Why We Love Music — Text and Context

Instruments were furnished at public expense. Credit for music gained current coinage on a par with history and chemistry. The introduction of principles of educational psychology led to selective admission and elimination and gave the teachers a basis for the administration of praise or blame in achievement. Few public school subjects can point to a similar epoch-making stride. These achievements today give youth a chance in music.

_Orientation in the grades._ For the musical life of youth at and soon after the high-school age, the training in the grades was most significant, and that, in turn, was rooted in a national awakening to the possibilities and the responsibilities of music in the earliest years in the home and the kindergarten. This awakening was strengthened by the recognition given art in general. Music early became associated with the speech arts, the dance, and other games. The development in the graphic and the plastic arts, though slow, was somewhat parallel with music for these early years. In the eight years in the grades there developed a process of selective opportunities for the pursuit of music so that freshmen entered the high school as a group fairly differentiated on the basis of abilities, opportunities, likes and dislikes, and ambitions for music.

This differentiation had a twofold effect on the high school: First, the elimination of pupils who, on various legitimate grounds, did not qualify for musical training at public expense at this stage and, second, the beginning of specialization for those who had previously found themselves or who at this stage made a happy decision. Thus the development of music in the high school has followed logically on the early development of music in the grades, and in like manner the development of music at the college level is now beginning to follow the development of music in the high school.

_Group activities in voice and instrument._ Youth is the age of learning by doing. This principle has been implemented in high-school education by the development of group activities, both in theoretical and in practical music, both in the curricular and in the extracurricular activities. Throughout, the emphasis has been on action. Instruments are supplied at public expense; opportunities are given for participation in programs of entertainment; and a stimulus has been climaxed by the introduction of local, state, and national contests for groups and for individuals.

The adoption of the principle of group instruction at this level has had many significant advantages. It draws large numbers of pupils into group activities for the social value of the activity in itself and for the social value of participation in public life. It has lessened the cost of musical education many times over by training ten or a hundred pupils in a group as effectively, in many respects, as they could be trained by individual instruction. Group instruction has, perhaps, been the strongest leverage for the motivation of musical pursuits in the school. It has increased the pursuit of individual instruction on the basis of discovered needs, for example, in the mastery of a particular instrument for participation in the band or orchestra or in the development of a voice discovered in the group. The individual instruction has thus been motivated and made to fit into particular niches in the musical groups or in the choice of vocational pursuits in society.

_Contests._ The development of contests both in individual and in group performance has had a profound effect on the development of music in youth and is destined to serve in large part as a clearinghouse. Educators recognize many drawbacks in the plan of contests. Preparation for the contests requires excessive time and highly trained teachers. A contest becomes an occasion for the revelation and the objectifying of differences in individuals and groups. It involves some little expense. It tends to discourage the pupils who cannot qualify.