in high school and grammar school, but thoroughout the entire school course. In its place, a number of factors almost wholly aesthetic, or at least non-technical, are uniting to create a manysided love of literature. Story-telling by primary school teachers and through phonograph records; the impressive reading by teacher or expert of books and poems, which will not be followed by composition writing or quiz; dramatization, where pupils with minimum preparation and costuming, take the parts of various characters in their story-books; school plays, which through double or triple castes, ensure general participation in dramatic activities; the reading of several primary school readers each year in place of one; the encouragement of individual reading through school libraries and the posting or circulation of lists of books suitable for children of various ages; the circulation by the school of such lists among parents and the committees that purchase books for Sunday school libraries; the requirement that pupils shall read a limited number of books from a list embracing a great variety; the reaction in the grammar school grades from the critical reading of two or three masterpieces to the reading of miscellaneous selections from all forms of literature as was the case with the older school readers; the modification of college entrance requirements in English to permit the substitution of evidence of wide reading or broad literary interests for mastery of technique; all these practices are combining to create a popular taste for what is beautiful in verse and in prose. CULTIVATION OF THE LOVE OF MUSIC In music, as in literature, democratic culture demands a love of music in a variety of forms especially in the forms which require a cultivated ear. Everybody loves some form of music or other, but confined to a brass band, ragtime melodies, fox trots and one-steps, or even the ordinary sort of hymns and Sunday school songs, music cannot be regarded as cultural. Still the beginnings of musical culture lie outside the school. The noblest music has been adapted to sacred song and remains as a spiritual possession of the people in common with the meaner melodies that are more vulgar in religion than in art. Themes from the masterpieces and songs that are themselves masterpieces are sung in the home, played in the theater, or whistled by the street Arab. But in spite of this universal singing and playing, we lack as a people the sense of discrimination which finds greater pleasure in the artistic than the mediocre. It is not that a love of ragtime and of oratorio can not co-exist. Each is a form of self-expression adapted to changing mood. But culture demands not only a response to the sensuous in rhythm and harmony, but an intelligent and sympathetic comprehension of the music which through the genius of the master expresses the finer imaginings, emotions and aspirations of the human soul, or miraculously interprets and emotionalizes human experience. This involves something more than ability to sing or to perform on piano or violin and something less than training in musical technique. Probably Dr. Flexner is right in his suggestion that "all children should at least endeavor to learn some form of instrumental music" even though he used it as a hypothetical illustration of possible forms of educational compulsion. All children should also be "made to sing." The mediocrity of skill that usually results is in itself a form of individual enjoyment and self-expression that does not necessarily interfere with appreciation. Since part singing, school orchestra, and even inartistic vocal and instrumental solos make the enjoyment of music more active and social, they should form a part of public education. Now that the phonograph is making us more than ever dependent upon music in which we have no part, it is especially significant that almost 50 per cent of the two hundred thousand pupils in four hundred American high schools are given training in chorus singing, 50 per cent of the schools give some credit toward graduation for chorus work, and two hundred and thirty-eight high schools have orchestras, though but a third of them allow any credit for orchestral service. The early giving of school credit for properly supervised private instruction in music by such school systems as those of Berkeley, California, and Chelsea, Massachusetts, and more recently by those of Pittsburgh and Hartford, may constitute the first step toward the teaching of instrumental music in the public school. While not necessary to an appreciation of good music, school singing intensifies it for the patriotic songs, folk songs and lyrics that are rapidly taking the place of exercise and rote. On the other hand, it is hostile to appreciation only when it is confined to elementary technique. Mr. Foresman's utilization of the phonograph in the teaching of vocal music by giving for the pupil's imitation, marvelously trained voices and perfectly played instruments in place of the halting notes of an unskilled teacher, and his linking of the scale with masterpieces of beauty, have transformed the rote lesson itself into a means to appreciation. The chief sin of the school, however, in the teaching of music has been the omission of work directly planned to develop appreciation. In the special report on "Music in the Public Schools," made by Mr. Earhart of Pittsburgh at the request of United States Commissioner Claxton, only twenty-four among six hundred and thirty-one high schools had courses in musical appreciation and but forty-nine in the history of music. Unlike the influence of uniform college entrance requirements in English, appreciation has not been sacrificed to a technique required of all. Music has been taught only in its more elementary phases and almost solely in the elementary school. Even in the college, the champions of its traditional culture have strangely enough been satisfied to leave symphony, grand opera and oratorio to individual taste and opportunity. Its formal courses have been almost wholly confined to advanced technical training open only to the specialist, while its glee clubs and orchestras are hardly open to the charge of elevating musical taste. THE USE OF THE PHONOGRAPH The introduction of the phonograph into the school and the multiplication of records which sympathetically reproduce most of the great masterpieces remove the real bar to the development of appreciation for what is finest in music in every period of education. The teacher who might read a passage from literature impressively is helpless to present a variety of musical selections. Coöperation from local musical artists, such as that given by the Combes Conservatory of Music to the Observation School of the University of Pennsylvania during the summer of 1908, is rarely practicable. Courses in musical appreciation based on the use of phonograph records are practicable for every kind of school, from the little red schoolhouse to the college class. Hundreds of victrolas or other forms of phonographs and thousands of records have already been introduced into American schools. Dayton, Ohio, has long had a victrola in every school, Los Angeles has eighty and Trenton sixteen. The danger is that they will become little more than a source of amusement, with musical appreciation as incidental an aim as in the home itself. Fortunately the phonograph companies are themselves meeting this need with specially designed machines, records and courses, though educational experts must give the same serious study to this new movement as to other factors in the course of study. In the report made to the University of Wisconsin and the Department of Education by the State Music Committee, a course in music appreciation is included among those recommended to high schools having competent instructors in music. It is based upon Miss Faulkner's course planned for the Victor Talking Machine Company but advises the use of local artists and advanced music students to supplement mechanical musical instruments. The work of this course is to study the form and structure of different kinds of music, to learn the leading composers and become familiar with many of the famous compositions, to study styles of various artists by means of the talking machine and to get an idea of good interpretation. Credit, one-fifth, each semester. This course is open to everyone who takes credit for private study. Work such as this should begin in the first grade of the elementary school and continue through the last stage of instruction. The college should do as much for music as it does for literature. An advanced general course in the history of music should be required to make or to keep students familiar with the school, nationality, period and individual characteristics of composers, supplemented by electives, required in various kinds of musical composition, as in various fields of literature. And basal for this common culture and a part of it in every period of development should be a love of patriotic song and pride in American singers, instrumentalists and composers and their contributions to universal art. APPRECIATION OF FORM AND COLOR After all, it is perhaps in art in the field of form and color that the tendency toward aesthetic appreciation is most marked. Mr. Farnum in his recent report to United States Commissioner Claxton sharply contrasts the mechanical conceptions of drawing as a school subject held at the time of the Centennial Exposition of forty years ago with those of today. To be sure, art appreciation is set down as but one among several fundamental aims and is generally subordinated to the "carefully guided practice" which is the "surest if not the only road" to visual discrimination without which "true appreciation of a work of art" is impossible. But "nearly every supervisor gives opportunity for practice study in the drawing course" and in the various means used to illustrate existing tendencies, art appreciation is given prominent place. It is not without significance that notwithstanding insistence upon actual work in drawing as the "surest road," the detailed work in appreciation given in certain of the illustrative courses is quite independent of "practice." In the high school department of the Ethical Culture School in New York City pupils who are not studying drawing are allowed to take the course in appreciation. From the standpoint of aiding observation, correlation with manual training and some little contribution to appreciation that cannot otherwise be gained, a limited amount of work in drawing may be useful to all individuals. On the other hand, there are many other ways of teaching observation than through drawing, and all school studies that are not as highly specialized as advanced work in drawing itself should be, can be effectively taught without it. Here, as elsewhere, the expert in education must analyze and determine relative aims and values. Owing to the fact that the planning and supervision of art courses has been given over exclusively to specialists, there is the same added need for an openminded study of values as in the case of the high school subjects. But art appreciation is an aim that is largely independent of the development of skill and so far as the majority of the pupils are concerned, should, like literary and musical appreciation, be required throughout the school course with special emphasis of all that makes for the development of pride in American art. Strangely enough, the only course of study in which I happened to find an injunction for this special emphasis was in that of Salt Lake City. It is not a new sort of work that is needed but a more universal requirement of what is already done in many schools. Excellent reproductions of the great masterpieces can be obtained in penny prints. The study of pictures and sculpture with the aid of such books as John C. Van Dyke's How to Judge of a Picture, Miss Emery's How to Enjoy Pictures, Coffin's A Child's Guide to Pictures, must, therefore, not be sacrificed in the vain effort to teach all |