and how that is to be fulfilled need discussion. Two Aspects. The two aspects of music that belong to education are producing music and appreciating music produced by others. Thus far in schools we have limited our efforts almost wholly to the former. We have undertaken to teach children to sing, it must be confessed with somewhat meager success. What may be accomplished in the other phase of music remains to be seen.

School not a Studio. - The very modest success of our efforts to teach children in school to sing must be attributed mainly to faulty method, itself due to a failure to grasp the difference between the schoolroom and the studio. Until quite recently the methods were wholly those of the music studio, and these methods still prevail to a very large extent.

In the studio a specially trained teacher of music teaches specially gifted pupils an art in which they already have particular interest. These pupils are willing to undergo the drudgery of thorough training in the elements of musical science, for ability to sing well is already a desideratum to them. Presumably they are already musical. They know something of music and they love it. Moreover, here, teaching music is the one aim, unembarrassed by other claims upon the time and attention. Even if there is any lack of interest on the part of the pupils, the zeal of the teacher and his cultivated skill

in teaching this particular art, to a very considerable degree, atone for this lack.

In the school the conditions are quite different. The teachers for the most part are untrained in this art, and few of them are in any true sense musical. They are compelled merely to follow the instruction of the supervisor, or the course of study, without much interest, and frequently without skill. Many of them are much more interested in arithmetic or grammar than in music.

The children too are of all sorts, children with no interest in music, those with a little interest, and those with great interest, all in one class to be taught together. They do not come to school to study music chiefly, or even as a very important matter. They would find no fault if not taught it at all. Some have considerable musical ability, some little, some are monotones. Under these conditions, De Reszke with Farrar as a pupil will not serve as a model. The approach must be psychological, rather than scientific. The limitations of the teacher, of the pupils, and of the curriculum, all require this.

Wherein have the prevailing methods been faulty? In two respects in particular, and these relate to the two especial aims in the teaching of music in school.

Appeal to Esthetic Nature. In order to realize through the teaching of singing the higher ends of education to which they are supposed to contribute, it is necessary, through a wholesome cultivation of the feelings, that children should come to love singing, to love music, and to know and love good music. The appeal should be made from the very first to the æsthetic nature. Hence the beginning should be song,

real song, such as the children can appreciate, but not vulgar or commonplace. The rhythm, the melody, the lilt, the echo of the heart beat, which are the physical basis of both poetry and music, should be strongly present in the first musical instruction, and they should never disappear. The mechanics of music, its scientific structure, should be kept in the background and should be brought forward only when the children are ready for it as explanation of that which already has given them pleasure and as a means to fuller joy in singing.

The familiar method of teaching singing to children. by beginning with the scale is comparable to teaching reading by beginning with the alphabet or teaching drawing by beginning with a study of type forms, the sphere, the cube, and the cylinder, methods which all the older teachers will readily recall. To a degree they are all logical. They start with principles, and what method of teaching a principle is so simple as to state it in good set terms"? But they are to even a greater degree unpsychological. They ignore the interest of the learner. They forget that children learn by contact with things, embodied principles, first, and later may come to understand and even to state the principles.

Begin with Songs. -Hence teaching singing in schools must begin with singing, singing real songs, enjoyable to the children in both sense and rhythm, appealing even to the unmusical children. It must first be rote singing, singing "by ear," until the songs are learned. Gradually a study of principles and even of technic may be introduced, after the children have been made ready by much enjoyable singing.

It is not the aim of this discussion to treat of method