SLOW PUPILS WHO SUCCEED

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 90, 13 October 1934, Page 25

SLOW PUPILS WHO SUCCEED

DR. PERCY BUCK, King Edward Professor of Music at , London University, and. musical adviser to the L.C.C., speaking at the Oxford Course in Music Teaching recently, advised his audience of schoolteachers never to put their faith in their quick pupils.

"I can tell you the names of at least a dozen men," he said, "each of whom is now at the head of his profession and yet never won a prize or was first in class at school. They were all slow thinkers."

Illustrating the improvement recently in musical knowledge. Dr. Buck said that when he was young if he passed a boy whistling in the street he knew perfectly well that the boy was whistling a music-hall tune.

"Things have changed since then.

"Recently my wife, in the course of a hundred yards, passed three .messenger boys. The first was whistling the opening bars of the 'Tannhauser' overture, the second was singing the song 'Where'er You Walk,' while the third was .whistling the second subject of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony..

"That story had a depressing sequel. A little time afterwards I sat at dinner next to a young woman who had been educated at Girton and one of the big public schools. I told her the story, and she said, 'What is the Unfinished Symphony'?"