Mtcsic in education
surrounding villages, has created such larger schools. They impera-
tively call for a specialist, or quasi-specialist music teacher. But such a
teacher is not easy to find because of the lack of adult musical amenities
in the neighbourhood. Moreover, the children must be taken back to
their villages by special buses, leaving within a few minutes of the end
of the school day. Thus the teacher cannot build up the musical life of
the small town as a result of his work in the school.
Finally, one may consider the type of musical education suitable for
the rural school, assuming that proper teaching can be found. With the
partial exception of the northeastern counties of England, it cannot be
said that the rural schools of England keep alive the traditional music
of their own locality in the same way as those of Wales or the Scottish
highlands. One has to take account in England of a certain drift away
from the countryside; of the bus which takes the villager and his
children to the cinema (though not to a concert) in the neighbouring
town; and of the dissemination of urban, indeed metropolitan, con-
ceptions through sight and sound broadcasting. It may, then, very
likely be romantic nostalgia to look for a revival, through the schools,
of village music-making of 75 years ago, such as Thomas Hardy depicts
in Under the Greenwood Tree, yet it may be suggested that it is through
the treatment of music-making, both vocal and instrumental, as a craft,
rather than as a literary culture of an urban civilization, that the rural
school, secondary as well as primary, can make music a contribution
to the life of its neighbourhood and a spiritual force in the personality
of the child.