Thesis (D.M.A)--Boston University
N.B. Page 237 misnomeredWhen traced culturally, the history of music education in the United States reveals certain shiftings of emphasis from the religious (1625-l770) through the political (1770-1860) and the utilitarian eras (1860-1920) towards the motives of mass education (from 1920).(148:174) More recent trends indicate the emergence of the musical arts and music education as an integral aesthetic component of contemporary culture. The broadening interests in general education have stimulated the gradual promotion and clarification of such desirable democratic goals as equality of opportunity, child-centered interests, and the breakdown of parochialistic attitudes and ethnocentric tendencies. Ever since the efforts of Mason and others in introducing music into the public schools, the music education profession has made forward-looking strides to clarify objectives, to stimulate more effective teaching pedagogy, to improve standards, to broaden the horizons of music education, and to establish a working rapport with the social sciences. As a result of new concepts in changing society, important anti-thetical issues have risen from a great tradition of private and public school teaching, and have found more significant meanings in closer relations with the school, the home, and the community. These basic problems in both professional and amateur music are most crucial to the music educator today, in view of new leisure time patterns, technological advances; economic and political pressures, population growth, and the development of mass media in communication. [TRUNCATED
