At present we are moving in a vicious circle. Many of our normal schools still preserve something of that artificial pedagogy to which I have referred, and still send out teachers who are, _humanly speaking_, ill-fitted to lead the children in music. (I refer to the human element in the matter because it is impossible to teach music properly if you have not had experience with the best of it, and if you do not love the best more than any other. So long as our normal schools lay too great stress on the technique of teaching music at the expense of the greater thing, just so long will our schools suffer. And it is easily possible for the normal school authorities to be deceived as to what is the best music, as well as by a brave showing of musical performance.) The real failure in the administration of music is due to a false ideal. And it is in this mistaken ideal or purpose that the crux of the whole matter lies. Nearly the whole stress of teaching is laid on expert sight-reading of music. Go into a schoolroom with a supervisor to hear his class sing and he will almost invariably exhibit to you with pride the capacity of the children to sing at sight. He will ask you to put something impromptu on the blackboard as a test of their proficiency. He will exhibit to you classes of very young children who have already learned to read notes and who can sing all sorts of simple exercises from the staff.
What is meant by the term “sight-singing”? It means, if it means anything, that a person shall be able to sing correctly at the first trial his part in any piece of vocal music which he has never seen or heard before. And this, which we spend our money for, is an entirely artificial attainment, since in real life we are almost never required to do it. “Sight-singing” has become a shibboleth. What we want is a reasonable capacity for reading music, for that is all we are called upon to do in actual life. In choral societies and choirs all over this country the number of singers who can read music at sight is negligible, and there is probably not one of them who could master at once the intricacies of modern choral writing. Let us then teach children to read music by giving them as many trials as is necessary, and let them gradually acquire such a familiarity with intervals and with rhythmic figures as will make it possible for them to sing with other people, and enjoy doing so. We shall then get rid of an artificial ideal and have just so much more time in which to cultivate music for its own sake. It goes without saying that the vast majority of the children in our public schools never attain to that expertness which is the present objective of the teaching. So we have a double failure--in ideal and in practice. (This is not the place for a discussion of the various methods of teaching sight-singing. The method commonly used in this country is derived from English practice and we have ignored the much more accurate and scientific systems of France and Germany.)