THE TEACHER

"The teachers of this country have its future in their hands"
William James

Ideas on the subject of the teaching of Music are changing at such a rapid rate to-day that the position of the teacher as an interpreter may well receive some consideration. The study of psychology and the many new discoveries in the realm of mind bid fair to revolutionise our conception of teaching: the old standards are fast becoming obsolete. Once the idea of education was more or less to get something into the pupil, the newer ideal is to get something out: instead of compression or repression the process is now regarded as one of expression. We aim at developing the latent faculties and exploiting the hidden resources of the mind. It is assumed that the various qualities and abilities are embodied in mind, just as the possibilities of the oak were implanted in the acorn: it is the function of the teacher to ensure the requisite conditions under which these qualities may come to fruition.

From this it is clear that the modern teacher is more occupied in teaching the pupil than the subject. The old method of grinding in scales, scales, and yet more scales until those scales had become second nature is recognised as being worse than merely futile. What can it profit a pupil if he gain the whole world of scales and lose his artistic soul? So also with other points, the centre of attention is transferred from the subject to the pupil. Furthermore, the wise teacher recognises that as music is a part of life, so the understanding of music should lead to a larger comprehension of life. There are no watertight compartments in our lives, everything is acted upon and reacts: all life is of a piece, and nothing comes out of the mind in exactly the same condition as it entered. Things become transformed and assimilated in the process of mental digestion. Consequently the discerning teacher knows that he is working in terms of life through the agency of the music. He is helping to modify, form, or transform the mind of the pupil through his memories, he is moulding his character: and his character weighs in the eternal scales. The teaching thus stands on a base that is wider than life itself, and such a teacher is invested with a dignity and worth that can never attach to the time-server or the crammer.

The Royal Academy of Music gives the Licentiate diploma for (a) teachers and (b) performers: this is a technical distinction without any real difference. It is the function of both alike to reveal and to pass on a message of spirit. The performer passes it on to an audience of many, and the teacher to a little audience of one. Teachers are "artists to whom the most priceless material has been committed."[16] There is an idea abroad that those who are not clever enough to perform can always take to teaching, but this is of course a lamentable perversion of the truth. There are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit, and certainly as high a degree of spiritual perception is necessary for the teacher as for the executive artist. The teacher has merely chosen a different technique for its expression. Not so many years ago the teaching profession was known as "the refuge of the destitute," but we are changing all that with the revaluation of values which is being forced upon us by the logic of events. In course of time the old type of teacher must become as extinct as the dodo.

Effective teaching can never be done to pattern, for the simple reason that pupils are not machines or blocks of wood and cannot be turned out to sample. Every pupil is unique: he is the inheritor of a spirit which is peculiarly his own, and of a body in its endowments and proportions unlike that of anyone else, and in his nervous system he possesses special pre-dispositions and "potentially linked paths" which provide him with particular adaptabilities and traits. Were the teacher to treat every pupil alike, his scheme would probably truly fit none of them: but as a matter of fact each one of them calls for insight and special treatment. So the teacher learns from every pupil, and the experience garnered from contact with the many phases of human nature renders his judgment the surer and his sympathy the more sound. But this, quite obviously, is mind-moulding and character-building, with the emphasis laid upon the teaching of the pupil rather than the subject.

The three generally accepted divisions of mind are (a) intellect; (b) feelings; and (c) will; and in these directions the teaching of music should have far-reaching effects upon the culture and the outlook. Observation is the root of all mental growth: it supplies the mind with the necessary food for development and expansion, and according to the range and definiteness of the evidence supplied by the senses, so is the foundation laid for a good memory and a lively quality of imagination. The earliest lessons will thus be a stimulus to mental growth: the pupil will learn to take in by the eye and the ear, and what he takes in will enable him to understand and to appreciate more and yet more. He will be taught that everything in music means something, and even exercises will be invested with a meaning and a purpose of their own. Purely mechanical work has gone, never, we may hope, to return: and meaningless music is discarded in favour of that which expresses something. It may illustrate a mood or an emotion, a scene, an action, or a fairy tale—it matters not what so long as it possesses a meaning to lend it point and purpose. So right from the beginning the action of the pupil will be the expression of the emotions and ideas that hold sway in his mind.

In this connection we may quote an actual instance. A teacher writes:—"A young pupil (age 14) came for a lesson, playing Farjeon's 'Prelude and Pavane.' She had learnt the 'Prelude,' and had had one lesson, a fortnight before, on the 'Pavane.' We went through the technique, and I told her a little about the 'Pavane'—when it was danced, the derivation of the name, and so on. When she played it, she played it very, very slowly, but quite correctly and finished in detail. I asked her if she liked it quite as slowly as that, and she replied that she thought 'the Court ladies with their long dresses would not be able to dance any quicker' and that it 'sounded grander very slowly.' So I left it." This, we may add, is an illustration of method quoted by a teacher in a diploma Examination paper, but it aptly shows the new spirit. The teacher had no mind to force her own views upon the pupil. Had she insisted that the dance should be played more quickly, she might have spoiled the child's mental picture and destroyed her interest in the piece. The incident also points the way in which the pupil's observation, imagination, and powers of deduction were being stimulated, so that, as we have been endeavouring to show, the music—of value for its own sake—was also ministering to the larger end of life-growth.

The world of affairs and the world of education see to it that our intellect and will are duly and properly brushed up, they exact their penalties in default from the stupid and the invertebrate, but the feeling and emotional side of the nature is too often ignored. It is left to develop by chance instead of being nurtured by design. As a consequence a vast amount of distorted feeling exists in the world, and a very great deal of emotion is repressed. Music is at once a means of cultivating the rightful feelings towards life, and an outlet for the repressed emotions. The interpreter recognises that his true function is to serve his day and his generation, and so he places this ideal of Service in the forefront of his vision. If he substitute Selfishness he is permanently wrongly adjusted to life, and nothing can go truly right with him. He is off the lines of his spiritual evolution, and Nature will take pains to impress the fact upon him: she has her larger vision to which he must, willy-nilly, conform. The teacher, in handing on the torch, will thus be able at the very outset to point to this ideal of Service, exemplified in finding out the beauty or the meaning of the music, and in passing it on for the benefit of others in song or sound.

Repressed emotions are now recognised as a potent source of trouble, both mental and physical. In the adolescent stage of youth vital forces surge through the body, they are perhaps indefinable but they are none the less potent. "The emotions are there, and it is for us to find the way in which we can best turn them upward: the time has passed when we need or can deny their existence, or their expression."[17] These emotions cannot be permanently repressed, they are too deeply embedded in the self: they may find an outlet in the amours of youth, or in some other way. But music offers a means and a channel through which these emotions may flow in useful direction, and this is a most valuable service. Failing legitimate expression they not infrequently find an inappropriate or distorted outlet. There is discord within, and it is far better that the discord should be resolved harmoniously rather than ill, or not at all. The study of music at this period may thus result in marked benefit to the physical health in a perfectly natural manner: for to forbid any expression to these emotions would be much as if we forbade a canary to sing or a lambkin to jump. If they can be reflected in "pure joy" in song we may indeed be sure that the outlet they are finding is a happy one. The subject is a very important one, but it leads us far afield from the present scheme. The reader who is interested may find further treatment of this topic in the present writer's "The Hidden Self, and its Mental Processes."

The modern teacher has progressed beyond the stage of imposing his own standard of judgment upon the pupil. By introducing the element of musical appreciation and making the pupil familiar with a wide range of musical ideas, he will gradually build up his power of discrimination and judgment and his standard of taste. These are no fixed things, but will grow as the experience of the pupil himself grows. As his sympathy and insight also increase, so will his knowledge of the good and evil of music progress. This is a vastly different process to any arbitrary enforcement of "this is good and that is bad" standards, and indeed it is but a poor compliment to any teacher when we find pupil after pupil a more or less complete imitation of the same original.

One thing that is conspicuously lacking in the world to-day is the ability to be one's self. Suggestion and habit are ever at work to kill originality and to stifle self-reliance and initiative. Thousands can copy, few can invent. The reason may be that only the few are able and willing to go to the fountain-head of spirit, where there is the infinite variety of universal thought to be their inspiration. The many are content to live their teachers' ideas over and over again, building their lives and abilities on quite ordinary models in a quite ordinary way. In music we already possess far too many "dittos," ditto programmes, ditto compositions, ditto renderings, and ditto ideals. Praise the Lord for originality wherever it may be found. The conventional goes round and round in a circle, like a puppy after its own tail: but originality rises at each revolution and so reaches on and up, in progress like a spiral. So to-day the teacher fosters originality, shaping it with kindly criticism or helpful suggestion, but never damning it with a fatal "don't." Education's maxim to-day is "Do; but do better next time."

In this larger view of teaching, the technique, though not despised and rejected, is relegated to its proper place in the scheme of things. The cult of the head and the heart predominates, and the whole course of the instruction is an integral part of the training for life. If it be true that we are making "houses built without hands, for our souls to live in," then music is determining no small part of the architecture for the student who follows the gleam. The inspired teacher (and, without the vision, teaching must ever be the veriest drudgery) is engaged upon one of the noblest of tasks as well as one of the most responsible. We may even hope that one day the world will awaken to this fact. Incidentally teachers themselves, by thinking more nobly of their tasks, can do much to dignify their calling. They are truly in the van of progress, and "with the power of the Spirit almost untried and the possibilities of Prayer as little known, with the inheritance of Love still unclaimed and the ocean of Truth yet unexplored, life is full of an immensity of purpose."[18]