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Music Education Grows Up— An Administrator’s Point Of View


Reprint from February 1958 Michigan Music Educator


Richard N. Percy


Probably no one can speak with more authority about the subject of music than I. Allow me to list, without undue humility, my qualifications. I can play no musical instrument. I can neither carry a tune nor read a note of music. But, and this is a big but, I feel strongly that music must be an important and integral part of the curriculum. I would fight for the right of every child in the schools to have his musical ability, understanding and appreciation developed to its highest potential so that he may secure maximum satisfactions and contribute to the society of which he is a part.


Before I develop this further let me review what has happened in our society within the memory of men still living. Only shortly before the turn of the century the musical experiences of the great mass of society were relatively simple. In many homes the only music to be had during a lifetime was the hymn singing around the harmonium played by a self-taught musician. To this would be added the Sunday singing in church where the more talented were members of the choir. In hundreds of rural schools and small community schools music was nonexistent. Only the most talented and determined got any special training and that from private teachers. The choice of an individual as to his preference often was between either church music or barn dance music.


Musical experiences in larger communities at that time were but slightly better. Those communities that had performing musical organizations of any stature could be easily counted. Only the elite and so-called cultured would experience such treats as a symphony orchestra concert, or creditably performed music. In these cities the hurdy-gurdy, the quartet in the corner saloon, or the vaudeville offered but a few more choices to satisfy the individual taste. This thin veneer of music indeed seemed to be all that could be crowded into a twelve-hour work day in which labor and home responsibilities left little time for the gratification of personal pleasures or development of special talents.


But today—I hardly know where to begin. Take my family of three growing children on any typical day at home.


The little guy—four years old—sits by his tinny record player listening raptly as he plays for the hundredth time the records from his knee-high stack of children’s Record Guild records. The ten year old is in the den listening and watching indiscriminately the television shows. The teen age daughter is in her room listening to the full volume of her radio which she has permanently tuned to a station which plays only current and popular records. Waves of sound cascade through the house. I leave for the bank where they ease my pain when they take my money by flooding the place with piped-in music. The supermarket provides a similar quality of opiate while I shop. Thus it goes.


For entertainment during a week I have the choice of listening to a radio, a record, of watching television at home or of attending a symphony concert, a choir concert, a musical movie, or going a few miles to see a road company of a musical Broadway hit.


I go to sleep to music and am awakened by music.


We are bombarded by organized sound., Music is everywhere and its varities are multiple. Record sales in less than ten years have gone from about 200 million dollars to nearly 400 million dollars; instrument sales and sheet music sales, from 225 million dollars to nearly 500 million. Time magazine for December 23, 1957 has likened the music boom since World War II to the explosive interest in painting during the Renaissance. While the Renaissance produced some of the greatest art of the world, the present tumultuous assault of sound appears less discriminating and defined. We, as educators, must view then the individual in this cultural scene. There are some fundamental things that we know about him:


First, the individual has a basic human need. The one human basic need is self-preservation and self-enhancement. The individual must operate in his own phenomenal field. Where he moves his field will move with him and within it he must preserve the self; develop the self-concept which is basic to his enhancement processes. The more effectively he may take from and


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