The year is 1943, and the music teachers are debating.
An editorial in a music journal was followed by a heated discussion. It was all about the best way to get kids reading music – and believe me, they didn’t unanimously approve of the new, fashionable trends! One enlightened individual asked whether anyone had asked the kids what they thought. The editor remarked that we didn’t ask what they thought about learning maths, so why ask them about learning music? There was even some gloomy muttering about Beveridge and the welfare state …
On the whole, it was a gentlemanly conversation – and I can use that word, because the correspondents were, by and large, men. Not entirely – there was a lengthy contribution from a woman teacher training instructor, too.
After publishing a selection of responses over the three months following his editorial article, the editor attempted to sum up the arguments in the following three issues. He named and shamed those he disapproved of, stating quite openly, that someone’s opinion was frankly a load of nonsense! (I’m summarising – these are my words, and not the journal editor’s.)
The second, summarising editorial was supposed to be the end of his [lengthy] summary. But it took yet another editorial before he finally did finish it!
In actual fact, they almost all agreed that things weren’t as good as they had been, forty years earlier; precisely when the rot set in, was open to debate. Moreover, everyone blamed it on the politicians and inadequate time allocations.
Plus ca change …?
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 