Music In Education
Since the middle of the 20th century, it was thought that music education should be included in school as a compulsory subject in the curriculum. However, on many occasions, these classes were taught by teachers who had not studied to become music teachers. That is, in many cases, it was the perfect excuse to “fill” the position of music teacher just by singing adequately. then, the music class was reduced to a class in which songs were learned and sung. Sadly we must recognize that even today this situation occurs, although in less and less proportion.
Over time, professional programs were developed to train new music teachers, without ignoring that until then there were already musical training programs in the Conservatories of Music, where professional musicians were trained in the interpretation of a musical instrument, but that they cared little about teaching music to those children who did not have the “TALENT” to learn a musical instrument.
Thus, these teachers began to create a repertoire, methodologies, and didactics designed for children who were trained in traditional schools, composing songs with children’s lyrics, which spoke of the beauty of nature, family, animals, among other topics and that they are also linked to “hard” subjects such as mathematics, science, and language.
Songs like the nursery rhymes of vowels, … the A says “ahh”, the A says “ahh”… Old McDonald, … with an oink oink here and oink there… the multiplication songs… were created as support to reinforce and make children’s learning more enjoyable. Over time, music education begins to take on greater relevance, to the point that we can now speak specifically of the various contributions that music has in the cognitive development of children and young people. In the following articles of the magazine, we will be talking about what are the most important contributions of music education and why it is fundamental in the integral development of children and young people.