Preparatoy Brands in Grade School

Abstract

REMEMBER when you were in high school how much you wanted to be in the chorus or orchestra? And how Mother and Dad directed you, in no uncertain terms, to come home immediately after the dismissal bell? Your evening chores around home were to be done, and that settled it. All the education that was recognized as being worth anything was supposed to be administered between the hours of nine and four. So you did the only thing that was left: you took four or five subjects and two or three study periods and were denied the musical training you rightfully deserved because music was not considered of sufficient educational importance to be placed in the regular school schedule. Your opportunities for self-expression through music were limited from that time on to group singing in the weekly general assembly. At the end of your four years in high school you passed down the aisle with your classmates as the orchestra played the processional march. You listened while that especially privileged group who didn't have to go home after school sang their farewell songs. Another of your classmates demonstrated the technique he had acquired from five years of private lessons in the city by playing a solo. And here you are today, still wondering why it was that your educational system did not give you a fair chance to develop the musical talent you felt you possessed. Maybe this didn't happen to you, maybe you were one of the fortunate ones who did play in the orchestra or sing in the chorus or take private music lessons, but it did happen to many of us. School directors, administrators, and music teachers long since have become aware of this problem and already have done much toward its solution. Everyone has witnessed the increased opportunities for participation in music and has observed the definite positive results in the pupil from that participation. If education is the beginning and the continuation of the actual living of life, and not merely the acquisition of a series of unrelated knowledges and skills in preparation for life, it is the duty and obligation of a democratically founded educational system to see to it that those opportunities are presented which will permit the individual to develop his particular talents and abilities. Since all of you are either directly or indirectly associated with the public schools, there is no need to discuss how music gradually assumed its present place in the high-school curriculum. The attainment of that milestone did not settle the problem, however, because as soon as the advantages of music study on a curricular basis were realized, it became apparent that those four years in the beginning experiences of music belonged in the grades. There was no pedagogical reason why music training should not start at the same time other training started. Then the child, presented with musical opportunities from grade one through junior high school, would have sufficient musical background upon entering senior high school to express himself in music and to receive the full aesthetic values from music through a keener sense of appreciation. Educators, after considering the situation, decided that more music opportunities, both vocal and instrumental, should be presented in the grade schools. This immediately resulted in a new and increased interest in vocal music and opened a new avenue of approach to instrumental music through the development of grade-school bands. Bands in the grade school have assumed a multiplicity of forms, in addition to what is generally meant by the term. Some of the various types of grade-school bands which are now serving the young child as a means of actual participation in music are the rhythm and ryth-melody bands, and ensembles comprised of tonettes, saxettes, symphonets, clarettes, song-flutes, clarolets, fluteolets, harmonicas, melody-flutes, recorders, and ocarinas.