Mwic in education
The centre is not very old: it was founded by Raymond Loucheur
six years ago and opened its doors in October 1947.
Coaching for all the tests and qualifying examinations described
above is given by a team of nine instructors. In addition, after the
competitive examination, we endeavour to train our students for their
future career and this is my own special task. I share it with Mr. Jean
Rollin who is a choirmaster and in charge of teaching from records.
Classes are mixed and admission is by competitive examination. Like
other State institutions of similar standing to our own, we accept only
students who have passed the baccaladat and they often prove to us
that it is possible to have completed the full course of secondary edu-
cation and be an excellent singer or fine instrumentalist.
The normal duration of the course is three years, of which the first
two are spent preparing for the final test and the third for the compe-
titive examination. Conscientious students may be allowed to take the
appropriate part of the course again, should they fail in the tests.
The centre awards no diploma. We are not the only institution train-
ing music teachers; a great deal of instruction in various courses is
given privately.
For myself, I concentrate on driving home to my students that there
is no such thing as a ‘model’ lesson. There are indeed model classes but
the only way of initiating them is by proceeding on the same lines,
which of course produces something as good but necessarily different.
The Lycke La Fontaine (Paris) where we are accommodated lends us
classes of children for whom we are responsible throughout the year
and to whom our students give their practice lesson.
The most difficult thing for a young teacher giving his or her first
lesson is to be perfectly natural with the children; not to imagine there
is a special teacher’s attitude bearing no resemblance to the real self;
and, above all, to think about the children and not about oneself. In
most cases our students begin by being obsessed with what they have
decided to say and the course the lesson should follow at any price
(their ‘model’ lesson) and they forget to keep their eyes on the class
to see whether it is awake, attentive and interested, or whether it would
not be advisable to alter the prearranged programme a little in order
to arouse the interest of the audience. Yet it is only the teacher’s ability
to hold his pupils which makes a good class possible, and the children’s
sympathy must be awakened through the talent, intelligence, perhaps
certain physical traits of the young teacher, and also through his cha-
racter. I attach much importance to character: a repressed or gloomy