Mmic cducatiart in the curriculumto pay. There is constant contact between these country schools and
artists of repute who play and sing to the students and, on occasions,
with them. There must be eacient but elastic administration.
As to the teaching methods used, the Rural Music Schools Asso-
ciation lays down no hard-and-fast rule, but methods have been evolved
in the class teaching of string instruments which have proved successful
in teaching adults. Miss Edwina Palmer gave a brief demonstration of
some of these at the Brussels Conference, and it is regretted that they
cannot be described in detail here. The essentials of success in class
teaching may be summarized as follows.
The whole plan of advance must be carefully thought out in the
greatest detail and the gradual teaching of the theory of music must be
included in the plan.
One difficulty must be mastered at a time, e.g., the proper way to
hold the violin must be grasped before the bow or left hand fingers
are used.
There must be real musical enjoyment at every lesson. This means
that the music must be very carefully graded. There are, for instance,
many pieces published using open strings, for which lively piano
accompaniments are provided and which exploit varieties of elemen-
tary bowing.
Above all, one must progress slowly and to do this one must have
at one’s disposal a great deal of music for each stage. Fortunately much
attention has been given to this problem by United Kingdom publish-
ers who have excellent and carefully graded teaching material on
their lists.
This article is based on notes of a talk given at the request of
Mr. Bernard Shore, to the adult education section of the Unesco con-
ference on musical education at Brussels and it is hoped that this
English experiment will stimulate others to form organizations for
musical adult education. We need amateurs who play and sing as well
as listeners. Their education should not be left to chance.