THE TEACHING OF SINGING
IN THE RURAL SCHOOLS
OF YUGOSLAVIA
by
Miodrag A. VASILJEVI~, Professor, Music Academy of BelgradeCHILDREN AND THEIR ENVIRONMENT (EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION)Music education in country schools must be based on folk or popular
songs, just as general education is based on a study of the mother
tongue, for such songs are, psychologically speaking, the most acces-
sible to children as a whole. This applies to all schools alike, and no
distinction should be drawn either between urban and village schools
or between ordinary schools and special music schools. The mother
tongue and the folk songs of the country are of equal importance in
education.
Singing is important, both in ordinary education and in specialized
music education, for the revival of folklore-both in countries where
the old peasant culture is still alive, and in those where it is extinct.
Cecil Sharp, for example, wrote that children learn the popular melo-
dies appropriate to their age as easily as they learn their mother tongue,
proceeding, of course, from simple words to complicated expressions,
and from easy phrases to more difficult ones.
As regards teaching children the elements of music, there are differ-
ences between countries where folk music is still alive and countries
where it is in the process of disappparing. Most of the children in my
country, for instance, are already familiar with many popular songs
when they enter primary school, having heard them since babyhood
from their mothers and their family circle, or picked them up in their
native village. Children take part in wedding rites and other peasant
festivities. They hear the adults singing as they work in the fields; they
sing and dance with other children; and they listen to the shepherds
who are versed in the popular songs of the whole region. In summer,
keeping watch over the flocks in the pastures, many children learn, by
imitating their elders, to play the national instruments. In winter-
which in our country is marked by joyous festivals and gatherings
where people meet together to shell the maize or spin the wool and