LETTER.

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,

BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D. C., August 4, 1886.

SIR: It has been the aim of this Office, so far as under my direction, to point out the highest results in education, and stimulate as well as aid efforts to their attainment by the historical and comparative methods. This end has been sought in the Annual Reports by co-operative endeavor, giving annually a survey of the progress of education in the several grades of the different systems of State and city instruction, and in the many private educational institutions, under the different methods practiced. Early in making these Annual Reports it was my purpose to include the condition of instruction in music; but the number, variety, and difficulty of the new summaries to be undertaken, and the lack of adequate clerical aid, together with the insufficient response to my tentative efforts to secure information in connection with education in music, led to the omission of this item from the mass of matter annually tabulated. Recently there has been a growing demand for the special treatment of education in music. Last year the request of the Music Teachers' National Association and other promises of cooperation pointed to the favorable moment and the needed assistance. The facilities of this Office and the good will and gratuitous co-operation of those correspondents at the head of systems and institutions of instruction were laid under contribution, and a large and valuable amount of material treating of the present condition of instruction in music was collected.

As there seemed to be no way for the immediate publication of these valuable facts by the Office, I gave them, as far as then collated, to the teachers of music in the National Association at their annual meeting, together with other data illustrating the progress made in teaching music in other countries. The members of the Association, feeling that instruction in music is too much neglected, and seeking a further general movement for the improvement and increase of this instruction, appointed Messrs. Theodore Presser, Charles W. Laudon, H. E. Holt, N. C. Stewart, George F. Bristow, and L. W. Mason a committee to co-operate with this Office in preparing papers adapted, in their judg ment, to secure better and more general instruction in music in the schools of our country.

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In addition to the papers contributed or revised by these gentlemen, the material now submitted for publication as a circular of information includes statistical tables showing in detail several facts respecting the amount and kind of vocal music taught in two hundred and forty-three American cities and towns, the summary of which I presented before the National Association, as stated above, together with an introductory paper by Dr. Charles Warren, of this Office.

I have the honor to be, very respectfully,

THE PLACE OF MUSIC AMONG THE ÆSTHETIC ARTS DEFINED, AND ITS VALUE AS A PART OF FREE COMMON SCHOOL INSTRUCTION CONSIDERED.

BY CHARLES WARREN, M. D.,

Of the U. S. Bureau of Education.

I.

INTRODUCTORY.

Education may be divided, in the order of its application, into Nurture, Teaching, and Culture; that is, Nurture implies the education. of the infant, Teaching that of the youth, Culture that of the adult. In all these stages Education, though a continuous process, begins by placing the human being under the best conditions for healthy life and growth, proceeds to the training of all his capacities so as to develop them into abilities, and ends its useful work by supplying the personal conditions necessary to his best action, or use of his abilities. Its purpose, therefore, is not only subjective, or personal, but also objective, or social. No theory of Education is complete that does not make due provision for human Nurture, Teaching, and Culture; no method of instruction is sound that does not, at proper times, promote one or more of them; no exercise or study should form part of the curriculum of any school that is not nutritive, instructive, or liberalizing in tendency.

Modern science has shown that man, like every other living thing, is the inevitable result of his heredity and his environment. It is due to the always varying influence of these diverse causes that members of the same family, tribe, and race, are both alike and unlike each other. Theoretically, education should vary in accordance with individual needs; but in reality nearly all infants thrive and grow under similar Nurture; youths learn much, though not all to the same extent, under the wise Teaching given at a good school; and their after Culture, always to a great extent under their own control (if wisely directed to definite results), may supply many incidental deficiencies in their earlier education.

Free common school instruction is the modern, and specially Ameri ican, instrumentality by which the second, or middle, phase of Education is imparted to the greater number of people in this country. Properly considered, the School is the organized contrivance of the modern

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civilized state, or nation, for the inculcation of such knowledge as is found most useful for the subsequent practical or idealistic Culture of its citizens, and is based on the admitted truth that the existence of a civilized state is only possible when all its citizens live in due relation to it, and are obedient to its laws. It follows that the free common school system can be defended by the same arguments that, under other circumstances, justify the existence of other schools and the employment of other instrumentalities for man's comfort, safety, and free action, or such as conduce to the tranquillity, prosperity, and power of the State itself.

Free common school instruction being what it is in this country, when any proposal is made to add something to the subjects recognized in the usual curriculum, it is imperative that the value and extent of the proposed addition should be understood, and that all necessary or advisa ble changes, or omissions consequent upon such changes, should be foreseen. Subjects and methods suitable only to precedent Nurture or to subsequent Culture should not be admitted into this form of Teaching, which is simply saying that boys and girls of school age should not be treated as either infants or grown people.

While it is right to expect Teaching to do most, if not all, of the kind of training necessary for the youth, it is unwise to expect it to supply obvious omissions in the previous training of the young child; it is equally foolish to ask it to give in advance that Culture which can only be attained through later agencies. Nothing, indeed, is more foolish than to impede the proper working of any human contrivance by visionary requirements or merely theoretical principles. An illustration from another circle of experience than Teaching will serve to point this moral. Very few of the most ardent advocates of Protection vs. Free Trade have ventured to plead for the discouragement of immigration; yet within the last half century the careless and uncontrolled importation of Asiatic laborers to the Hawaiian Islands has permanently and most shockingly afflicted the native population with leprosy. In like manner some vague general proposition about education, true enough as to some single part, may be applied wrongly to the whole work.

II.

MUSIC AS AN ESTHETIC ART DEFINED.

Before assuming, then, as enthusiasts and initiates in their charm and entrancement are wont to do, that the fine arts of necessity form part of the whole Education of man, and as well before assuming, as some do, that all knowledge, practice, and love of the fine arts are dangerous to the purity of the spiritual life, let us, after restoring Music to its true place and relation among the fine arts, endeavor to discover whether or not it is so immediately and generically connected with, and natural