Music Education in The United States - History

History

The earliest systematic music education in the country was centered on the training of singers for Protestant church services, to lead the congregation in psalm-singing. In the 18th century, the first singing schools in the country were founded, and a number of legendary traveling singing masters traveled New England, teaching in barns, schoolhouses and other informal locations; these masters included Francis Hopkinson and William Billings. By the end of the century, more formal singing schools in cities like Savannah, Philadelphia and Boston become social singing societies.

Public education in the United States first offered music as part of the curriculum in Boston in the 1830s, and it spread through the help of singing teacher Lowell Mason, after he successfully advocated it to the Boston School Committee in 1838. The committee ultimately decided to include music as a curricular subject because it was of a moral, physical, and intellectual nature. Music was considered moral because it played such a part in religion, as well as the fact that had been documented to produce "happiness, contentment, cheerfulness, and tranquility." It was of a physical nature because singing was exercise for the lungs. The committee justified music's intellectual nature by stating that it had been studied as a part of the quadrivium in the Middle Ages, and that it "contributes to memory, comparison, attention, and intellectual faculties." (p. 13-14).

Another advocate of music in public education was Swiss educational reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Pestalozzi believed that nature was the ultimate and original source of knowledge, therefore his educational theories placed a high value on sensory, kinesthetic, and active learning. He felt students should start with simple concepts in all subjects and move later to more complex ideas. Pestalozzi's method was one of the earliest methods that could be considered "student-centered learning" and his ideas of discipline and a student-teacher rapport based on love and trust were markedly different from the common practice of corporal punishment at the time. The first music educator to use Pestalozzian ideas in teaching music was Hans Negeli, a colleague of Pestalozzi in Switzerland. His Pestalozzian approach to much was brought to the United States, translated, and popularized by William Channing Woodbridge, Elam Ives, and Lowell Mason. This approach prized active and sensory learning, taught sounds before signs, separated music into melody, rhythm, and expression, and to moved from the simple to complex within the context of each element. Many of these ideas that are found in later established music teaching methods, such as Orff-Schulwerk, Kodaly, and, Dalcroze-Eurthymics.

Music education, primarily vocal, remained most common in women's schools, though many private academies also existed, offering boys and girls instruction in orchestral instruments like the violin, viola, cello and piano.

In the mid-19th century, educator Luther Whiting Mason established music education in the schools of Cincinnati, and become a prominent author of textboooks. His National Music Course, first published in 1870, was a widely adopted standard part of many American curricula. Music education continued to expand across the country, and gained in respect as an essential part of educational development. There was a music section in the National Education Association by the 1890s.