Methods and aids in mmic education
express themselves as well in the language of music as in their
mother tongue.
- In the primary school, the teaching of music should be in the hands
of the ordinary teacher. He is the only one who knows the pupils
thoroughly, who can relate music closely to the other subjects taught
and make it a part of the children’s lives. He is also the intermediary
between ‘school’ music and music in general. He alone will know
the right moment at which to set the children a particular song.
Both psychologically and educationally he has many advantages
over the music specialist; moreover it will always be easier for the
primary schoolteacher to grasp the basic elements of musical know-
ledge than for the music specialist to master child psychology and
teaching technique.
Furthermore it would be difficult to find enough certificated
music instructors to teach in all the primary schools. It is therefore
necessary that the elementary music teaching given should be within
the reach of all pupils, and the giving of it within that of most
teachers, in the schools of this grade.
It is for this reason that, in the Ward method, the subject-matter
is minutely and judiciously graduated, with very full teaching direc-
tives, constant allowance being thereby made for the less gifted child.
- The sense of rhythm should be taught by physical, muscular move-
ment. This axiom is now universally accepted.
However, rhythm is not a more or less recognizable sequence of
accentuations, arising from the periodical recurrence of the down-
beat, as is unhappily taught by many methods. Rhythm is simply
movement. Plato defined it as the ordering of movement, and
St. Augustine as the art of beautiful movement. It is a well-ordered
succession of tensions and relaxations, of risings and failings-of
arsis and thesis, as in Greek dancing.
That is why our pupils are accustomed to making sweeping
gestures with their arms, to rising on tiptoe, to advancing and retir-
ing-in short, to expressing the rhythm of the phrase with theit.
bodies, or to projecting their own rhythmic feeling into space
through chironomy.
- Musical notation is very complex, the ‘inclinations’, interrelation-
ship and modal functions of notes varying with the key-signature.
It is by no means self-explanatory; moreover, immediate association
of the note-sound with the written symbol must be achieved. To
facilitate this, the Ward method uses figured or numerical notation
which little by little enables the pupil to grasp first one, then two,
