Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

is, carefully observed, and the interesting features and such of the points of beauty as children can appreciate should be talked about. All this is preparing for the more technical study later. It is creating taste. It is the natural way of approaching the subject.

Much Drawing. Along with this, of course, should be much drawing and painting by the children. At first this will be necessarily of the crude, psychological sort. But quite early a few principles may be taught by observation. Color work is best, - at first, with large, generous effects, concealing the unsteadiness of little hands, and requiring chiefly arm movements. The sky line and a little of perspective may be easily taught.

The children's observations, at first undirected, become gradually more definite. Their reproductions grow accurate, truthful, and artistic through a gradual acquaintance with some of the essential laws of the art, obtained by studying pictures with constantly increasing closeness, and by drawing and painting what they themselves see.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TASTE

How is it possible in the ordinary public school to inculcate taste in the fine arts? As to literature, the question is a simple one, and has been sufficiently answered in the chapters on Reading and Nature Study. But how is it with music and the graphic and plastic arts?

The natural way of cultivating a taste for good music is to enable the learner to hear good music sung or produced by orchestras, or by performers upon single instruments. It is evident that it is possible only in rare instances to present in schools for the benefit of pupils either skilled singers or trained performers upon musical instruments, either single or in bands. Now and then in the larger cities in a very few cases this may be done, but these cases are so exceptional as to be negligible in any general consideration of the musical needs of children. Public concerts in parks sometimes offer real training in musical taste, and fortunately the custom of giving such concerts is growing. But the schools have no control over these offerings, and can have none. Moreover, they reach a comparatively small number. Can the schools do anything for the many children attending them?

Canned Music.

[ocr errors]

There seems to be but one way at present, and that is through the increased use of

canned music." Phonographs and mechanical piano players have already attained a considerable popularity in schools, and it is to be hoped their use may be greatly extended. These instruments of various sorts have been so greatly improved that they really offer very excellent substitutes for the personal performer. In many cases they present good music in a very much better style than the best local talent, even if this could be secured. If every school owned a first-class phonograph, or a good piano-player, or both, children could hear enough good music really to develop musical taste.

In some instances, school boards are wise enough to provide such instruments, but in most cases, where they have been obtained for schools, it has been done through the efforts of teachers and pupils, aided occasionally by parents' clubs and other auxiliary organizations. It is an excellent thing to work for.

Good Music to Sing. Aside from this device, almost the only reliance of those who would elevate the people's children through the aid of music is in the kind of music presented for their singing exercises. As was said in the preceding chapter, this should always be good music. Mere exercises, scales, runs, and all pseudomusic, should take a subordinate place, merely to train the ear and the voice and to give the ability to read music, after the children, through singing real music, have acquired some taste and a desire to know more of the art which already gives them pleasure. They should never precede such pleasurable singing, and should never supersede it. They should merely accompany it when necessary, in order to make it more pleasurable.

The "music books" filled with "made up" strains of

inferior grade, so common in our schools, should go to the scrap heap, and in their place should be books containing music, real music. For we must never forget that the real aim of teaching music in schools is the elevation of the feelings and the consequent enrichment of the moral nature, and the one essential to this end is music itself, fine music, in abundance, developing taste and an unquenchable appetite for more music.

As to drawing and painting and modeling, the situation is much more encouraging, or rather the facilities for cultivating taste are much more easily obtained.

Reproductions of good paintings and drawings and statues are abundant and inexpensive. A very small sum of money will equip a school with a portfolio of thoroughly satisfactory reproductions of the best of the world's paintings, and with a few plaster casts, for all instructional purposes as good as the originals. It should be the aim of every school to own such a treasury.

It is not enough to have a few good pictures hanging on the walls, though of course these should be present. There should also be the portfolio. And all these pictures should be studied sympathetically, not merely to get a story from them for the language lesson, but to find out why they are beautiful. This study should be a regular and necessary part of the drawing lesson. In some cases it might profitably precede an attempt to draw some similar subject, but in most it should be simply a study to find the beauty — a training in taste.

Feed the Soul through the Eyes. When a child has completed a common school course, it is not enough for him to be able to draw simple objects fairly well. He should be able to tell a good picture from a bad one,

and why it is better, and he should love the good picture and despise the bad one. The Sunday comic supplement should excite his horror and detestation, as should some of the illustrations that do not illustrate, found in popular novels and magazines.

We do not pay enough attention to the feeding of children's souls through the eyes. We cannot wholly prevent the presentation to them of the base, the commonplace, the vulgar, even the indecent, in books and papers, and on public walls. But we might to a degree at least render them immune to these degrading sights by cultivating a distaste for bad art, through its antipode, a love for good art. Here is where stress should be laid in the art departments of our schools.

It is possible, if the schools should seriously undertake to cultivate taste in the children, that, in time, our civilization would be so far removed from barbarism that popular sentiment would demand the entire abolishment of bill boards. But that may be an iridescent dream.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »