Music in education
hemp-the children join in the collective singing and take a hand in
the work, a process which sometimes goes on far into the night.
There is more singing in the villages than in the towns, and the
peasant child entering primary school is already familiar with a number
of folk songs. The schoolmaster cannot replace the teachers of that
child's early days-the shepherds, the peasant women singing over
their embroidery and their spinning, and, of course, the child's own
mother-unless he has a real understanding of the importance of folk
music. Fortunately the education received in the home continues after
the child enters school, since the pupils, themselves of peasant stock,
almost all have a great love for popular songs.
THE PRIMARY SCHOOL AND THE ORAL TEACHING OF SINGINGThe new generations of our young schoolmasters are keenly aware of
the importance of folklore and the teaching of singing in primary
school. They are taught, in the course of their training, to find out
what songs the children already know; to attempt, in the course of the
first two years, to reduce the difference in standard between the
children's musical accomplishments ; to continue to give them oral
instruction on folk songs and folk dances; to teach the children new
songs of an educational value and give them a basis for studying sol-fa
in the higher classes.
Teachers not qualified to teach sol-fa are instructed to omit this last
subject.
TEACHING OF SOL-FA IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS
The teaching of sol-fa in our primary schools is only just beginning.
Instructors in teachers' training colleges hope that the most gifted of
their students will, on entering their profession, be qualified to teach
this subject.
Experiments made before the war, among students attending a
training course for prospective teachers in a certain region, yielded
satisfactory results, but have not been repeated since that time. The
new generations of sol-fa teachers qualifying in the music academies
of Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana will, in the near future, have to cope
with a considerable task in organizing the teaching of sol-fa in the pri-
mary schools.