2cfztsic educatiotz it2 the curricul~inicreating movements to music, and expressing the swing in music, can
also serve as a means of self-expression, emotional release, spiritual
satisfaction and intellectual stimulation when small bodies become
restless, small heads too full, and chld emotions seek a means of
release. Too often, we seem to be thinking of children as little problem-
solvers rather than dynamic, growing, reacting little people who need
to express feelings about living in the school environment, in addition
to reciting correct answers to stereotyped questions. Children have a
real need for creation and recreation.
In the state of Louisiana, and in many of the other states, the respon-
sibility for seeing that children have experience in expressing them-
selves musically throughout the school day is shared by the elementary
classroom teacher and the music specialist. The music specialist works
with the classroom teacher and children on a definite schedule. The
classroom teacher, though, may have music any time during the day.
She has the definite advantage of knowing her children better than any
visiting teacher possibly can, and she alone can sense which tendencies
towards creative digression from the regular classroom programme
are most likely to be of value to her pupils.
Classroom teachers naturally are not trained as specialists in music.
They are, however, and more importantly, trained as specialists in
understanding children. Therefore, they conduct such activities as
singing familiar songs, teaching new songs with the aid of a phono-
graph, listening to musical radio programmes during school time, com-
posing tunes to poems during language arts period, singing number
songs during arithmetic lessons, choosing songs about animals, birds,
trees, and the natural world to accompany science study, helping
children to plan short musical programmes for others, and playing
folk games and singing folk songs while studying geography and
history as it relates to people all over the world.
Today, everyone is greatly concerned with human relations as they
affect international relationships of all kinds. Most of us believe that
one key to world friendship is understanding. In turn, one of the keys
to understanding is the study of how people of countries other than
our own have expressed themselves through music.