Music in educationCONCLUSIONMusic in sanatoria is a form of collective as well as individual psycho-
therapy. It is also a vehicle of culture. In view of the special character
of tubercular patients, the organization of concerts calls for special
experience and qualifications.An experiment in music education has been carried out during the past
few years in a medico-pedagogical institute for backward children,
many of them mentally defective and almost all presenting difficulties
of character. They are generally children who have been exposed to
psychological trauma and family troubles; and what they lack most is
the feeling of security engendered by true understanding and affection.
Music, as an accessory to education, gives them a feeling of joy which
compensates, to some extent, for the affection of which they have been
deprived.
Children love stories told to music; and it gives them great pleasure
to try to repeat a song they have heard, and to pick out a familiar
melody on the piano, Programme music is fully comprehensible to
young audiences in medico-pedagogical institutes; and after a few
months they derive real pleasure from listening to abstract music also,
such as that of Bach.
Apart from listening to music, there is the question of performing it.
Group singing gives excellent results. Children love singing, and learn
very quickly. Even those with but slight musical gifts often have a
considerable musical memory. Choral singing develops self-confidence,
a sense of individual and group discipline, a taste for the task in hand,
and the exercise of aesthetic judgment. Children with anti-social incli-
nations become friendly as a result of having achieved success in musical
work.
What we have said above is designed simply to indicate possibilities.
We hope that systematic research will be undertaken in this field; and
that all who have any experience of this type of work will tell us of
their findings for the benefit of the sick, whom it is our duty to restore
to mental and physical health.
[Trandated from the French]