College Teaching / Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College

by Paul Klapper

Music a comparatively recent addition to the college curriculum

There is perhaps no more direct way of throwing a sort of flashlight upon the musical activity in the colleges of America than the statement that a volume of this kind, if prepared a dozen years ago, would either have contained no chapter upon music, or, if music were given a place at all, the argument would have been occupied with hopes rather than achievements. Not that it would be literally true to say that music was wholly a negligible quantity in the homes of higher education until the twentieth century, but the seat assigned to it in the few institutions where it was found was an obscure and lowly one, and the influence radiating therefrom reached so small a fragment of the academic community that no one who was not engaged in a careful, sympathizing search could have been aware of its existence. It was less than twenty years ago that a prominent musical journal printed the very moderate statement that "the youth who is graduated at Yale, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Brown, Dartmouth, Bowdoin, Amherst, Cornell, or Columbia has not even a smattering of music beyond the music of the college glee and mandolin club; and of course to cultivate that is the easiest road to musical perdition." One who looks at those institutions now, and attempts to measure the power and reach of their departments of music, will not deny the right to the satisfaction which their directors—men of national influence—must feel, and would almost expect them to echo the words of ancient Simeon. The contrast is indeed extraordinary, and, I believe, unparalleled. The work of these men, and of others who could be named with them, has not been merely development, but might even be called creation. Any one who attempts to keep track of the growth of musical education in our colleges, universities, and also in the secondary schools of the present day, will find that the bare statistics of this increase, to say nothing of a study of the problems involved, will engage much more than his hours of leisure. Music, which not long ago held tolerance only as an outside interest, confined to the sphere of influence of the glee club and the chapel choir, is now, in hundreds of educational institutions, accorded the privileges due to those arts and sciences whose function in historic civilization, and potency in scholarly discipline and liberal culture, give them domicile by obvious and inalienable right.

History of the subject of music in the American college curriculum

The first university professorships in music were founded at Harvard in 1876, and at the University of Pennsylvania at about the same time. Vassar College established musical courses in 1867, Oberlin in 1869. Harvard took the lead in granting credit for certain courses in music toward the degree of A.B. in 1870.[[94]] Progress thereafter for many years was slow; but in 1907 investigation showed that "approximately one half the colleges in the country recognize the value of instruction in music sufficiently to grant credit in this subject."[[95]] Since this date college after college and university after university have fallen into line, only a few resisting the current that sets toward the universal acceptance of music as a legitimate and necessary element in higher education. The problem with the musical educators of the country is no longer how to crowd their subject into the college preserve, but how to organize its forces there, how to develop its methods on a basis of scholarly efficiency, how to harmonize its courses with the ideals of the old established departments, and now, last of all, how to bring the universities and colleges into coöperation with the rapid extension of musical practice, education, and taste which has, in recent days, become a conspicuous factor in our national progress.

Changing social ideals responsible for the new attitude toward the study of music in colleges

An investigation into the causes of this great change would be fully as interesting as a critical examination of its results. The limits of this chapter require that consideration be given to the present and future of this movement rather than to its past; but it is especially instructive, I think, to those who are called upon to deal practically with it, to observe that the welcome now accorded to music in our higher institutions of learning is due to changes in both the college and its environment. In view of the constitution and relationships of our higher schools (unlike those of the universities of Europe), any alteration in the ideals, the practical activities, and the living conditions of the people of the democracy will sooner or later affect those institutions whose aim is fundamentally to equip young men and women for social leadership. It is unnecessary to remind the readers of such a book as this of the marked enlargement of the interests of the intelligent people of America in recent years, or of the prominent place which æsthetic considerations hold among these interests. The ancient thinker, to whom nothing of human concern was alien, would find the type he represented enormously increased in these latter days. The passion for the release of all the latent energies and the acquisition of every material good, which characterizes the American people to a degree hitherto unknown in the world since the outburst of the Renaissance, issues, as in the Renaissance, in an enormous multiplication of the machinery by which the enjoyment of life and its outward embellishment are promoted. But more than this and far better—the eager pursuit of the means for enhancing physical and mental gratification has coincided with a growing desire for the general welfare;—hence the æsthetic movement of recent years, and the zeal for social betterment which excludes no section or class or occupation, tend to unite, and at the same time to work inward and develop a type of character which seeks joy not only in beauty but also in the desire to give beauty a home in the low as well as in the high places. Whatever may be one's view of the final value of the recent American productions in literature and the fine arts, the social, democratic tendency in them is unmistakable. The company of enthusiastic men and women who are preaching the gospel of beauty as a common human birthright is neither small nor feeble. The fine arts are emerging from the studios, professional schools, and coteries; they are no longer conceived as the special prerogative of privileged classes; not even is the creation of masterpieces as objects of national pride the pervading motive;—but they are seen to be potential factors in national education, ministering to the happiness and mental and moral health of the community at large. It was impossible that the most enlightened directors of our colleges, universities, and public schools should not perceive the nature and possibilities of this movement, hasten to ally themselves with it, and in many cases assume a leadership in it to which their position and advantages entitled them.

The educative function of music

The commanding claims which the arts of design, music, and the drama are asserting for an organized share in the higher education is also, I think, a consequence of the change that has come about in recent years in the constitution of the curriculum, the methods of instruction, the personnel of the student body, the multiplication of their sanctioned activities, and especially in the attitude of the undergraduates toward the traditional idea of scholarship. The old college was a place where strict, inherited conceptions of scholarship and mental discipline were piously maintained. The curriculum rested for its main support upon a basis of the classics and mathematics, which imparted a classic and mathematical rigidity to the whole structure. The professor was an oracle, backed by oracular textbooks; the student's activity was restricted by a traditional association of learning with self-restraint and outward severity of life. The revolutionary change came with the marvelous development of the natural sciences, compelling radical readjustments of thought both within and without the college, the quickening of the social life about the campus, and the sharp division of interest, together with a multiplication of courses which made the elective system inevitable. The consequence was, as President Wilson states it, that a "disintegration was brought about which destroyed the old college with its fixed disciplines and ordered life, and gave us our present problem of reorganization and recovery. It centered in the break-up of the old curriculum and the introduction of the principle that the student was to select his own studies from a great variety of courses. But the change could not, in the nature of things, stop with the plan of study. It held in its heart a tremendous implication;—the implication of full manhood on the part of the pupil, and all the untrammeled choice of manhood. The pupil who was mature and well-informed enough to study what he chose, was also by necessary implication mature enough to be left free to do what he pleased, to choose his own associations and ways of life outside the curriculum without restraint or suggestion; and the varied, absorbing life of our day sprang up as the natural offspring of the free election of studies."[[96]]

The development of emotions as well as the intellect a vital concern of the college curriculum

Into an academic life so constituted, art, music, and the drama must perforce make their way by virtue of their appeal to those instincts, always latent, which were now set in action. Those agencies by which the emotional life has always been expressed and stimulated found a welcome prepared for them in the hearts of college youths, stirred with new zests and a more lively self-consciousness. But for a time they met resistance in the supremacy of the exact sciences, erroneously set in opposition to the forces which move the emotions and the imagination, and the stern grip, still jealously maintained, of the old conception of "mental discipline" and the communication of information as the prime purpose of college teaching. The relaxation came with the recognition of æsthetic pursuits as "outside interests," and organization and endowment soon followed. But a college art museum logically involves lectures upon art, a theater an authoritative regulation of the things offered therein, a concert hall and concert courses instruction in the history and appreciation of music. And so, with surprising celerity, the colleges began to readjust their schemes to admit those agencies that act upon the emotion as well as the understanding, and the problem how to bring æsthetic culture into a working union with the traditional aims and the larger social opportunities of the college faced the college educator, and disturbed his repose with its peremptory insistence upon a practical solution.