Dr. Klara Kokas: THE KODÁLY METHOD AND THE OPEN CLASS IN AMERICA

Published in The New Hungarian Quarterly, 1971,
Winter Edition, p.: 195-200

In the last ten years or so the Kodály method of musical education has become known throughout the world and it is now a much sought after export of Hungarian cultural life. The most interest for this method has been shown in the United States and Canada, where a whole series of Hungarian music teachers have given summer courses at various universities.

The concept underlying the slogan – “Let music belong to everybody!” -  and its practical implementation, has caught the imagination of dedicated music teachers. As these teachers become more familiar with Kodály method, they are excited to make full or partial use of the method in their daily work. The results are not always what they hope, however, for many music teachers - after acquiring a superficial knowledge of the method describe themselves as “Kodály teachers” without really mastering and embodying the concepts as a whole.

            The Kodály Musical Training Institute in Boston was founded with the idea of producing an authentic adaptation of the Kodály method in the United States through training that included a series of Hungarian contacts and exchanges of teachers. The institution was launched in autumn 1969, financed by the Ford Foundation, and its purpose is explicit in its name: to train music teachers in the Kodály method of musical education.

Four Hungarian teachers are currently working in the following areas of preparation and practice within of the Institute.

1. preparation of four young American teachers of singing who after a year of music and lessons in Hungarian they will go to Hungary for a further year of practical training
2. collection and compilation of musical material for class singing in the schools, from song collections in libraries
3. practice in music teaching in the public schools of Boston and its immediate neighborhood, and
4. the preparation of future research in psychology and teaching.

I have been given this last assignment, and as a result I have been visiting public schools in Boston and the neighborhood for two months now. I have observed both music classes, and the daily work of class teachers:  at the beginning of reading, writing, and arithmetic in the first grade (six to seven-year-olds).

For a teacher accustomed to centralized directives, and a uniform curriculum and syllabus, the informality of the schools here is very unusual. The teacher - obviously with the agreement of the school board - is free to choose methods and textbooks. This can be an advantage when a highly-educated and experienced teacher is allowed a free hand. But it also gives scope for mediocre, inconsistent, and slapdash work.  I saw examples of both.

The public schools of Boston are considered by the rest of America to be very conservative, and with good reason. A grandmother visiting the suburban school where I teach commented:  “Everything looks exactly the same as when I went to school here.” Single desks secured to the floor, the paper roses and the feathered Indian chief amid countless other colored lithographs, it is all neither comfortable, modern, nor in good taste. Nota bene, only recently has the rule been relaxed which forbade women teachers to wear trousers in school. This was a sad prohibition in a country where hundreds of more and more beautiful trouser suits are displayed in the shop windows every day.

The school furniture and interior decoration prevent the teacher arranging her class- room as she wishes, in accordance with her taste.  The Kecskemét Kodály School’s green “blackboards”, the plain white walls with their few, but genuine folk tiles or needlecraft decorations, even their external appearance, reflect the Kodály concept: the genuine, the functional, the beautiful.

I was even less pleased with the way the children are handled, an autocratic and strict discipline on the one hand and very little incentive to intellectual effort on the other. Signs like “Be quiet!”, “Silence!” indicate the goal: calm, order must prevail. Even though the one criterion of modern education is that the school must be a buzzing beehive of activity. The atmosphere in the different classes varies of course, depending on the personality of the teacher: some are strict, and others are liberal and more informal. A school in one section of the town will differ even more from that of another, but here we come to broader economic and social questions.

In the school year 1970-71 the Kodály Musical  Training  Institute  operated  in Boston  and  its  neighborhood  in  three schools, with seven experimental first-grade classes. One of the schools is in Needham, which is what is known as a “middle-class” district, and attended by the children of professors, doctors, engineers and businessmen. The other two schools (in a suburb of Boston) are attended by children from lower middle-class homes (foremen, conductors, drivers, policemen, etc.). There is practically no difference in the way the children are dressed; the youngsters from the Boston suburb are, with one or two exceptions, just as well dressed and trim. But the difference in the interior decoration, furniture and equipment of the two schools is all the greater. The Needham school is housed in a modern building with fine, large rooms, there is a plentiful supply of educational toys, there are water taps (so painting is possible, and they do paint, beautifully, under the direction of an excellent art teacher). They have a tape recorder, a film projector and musical instruments.  With their own Xerox machine the experimental teacher is able to duplicate hundreds of assignment sheets for mathematics or reading every day. I noticed the Xerox machine in particular with a good deal of envy because it is an invaluable accessory to modern education, and we suffer from its absence in Hungary. In Kecskemét they draw up the assignment sheets, which are indispensable in the up-to-date teaching of mathematics, by hand, with a great deal of personal labor, every day.

It was interesting to note the different atmosphere prevailing in two parallel classes at the Needham school. One of the teachers was far more permissive with her class, and a certain amount of coming and going and conversation during the lessons was not forbidden.  This group was rather undisciplined in its attitude to work; it only concentrated when given an assignment that captured its interest. The other teacher was a believer in personal authority: in her own exceptionally pleasant manner she was autocratic. The class consequently was disciplined and easily handled, but to the teacher's question:  “Are you really smart today?” they all replied with a singing, unanimous “ye-es”.

Naturally we apply the Kodály method differently in the two different atmospheres. In the group with the more permissive discipline intensive concentration based on interest is beneficial.  The other group, trained to pleasant conformism, begins its singing lesson in a strident voice with many relaxing movements, and the teacher employs many kinds of personal methods to stimulate the six-year-old children in the course of their musical assignments.

The difference in social environment is also shown by the examination of musical ability which we carried out at the beginning of the school year in all our experimental classes and in three control groups. The test consisted of six groups of assignments: singing back the melody, learning, the perception of rhythm, tempo, dynamics and timbre. It was a test on each individual pupil, and we recorded it on sound tape and partly on video tape. The description of the test is the theme of another paper. Here I only want to record the results of the singing back of a melody among the children from the two different environments.

The Needham control class achieved an average result of 7.15 points, one of the music classes 6.46 and the other 5.92. In the suburban (Brighton) school the average result of one of the classes was 2.00 points and the other 1.65. It was almost unbelievable for me to see the difference in communications behavior between the children coming from two - not such decisively different - social environments. The Needham results reflect not only better musical ability, but a far more confident bearing and ease of expression. Among the 71 children only one failed to make a sound, whereas in Brighton 5 out of 48 failed to do so. In Brighton we had to repeat our instructions to 12 children, in Needham we did not have to repeat them at all. (It is true, of course, that there are six children whose native language is not English in Brighton but all of them speak English, and all had also gone to kindergarten). In Needham 16 out of 71 children achieved the maximum number of points (18 was the maximum number of points in this assignment group), in Brighton 6 out of 48. Minimum points in Needham were 9, and in Brighton 26.

The period of teaching that has elapsed since these first tests were made has shown that we must not attribute the poor results to a poorer intellectual capacity: the Brighton classes are progressing quite as well as those in Needham. There is no doubt, however, that the latter receive the musical knowledge at a higher intellectual level. Each of the groups is developing vigorously, but the Brighton classes require a quite intensive sensorial basis (more movement, more play, and much more repetition for the learning of all musical information). Of course it would be possible to progress faster with only a few children to teach at a time; the simultaneous progress of the whole class demands a very careful and varied training. From time to time we repeat the sound and video tape recordings so that the stages of each individual development can be measured against them.

There is a great deal of discussion, even in the Boston area, on the new teaching system. In Boston it is called “integrated day”, elsewhere “informal education”, or “open classroom”. As far as I know the first experiments were carried out in Britain. J. Eddy, in his article: “The Upside-down Curriculum” (Cultural Affairs, 1970, Summer) refers to the lectures of Miss Rosemary Williams, the “former headmistress of an English primary school.” He also refers to Joseph Featherstone’s series of articles published in The New Republic, and to British schools in general where, in a changed school environment, liberal education is going on in small groups.

I had the opportunity of observing a few schools using the new form of education. I had my first unforgettable experience of it in Sherbrook (Quebec, Canada), where under the guidance of the Centre de Recherches en Psycho-Mathematique they are teaching the new mathematics. They are, moreover, experimenting with the mother tongue (French) and art as well.

I had already become familiar with the basic principles of the “new maths” in a few of the experimental schools attached to the National Educational Institute in Hungary. Under the direction of Tamás Varga they have been working for years to realize this splendid principle of teaching, which at root is identical with the Kodály slogan. “Let mathematics belong to everybody”, “The very best, the most worthwhile for children”, and - on the pattern of “There is no such thing as a tone-deaf child” – “There is no such thing as a child without mathematical ability”. Experience has shown that six- year-old children can solve complex logical problems with pleasure, that quantum mechanics are not beyond their understanding, and that they can perceive the beauty and symmetry of geometry. It is the teacher’s task to show the children how to handle the tools, to organize the work, and - only where needed - to provide the necessary hint.

An old truth has been rediscovered in the “open class”; every child is happy, when he can learn, discover, be active, move about, touch and hold, put together and take apart, work out the inner laws, the “whys” and “hows”. And what else is learning? If anyone has ever watched a boy fishing, assembling a motor, carving or drilling something, he knows the absorbed interest with which he takes in everything he needs to know about it. What “tools” does the child use to learn from at Sherbrook School? He himself puts quantities together with toy cars, dolls and lead soldiers, as if with accurate measuring implements. He works on the harmony of colors and the beauty of geometrical forms with mirrors. The classroom has a telephone directory, all kinds of transport timetables (airline, bus, train); maps, price catalogues, plants they themselves have planted, white mice in a cage, dictionaries worn ragged by use (a Petit Larousse for each child), paper, scissors, paste, a brush and many colored paints. But it is all kept in order, each thing in its proper place, and easily accessible. A child does not need to ask permission, he may use any one of them when he needs to.

When the visitor steps into the classroom the teacher has already assigned the groups.

Two or three children here, four or five there, so absorbed in what they are doing that they take no notice of the visitor. They talk, argue, come and go, build, lay out objects and count, write, draw, paint, without quarrelling, without “disciplining”. Here are three incidents to suggest the atmosphere in which the school functions.

One: four children (eight years of age) are doing their arithmetic in a corner, kneeling, elbows on table, heads together. One of them suddenly glances out the window; he has seen something and points to it. He climbs up on the table to see better, and three of the children follow suit. The fourth one only makes a remark, not even looking up from his paper. The three children, after talking over what they have seen, jump down again and once more absorbed, resume their arithmetic.

Two: I am talking to Professor Dienes in Hungarian over the heads of a group of children. Incidentally, Professor Dienes has lived abroad from 1932 onwards, lectures in five languages and speaks Hungarian faultlessly. When he talks Hungarian he uses only Hungarian expressions, not like the many others who left the country only fifteen or fewer years ago and use a spine-chilling salad mixture of language made up of English verbs and Hungarian inflexions. One little girl of nine glances up with a smile, and wants to know what language we are speaking. I tell her: Hungarian. She stands up, walks over to the globe and finds Hungary. “Is this it?” She looks to see what neighbors we have and how far away we are from the sea. She asks about the kinds of animals we have around the house, and whether we have much fruit. When I tell her how delicious the fruit is that we grow in our country she says, quite naturally: “Then you must have a lot of sunshine.” After this little conversation she goes back to her classmates and continues her work.

Three: a little boy of six drops a box full of mathematics teaching aids and the blocks scatter in all directions with a great deal of noise. Three boys jump up to help pick them up. The rest only glance up at the commotion, and quietly continue to work. The teacher does not even glance disapprovingly at the child.  He had simply dropped it; everybody drops something some time or another, there’s nothing to say.

When I saw the first classroom at the Ecole de Champlain with three large tables and twelve chairs I said, with surprise: “Twelve chairs for thirty children?” “They don't all sit down at once, and anyway, they prefer to sit on the floor,” the teacher replied. And of course it is true. What child likes to sit on a chair or bench for hours? They solve their complex logical problems at the blackboard, standing, and they paint at the easel put up in the corner, standing. If anyone is tired, he sits down in the corner marked off with low bookshelves and reads.

There is no doubt that this will be the pattern of the school of the future, because instead of memorizing an ocean of facts it will be possible for them to think and discover for themselves. I have seen a number of examples of the “open class”, but so far Sherbrook has appealed to me most. In the first place because they do not depend on outward elegance or expensive equipment. Of course, the supply of mathematics learning aids is costly, but the furnishings are simple and made of inexpensive materials. A great deal of useful and well-organized work is undoubtedly going on in the wonderful modern school of the town of Concord, for example, where 170 children study in one  large  room,  divided  into  informal groups, and where four or five separate small rooms are available for small-group activities. In these rooms, the floors covered with thick, gentian-blue carpets, I saw enough expensive furniture and equipment to make twenty Boston suburban schools happy. Sitting in the music room, however - on steps also covered  by  gentian-blue  carpeting - were twenty-five nine-year-old children surrounded by six electric organs and the full set of Orff instruments worth thousands of dollars,  absolutely  bored,  struggling  for 35 minutes with a six-bar rhythm without sounding a single musical note. All the instruments in the world are useless without ideas.

What does the “open class” concept mean in the context of the Kodály method? Professor Dienes visited our experimental Kodály classes and noted that the principles we worked on were identical, although of course we lacked the technical means for a real “open class” in our conventional, in fact, obsolete classrooms. The 35-minute singing lesson was packed with life, vigour and motion, exciting activities and sudden revelations, all the musical knowledge imbibed being built on vivid sensory foundations.

Two questions followed:  How can a group activity be integrated with the “open class” idea? i.e., singing classes that demand collective singing and collective silence? This is one of the essential questions in the American adaptation of the Kodály method. The other? How could we realize this educational system in our schools in Hungary - lacking as it does all formal discipline, grading, punishment and rewards - with the Kodály educational method?

I think we have found the answer to the first question.  In the Boston suburban school, alongside the seats fastened to the floor, we laid down the large paper sheets on which the groups of children, with great pleasure, and in complete concentration, arranged the rhythm signs and solmization discs used in the Kodály method, in melodic or rhythmic order. The improvisation in forms and the system of symbols began. One part of the singing lesson always remained a collective group activity, as this is the form of group music performance: a chorus or orchestra can only begin in silence and play music in full co-ordination. But in the other part of the lesson an infinitely great variety of opportunities is offered for parallel individual and group activities, which the practice of many years will certainly bear out. We are preserving the experiences of this school year on sound and video tape recordings, and in our notes.

We shall be able to give an answer to the other question when, after returning home, working jointly with our colleagues, with mathematicians and artists, together we shall have established it in Hungarian schools.