THE TEACHER
"The teachers of this country have its future in their hands"
_William James_
Ideas on the subject of the teaching of Music are changing at such a
rapid rate to-day that the position of the teacher as an interpreter may
well receive some consideration. The study of psychology and the many
new discoveries in the realm of mind bid fair to revolutionise our
conception of teaching: the old standards are fast becoming obsolete.
Once the idea of education was more or less to get something into the
pupil, the newer ideal is to get something out: instead of compression
or repression the process is now regarded as one of expression. We aim
at developing the latent faculties and exploiting the hidden resources
of the mind. It is assumed that the various qualities and abilities are
embodied in mind, just as the possibilities of the oak were implanted
in the acorn: it is the function of the teacher to ensure the requisite
conditions under which these qualities may come to fruition.
From this it is clear that the modern teacher is more occupied in
teaching the pupil than the subject. The old method of grinding in
scales, scales, and yet more scales until those scales had become second
nature is recognised as being worse than merely futile. What can it
profit a pupil if he gain the whole world of scales and lose his
artistic soul? So also with other points, the centre of attention is
transferred from the subject to the pupil. Furthermore, the wise teacher
recognises that as music is a part of life, so the understanding of
music should lead to a larger comprehension of life. There are no
watertight compartments in our lives, everything is acted upon and
reacts: all life is of a piece, and nothing comes out of the mind in
exactly the same condition as it entered. Things become transformed and
assimilated in the process of mental digestion. Consequently the
discerning teacher knows that he is working in terms of life through the
agency of the music. He is helping to modify, form, or transform the
mind of the pupil through his memories, he is moulding his character:
and his character weighs in the eternal scales. The teaching thus
stands on a base that is wider than life itself, and such a teacher is
invested with a dignity and worth that can never attach to the
time-server or the crammer.
The Royal Academy of Music gives the Licentiate diploma for (_a_)
teachers and (_b_) performers: this is a technical distinction without
any real difference. It is the function of both alike to reveal and to
pass on a message of spirit. The performer passes it on to an audience
of many, and the teacher to a little audience of one. Teachers are
"artists to whom the most priceless material has been committed."[16]
There is an idea abroad that those who are not clever enough to perform
can always take to teaching, but this is of course a lamentable
perversion of the truth. There are diversities of gifts, but the same
spirit, and certainly as high a degree of spiritual perception is
necessary for the teacher as for the executive artist. The teacher has
merely chosen a different technique for its expression. Not so many
years ago the teaching profession was known as "the refuge of the
destitute," but we are changing all that with the revaluation of values
which is being forced upon us by the logic of events. In course of time
the old type of teacher must become as extinct as the dodo.
[Note 16: Canon J. H. Masterman.]
Effective teaching can never be done to pattern, for the simple reason
that pupils are not machines or blocks of wood and cannot be turned out
to sample. Every pupil is unique: he is the inheritor of a spirit which
is peculiarly his own, and of a body in its endowments and proportions
unlike that of anyone else, and in his nervous system he possesses
special pre-dispositions and "potentially linked paths" which provide
him with particular adaptabilities and traits. Were the teacher to treat
every pupil alike, his scheme would probably truly fit none of them: but
as a matter of fact each one of them calls for insight and special
treatment. So the teacher learns from every pupil, and the experience
garnered from contact with the many phases of human nature renders his
judgment the surer and his sympathy the more sound. But this, quite
obviously, is mind-moulding and character-building, with the emphasis
laid upon the teaching of the pupil rather than the subject.
The three generally accepted divisions of mind are (_a_) intellect;
(_b_) feelings; and (_c_) will; and in these directions the teaching of
music should have far-reaching effects upon the culture and the outlook.
Observation is the root of all mental growth: it supplies the mind with
the necessary food for development and expansion, and according to the
range and definiteness of the evidence supplied by the senses, so is the
foundation laid for a good memory and a lively quality of imagination.
The earliest lessons will thus be a stimulus to mental growth: the pupil
will learn to take in by the eye and the ear, and what he takes in will
enable him to understand and to appreciate more and yet more. He will be
taught that everything in music means something, and even exercises will
be invested with a meaning and a purpose of their own. Purely mechanical
work has gone, never, we may hope, to return: and meaningless music is
discarded in favour of that which expresses something. It may illustrate
a mood or an emotion, a scene, an action, or a fairy tale--it matters
not what so long as it possesses a meaning to lend it point and purpose.
So right from the beginning the action of the pupil will be the
expression of the emotions and ideas that hold sway in his mind.
In this connection we may quote an actual instance. A teacher
writes:--"A young pupil (age 14) came for a lesson, playing Farjeon's
'Prelude and Pavane.' She had learnt the 'Prelude,' and had had one
lesson, a fortnight before, on the 'Pavane.' We went through the
technique, and I told her a little about the 'Pavane'--when it was
danced, the derivation of the name, and so on. When she played it, she
played it very, very slowly, but quite correctly and finished in detail.
I asked her if she liked it quite as slowly as that, and she replied
that she thought 'the Court ladies with their long dresses would not be
able to dance any quicker' and that it 'sounded grander very slowly.' So
I left it." This, we may add, is an illustration of method quoted by a
teacher in a diploma Examination paper, but it aptly shows the new
spirit. The teacher had no mind to force her own views upon the pupil.
Had she insisted that the dance should be played more quickly, she might
have spoiled the child's mental picture and destroyed her interest in
the piece. The incident also points the way in which the pupil's
observation, imagination, and powers of deduction were being stimulated,
so that, as we have been endeavouring to show, the music--of value for
its own sake--was also ministering to the larger end of life-growth.
The world of affairs and the world of education see to it that our
intellect and will are duly and properly brushed up, they exact their
penalties in default from the stupid and the invertebrate, but the
feeling and emotional side of the nature is too often ignored. It is
left to develop by chance instead of being nurtured by design. As a
consequence a vast amount of distorted feeling exists in the world, and
a very great deal of emotion is repressed. Music is at once a means of
cultivating the rightful feelings towards life, and an outlet for the
repressed emotions. The interpreter recognises that his true function is
to serve his day and his generation, and so he places this ideal of
Service in the forefront of his vision. If he substitute Selfishness he
is permanently wrongly adjusted to life, and nothing can go truly right
with him. He is off the lines of his spiritual evolution, and Nature
will take pains to impress the fact upon him: she has her larger vision
to which he must, willy-nilly, conform. The teacher, in handing on the
torch, will thus be able at the very outset to point to this ideal of
Service, exemplified in finding out the beauty or the meaning of the
music, and in passing it on for the benefit of others in song or sound.
Repressed emotions are now recognised as a potent source of trouble,
both mental and physical. In the adolescent stage of youth vital forces
surge through the body, they are perhaps indefinable but they are none
the less potent. "The emotions are there, and it is for us to find the
way in which we can best turn them upward: the time has passed when we
need or can deny their existence, or their expression."[17] These
emotions cannot be permanently repressed, they are too deeply embedded
in the self: they may find an outlet in the amours of youth, or in some
other way. But music offers a means and a channel through which these
emotions may flow in useful direction, and this is a most valuable
service. Failing legitimate expression they not infrequently find an
inappropriate or distorted outlet. There is discord within, and it is
far better that the discord should be resolved harmoniously rather than
ill, or not at all. The study of music at this period may thus result in
marked benefit to the physical health in a perfectly natural manner: for
to forbid any expression to these emotions would be much as if we
forbade a canary to sing or a lambkin to jump. If they can be reflected
in "pure joy" in song we may indeed be sure that the outlet they are
finding is a happy one. The subject is a very important one, but it
leads us far afield from the present scheme. The reader who is
interested may find further treatment of this topic in the present
writer's "The Hidden Self, and its Mental Processes."
[Note 17: Ernest Hunt. "The Hidden Self."]
The modern teacher has progressed beyond the stage of imposing his own
standard of judgment upon the pupil. By introducing the element of
musical appreciation and making the pupil familiar with a wide range of
musical ideas, he will gradually build up his power of discrimination
and judgment and his standard of taste. These are no fixed things, but
will grow as the experience of the pupil himself grows. As his sympathy
and insight also increase, so will his knowledge of the good and evil of
music progress. This is a vastly different process to any arbitrary
enforcement of "this is good and that is bad" standards, and indeed it
is but a poor compliment to any teacher when we find pupil after pupil a
more or less complete imitation of the same original.
One thing that is conspicuously lacking in the world to-day is the
ability to be one's self. Suggestion and habit are ever at work to kill
originality and to stifle self-reliance and initiative. Thousands can
copy, few can invent. The reason may be that only the few are able and
willing to go to the fountain-head of spirit, where there is the
infinite variety of universal thought to be their inspiration. The many
are content to live their teachers' ideas over and over again, building
their lives and abilities on quite ordinary models in a quite ordinary
way. In music we already possess far too many "dittos," ditto
programmes, ditto compositions, ditto renderings, and ditto ideals.
Praise the Lord for originality wherever it may be found. The
conventional goes round and round in a circle, like a puppy after its
own tail: but originality rises at each revolution and so reaches on and
up, in progress like a spiral. So to-day the teacher fosters
originality, shaping it with kindly criticism or helpful suggestion, but
never damning it with a fatal "don't." Education's maxim to-day is "Do;
but do better next time."
In this larger view of teaching, the technique, though not despised and
rejected, is relegated to its proper place in the scheme of things. The
cult of the head and the heart predominates, and the whole course of the
instruction is an integral part of the training for life. If it be true
that we are making "houses built without hands, for our souls to live
in," then music is determining no small part of the architecture for the
student who follows the gleam. The inspired teacher (and, without the
vision, teaching must ever be the veriest drudgery) is engaged upon one
of the noblest of tasks as well as one of the most responsible. We may
even hope that one day the world will awaken to this fact. Incidentally
teachers themselves, by thinking more nobly of their tasks, can do much
to dignify their calling. They are truly in the van of progress, and
"with the power of the Spirit almost untried and the possibilities of
Prayer as little known, with the inheritance of Love still unclaimed and
the ocean of Truth yet unexplored, life is full of an immensity of
purpose."[18]
[Note 18: Kirkham Davis. "Where dwells the Soul Serene."]