Abstract
Klára Kokas was a music teacher and music psychologist (1929-2010). Her method is based on music, motion and manual arts, therefore it can be defined as a form of reform pedagogy, otherwise it is called complex art pedagogy. The main elements and characteristics of Klára Kokas’s pedagogy were revolutionary new ideas in the fields of personality development, and music education – compared to the practices of reform pedagogy trends in the 20th century Europe and the United States (Pukánszky-Németh, 1996). The main elements of this concept are music, dance improvisation, motion, imaginative stories, visual arts, painting and drawing. However, its most important component is the very specific and intimate relation, which connected her to children. This distinctive feature of the Kokas-method is hard to teach. Klára Kokas approached to people with problems, suffering and disabilities, especially to marginalized and disadvantaged children with utmost empathy. She struggled to develop the social-cognition skills and affectionate behavior of the handicapped children through her own invented musical method.Her writings reflected her relationship with God, namely the presence of Him which can be felt behind the scenes. His name was mostly unspoken, yet when she named Him, it was to reveal that God was always in her mind, like in her words and musical activities too.The goal of this paper is to search and frame that text corpus, which can outline the spirituality of Klára Kokas with the aim of drawing up her relationship with God and children – according to her publications, writings, essays, books, short-film compilations, movie archives and interviews (Kokas, 1992; 1999; 2002; 2007; 2012; 2013). The contours of her spirituality from her teachings, manuscripts and publications couldn’t be attributed to any religious denomination. Also, to be presented are her notions about youth and teenage spirit and a unique relation with the world, her own students, the talents, the music and the holiness: the spirituality of Klára Kokas. The importance of beliefs and moral convictions in the art of education will be outlined.A single paragraph of about 150-200 words maximum. For research articles, abstracts should give a complete overview of the work. We encourage authors to use the following style of abstracts: background, methods, results and conclusion. The abstract should give an objective representation of the article.
Highlights
In my study I emphasize the aspects of the music teacher and music psychologist Klára Kokas’s (1929-2010) spirituality and concept of ’child’ based on her book entitled „Music Raises my Hands”
According to Pargament, an American religious psychologist, religion is a large collection of rituals, symbols and traditions, and spirituality is the seeking of the Sacred (Tomcsányi et al, 2010)
Pedagogical theories can be grouped into three major sections according to the anthropological periods, says Ferenc Pálhegyi psychologist and marriage therapist, and there are three pedagogical approaches according to these groups: pedagogy of forming the instincts pedagogy of forming the behavior and the humanistic pedagogy (Pálhegyi, 2011)
Summary
In my study I emphasize the aspects of the music teacher and music psychologist Klára Kokas’s (1929-2010) spirituality and concept of ’child’ based on her book entitled „Music Raises my Hands”. We notice that Klára Kokas often used expressions, descriptions and names which reflected her concepts about God (holy, Creator of the Universe, Silence, Master), humankind and children, such as: their empathy, attention to others, relation to school, interpersonal relationships, acceptance, imagination, personal mission, spiritual presentation to others, self-expression, freedom, community, motion, tolerance towards people with disabilities. These comprise the foundation of the Kokas method. This book of hers will answer our research question, which is: how can Klára Kokas' concept of ’God’ and the ’child’ be drawn based on her book „Music Raises my Hands”?
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