most country schools possess a piano, the training college lecturers are
experimenting in the quick training of students in the playing of melo-
dies and very simple basic accompaniments where these students cannot
play the piano on entering the training college. Before 1939, when
teachers were plentiful, education authorities usually required teachers
in rural schools to have some musical ability, or where there were two
or three teachers in the school, they generally managed to appoint at
least one who possessed some degree of skill in music.TIMETABLEThe Scottish Education Department expects that at least It hours per
week should be devoted to the teaching of music, and recommends
that there should be a daily music lesson, the weekly allowance of
75 minutes being divided into two long periods, and three short periods
of 5 to 10 minutes each.PRESENT CONDITIONSThe standard of musical proficiency at present existing in small rural
schools naturally varies with the capacity of the teachers. In many
areas, however, supervisors of music have been appointed to travel
round and advise and assist the class teachers. On the whole this has
proved successful where the supervisors possess the necessary personal
qualities which secure co-operation.
In the highlands and islands of the west where Gaelic is the verna-
cular language, Gaelic folk songs are widely sung to the exclusion of
most other types of song. The peculiar haunting beauty of these songs
appeals to the children of these areas and they usually have quite a large
repertoire of them, learned by ‘rote’. There are ‘Mods’ (festivals of Gaelic
music) in many centres where schoolchildren may contribute, either solo
or in groups or choirs. These Mods have fostered and kept alive the art
of singing in many places where it might otherwise have died out.
The music lessons broadcast by the BBC have also served in many
cases to keep alive an interest in the practice of singing where teachers
do not possess the ability to take their own music lessons. It frequently
happens that the diffident teacher begins tentatively to supplement the
broadcast lesson and eventually ends by becoming proficient and in-
terested enough to teach his own music lessons.