merely call attention to certain phases of the supervisor's work that seem to come within the scope of a book on conducting.
DIFFICULTIES INVOVLED IN TEACHING LARGE GROUPSThe first point that we should like to have noted in this connection is that teaching a group of from forty to one hundred children all at the same time is a vastly different matter from giving individual instruction to a number of pupils separately. The teacher of a class needs to be much more energetic, much more magnetic, much more capable of keeping things moving and of keeping everyone interested in the work and therefore out of mischief; he needs, in short, to possess in high degree those qualities involved in leadership and organization that were cited in an earlier chapter as necessary for the conductor in general. In teaching individual pupils one need not usually think of the problem of discipline at all; but, in giving instruction to a class of from thirty to forty children in the public schools, one inevitably finds in the same group those with musical ability and those without it; those who are interested in the music lesson and those who are indifferent or even openly scornful; those who are full of energy and enthusiasm and those who are lazy and indifferent and will do only what they are made to do; those who have had lessons on piano or violin and have acquired considerable proficiency in performance, and those who have just come in from an outlying rural school where no music has ever been taught, and are therefore not able to read music, have no musical perception or taste whatsoever, and are frequently not even able to "carry a tune." In dealing with such heterogeneous classes, problems of discipline as well as problems of pedagogy are bound to arise, and it requires rare tact and skill in working out details of procedure, as well as a broad vision of the ultimate end to be accomplished, to bring orderPage:Essentials in Conducting.djvu/89
