“Music in Schools A Vital Influence”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 188, 29 October 1927, Page 11

“Music in Schools A Vital Influence”

ADDRESS BY SUPERVISOR “BETTER APPRECIATION NEEDED” “Have you ever heard the •Boneyard Shuffle’?” asked Mr. Douglas Taylor, superviser ot musical education to the Education Department, addressing an assembly of school teachers yesterday afternoon.

The teachers had not. so Mr. Taylor played it for them on his gramophone. "To be perfectly fair to jazz, I should mention that it is about the worst specimen of its kind, ’ added the lecturer. His audience was inclined to "It is positively alcoholic,” he said. Going to the piano he struck a discordant chord several times in rapid succession.

“You can easily imagine the effect on your nervous system of much of that sort of thing,” he said. “But what must be the effect of ‘Boneyard Shuffle’ music upon the minds of those young people who hear and dance to nothing else. It must be remembered that music has destructive as well as constructive powers.”

Good music, he contended, had a refining power and was a big influence in the improvement of human nature. People of refinement would always turn instinctively to good music and those of a coarser nature to music possessing a more pungent flavour. In our popular music of the present day there is a poisonous and dangerous element creeping in, stated Mr. Taylor, and it was to be very much regretted. Stressing the value of music in schools, Mr. Taylor said that it possessed immense vitalising powers. In proof of that contention he instanced a certain school at Oxford, England, where the choristers at one of the churches received their education. Notwithstanding the fact that they lost 10 hours of school time every week through music, many of them had no difficulty in keeping in advance of the other scholars. Further stressing this point, Mr. Taylor also mentioned the sea chanties of the English merchant marine, the stimulating effect of which was most marked. AN EMOTIONAL OUTLET Music was undoubtedly one of the great forces in life, and a force they could not afford to leave out of account in their system of education. Music was also a means of expressing an overflow of happiness, said Mr. Taylor. Also when written in sadder vein it provided an emotional outlet. In support of the latter theory the lecturer referred to the plantation melodies of America. It was the music I of a people condemned to slavery, said

the lecturer, and in that sphere it was of the utmost value. Dealing with school music, Mr. Taylor demonstrated a number of simple methods of teaching children to read at sight and memorise pitch. He also paid a tribute to the work being done at the Auckland Training College. There, future teachers were given an appreciation of good music which they could pass on to their pupils. In doing so they were doing a service the value of which could hardly be realised, concluded Mr. Taylor.