III. CURRENT METHODS OF TEACHING
The most common fallacy in our teaching consists in putting knowledge before experience, or theory before practice. Children are taught about music before they have had sufficient experience of it. They are taught, for example, to pin pasteboard notes on a make-belief staff; they are told that one note is the father-note and another the mother-note (one supposes the chromatics to be irascible old-maid aunts); all sorts of subterfuges are resorted to in an attempt to teach them what they are too young to learn and what, in any case, can have no significance whatever except when based on a long process of actual experience. One might as well try to satisfy a hungry child with a picture of an apple as to show a child notes before it has dealt with sounds.
This, then, is our great fallacy. It is impossible to expect children to be musical if they begin with symbols of any kind. Furthermore, in the teaching of songs without notation, the whole stress can be laid on fundamental things. What are these? First, a sense of rhythm. In the development of music rhythm came before melody, as melody came before harmony. Rhythmic freedom and accuracy are essential, not only to a child’s musical education, but to his physical well-being. Now there is one thing certain,—namely, that freedom and accuracy in rhythm can be brought about only by actual bodily movement. (It is unnecessary to dwell on the fundamental difference between actual rhythmic movement and any symbol of it, such as a half or quarter note.) And the beginning of the musical training of children should consist in marching, or clapping hands to music played by the teacher. Following this the actual notes of simple folk-song may be expressed in bodily motion—as in running or dancing—the chief point being to engage the whole body. The beginnings of Eurhythmics as evolved by Dalcroze serve this purpose excellently, the meter of the song (4/4 or 3/4) being expressed with the arms, while, at the same time, the rhythms (or actual notes) are expressed by the movement of the feet with the body in motion. It must always be kept in mind, however, that this training is for the mind and the æsthetic sense, and that the bodily motions are for the purpose of giving children an exact sense of rhythm. Too great stress cannot be laid on the necessity of always using good music. Furthermore, I wish to avoid the pitfalls that are spread at every hand in the form of schools for self-expression in which children and adults are taught so-called “æsthetic” movements to music. Æsthetic dancing is one thing; a musical education is another. The cry for self-expression is characteristic of out attitude toward education. A child or an adult is asked to listen to a piece of music and then to express in motion or pose what it feels. Undisciplined by experience, incapable—as we all are—of fathoming the mystery of great music, uneducated in those immutable laws that underlie all æsthetics, what can such a person express—save that idiosyncrasy which he at that moment is? So, ultimately, one expresses a Beethoven sonata or symphony by poses and movements—in a Greek dress, against a curtained background and under a calcium light! This delicate, transitory, elusive, and impenetrable thing we call music is something more than motion; yes, more even than motion, melody, and harmony together, for they are but its body; its spirit can neither be fathomed nor expressed save in terms of itself.
On every side this sort of instruction goes on. One hears glib statements on the lips of uninstructed persons about child psychology, “second” brain, and so forth. A pupil is asked to listen to a phrase of music and then tell the teacher what “comes through.” We must remember that art is discipline and that there is no real liberty except under law. We want children to use their minds accurately and to have control of their bodies, but this use and this control can only come through definite and regulated effort. Gropings in the dark, detached and illusive pursuits of the will-o’-the-wisps of education will never accomplish our purpose.