We Found Traces of Land This Way
My Being is my House
Q: Could you give me an example of how songs may be made more personal?
A: My favourite is the song: “We found traces of land this way. Whose house is it? A good man’s, a God-fearing man lives in it”. It has a delicate tune, towards the end it rises, as if in a question. As far as I know there are no rules attached to it, so we can play freely with it. It is like Lego cubes, you can build anything from it.
Q: Do you play with the house?
A: Yes, with the house. Whose house is it? I am the owner of the house, my being is my house. Am I a good man? Am I God-fearing: God-fearing is a bit pejorative nowadays, it implies somebody who is a bit too meek, even a little stupid. In old times it used to mean goodness; it referred to somebody who would not hurt you, whose house is open for visitors.
Q: Do you explain this?
A: No, I don’t. We sing the song, go round with it and enjoy it. I never explain János Arany’s ballads to the children, what they don’t ask about they feel through their skin. We sing and walk round and round holding each other’s hands.
Q: Do you ask them to walk in step?
A: The first thing I teach the teachers who come to me for training is to forget about walking in step. Nursery-school teachers look at me frightened: what kind of a folly is this? The first requirement in the nursery school is for children to walk in step for the rhythm of the rhyme they are reciting or the song they are singing.
Q: That is true. What is the problem with it?
A: Are we educating soldiers or hussars? A soldier will learn to walk in step when he is sent on a parade in the guard of honour. True, there is a song “Those who do not walk in step will not get a strudel for dinner”, but this has nothing to do with music. No song requires you to walk in step, unless it is a choreographed dance, so then because of the performance.
Q: But if they don’t learn to walk in step, they will break up the circle, and you can’t play the circle game.
A: That is just a myth. I spent my childhood on the meadow in Szany playing singing games, and we never saw a nursery-school teacher. The song provides the rhythm; it has a natural tempo, a living musical tempo which varies from song to song. One can feel that. There are always children with a good sense of music whose movements will guide and prompt the others. Try it!
Q: What is important then in a circle game?
A: The song. They sing together and that sounds so beautiful, it is wonderful. So many voices with so many tones, it is like a meadow full of flowers. The song embraces the singers strokes them with silken threads. It is a sense of community woven from sounds. It would be a shame to think of anything else.
Q: Isn’t there some objective? What is the purpose of the music lesson?
A: Pleasure. Isn’t that enough?
Q: It is not concrete enough from a methodological point of view.
A: Indeed, I forgot about that. All classes have aims, and if these aims were not set the teacher and the children would remain aimless. What is it like to sing without aims? In Szany, on the meadow, we were not thinking about this. Now I look back and search what our aims were. We liked to sing together and to go round playing in circles. If, however, in education it is like the free childhood play, that is that there are no set objectives, then there is nothing to assess.
Q: Can’t we find some middle way?
A: Of course we can. We shouldn’t criticize methodological considerations if they serve the welfare of children as well as teachers. Let’s try circle games without walking in step and if children like to play in this way, if they don’t step on each other’s feet and if the circle remains a circle, then it is good for the teacher as well as the music.
Q: What should teachers be careful about?
A: The musical movement of the song. It is better if we don’t stop at the end of the song but continue with some improvised movement towards another one, until we weave a wreath of songs. I start some sort of singing conversation about “what kind of house do you have, Marcsi?”. Marcsi may say something, like her house is high, or has gables. This might even be true.
Q: And then?
A: Then I weave on the questioning, asking “what is your house built of, Jancsi?”. And Jancsi will say real things at first: the house is built of stone, wood, bricks or concrete. Yet a little encouragement will prompt them to say imaginary or fabled things: the house is built of gingerbread, chocolate or ice cream. If you encourage them further on, they will say their houses are built of petals, leaves, feathers, speckles of sand, or apple-seeds. Tibi, with whom everybody had some problem, once said that his house was built of sighs. I kneeled in front of him to see the house of sighs. And he was sighing.
Q: And you sing the song again?
A: Yes, we sing the song again after every answer, that means that we repeat it very often, but it always becomes more and more colourful. It is a creative process, we are already in a fable, where things are constantly invented, and ideas follow each other.
Q. What happens when everybody had their own special house?
A: Then the next question comes: who lives in it? Then a new series about what is he or she or it like? What is he or she or it doing?
Q: Do they say everyday things?
A: Yes, at first they do. But if you play it several times, imagined stories appear. We have already had hedgehogs with their children, an eagle couple, or a roe deer with its limp grandfather living in the houses. Then there are of course the highwaymen who hoard up their treasure there. At these points it is easy to start dramatization. You can change one of the interesting houses with stories happening around it. Dramatization improvised to singing makes the game more colourful, those who talk in song won’t shout and won’t interrupt the others. It is fine method of disciplining.
Q: What kind of disciplining methods do you recommend?
A: If you kneel in front of somebody and sing to them eye to eye, they will listen to you. They will pay attention. Not necessarily to what you say, but rather to how you think about what you say.
Q: You don’t really think that a three-year-old child will find out your thoughts, do you?
A: Even a five-month-old will find it out even before you could verbalize them. This is the speciality of children. The basis of all disciplinary problems is that we would like to communicate the content of our thoughts. However, when you say “Don’t do it, son!” or “Haven’t I told you a thousand times?” you succeed or fail not because of the content of these sentences but the power underlying them. Even if I can only see your back, I can predict how your sentences are charged, like whether you meant them seriously or just snatched them from your everyday vocabulary.
Q: Do all results spring from one’s thoughts?
A: All those that are potent. Results which are potent are those one can hold onto like some rope-ladder fastened to a rock. Disciplining is the rope-ladder of all your work. The students can hold on to that and set their foot stably on steep rock. All learning is about holding on, and this is especially true of group learning. In group experiences one learns from many different encounters particularly where you have to smooth out and reconcile many different circumstances until your steps will seem safe. As well, there will always be an independent spirit like Áron who will walk towards the front room while you are doing all you can to encourage the group effort.
Q: Are you hurt if they leave you while you exert yourself?
A: No, You can only wonder about what draws Áron towards the front room. And from the bottom of your soul you gather all the rays you have left to warm up Áron even if you do not call him back.
Q: You don’t call him back?
A: You don’t, if this is possible. He should be drawn, as if by a magnet. Like a stray speckle of iron dust may be drawn towards the invitation of the magnet. How can you draw him? By talking to him in song, for example. Or an unusual beckoning movement which could be a wild animal’s summoning of its offspring. Or a newly-invented funny rhyme. I have seen such things. The rich resources of creativity gathered from inside will tell you what you need to say or take at the tip of your tongue. Sometimes a puppet made of husk will help, or a napkin turned into an aeroplane. In general, all activities related to representation.
Q: Representation?
A: All representations are sources of attraction and are all around us: drawing and painting, working with clay or weaving, or playing in the sandbox in the garden; a play of shadows with the tablecloth fluttering in the wind; prints of pebbles and stones; all lines and spots which can be imagined to form faces, eyes, jug-ears or horns.
Q: Is that how you form a complex art activity?
A: Not only one, a whole series of them. My house, my castle, my citadel, my igloo, my tepee… It can be played for weeks and months because the line of variations is endless, and children’s imagination is inexhaustible. And I have not mentioned the other advantage of the house, yet: an attentive pedagogue will be able to discern if there is some problem with the child. If he or she is afraid, for example. Of burglars, or the destruction of the home, the divorce of parents. Or one of the children in the nursery-school. Or his or her brother or sister.
Q: What should a pedagogue do at this time?
A: The greatest problem is the one we don’t know about. You certainly can’t help that. On the other hand, you can help in things you have got to know. If nothing more, at least by letting the child express his or her fears, and not worry in secret.
Q: Do you recommend therapeutic activities?
A: All art activities may be therapeutic. The ancient Greeks used to heal with art consciously and attentively. You need this in all groups of children. There may be problems everywhere, temporary or serious ones: the different forms of art may be the healing force.
Note
Klára Kokas: The Bush of Happenings (excerpt)
Q: What kind of domestic problems are you prepared to face. Is it different for all children or are there general mistakes in child-rearing within the family?
A: Almost everybody struggles with jealousy. Where there are no siblings, however, the child may become envious and selfish for the attention of the whole family, parents and grandparents included until they realize they are wrestling an egocentric challenger.
Q: How can you help these problems?
A: In our classes everybody gets their own special attention. They don’t have to fight for it, they experience it, frequently, so many times that they finally find it natural. At the same time they get used to the fact that the special attention is not their privilege only. Everyone receives it equally. In order to achieve this, however, everybody has to make sacrifices such as, when they would rather run around or shout, they have to watch and listen quietly.
Q: Does the chosen piece of music play a part in how you help children sunk in jealousy or envy?
A: Yes, you are catching on! The piece of music which we elaborate through dancing, metamorphoses and our imagination reaches our soul through our body. It starts to work there in some way, in many ways. I can’t draw a map of its course. But it’s not impossible that some research will help us draw its ways and paths. The ways of creation and of imagination are secret and mysterious. Plato said the appearance of art, creative art, is God’s gift. We think children’s reception of music is God’s gift.
Q: We found traces of land this way. What traces?
A: The healing traces of the joy of creation, the fragrances coming from the flowers of imagination. The song is beautiful, it is probably very old, the heritage of our people. It carries a message. It is perfect in its smallness, like a gem. But it is also warm because it was woven from sounds.