A Unit Study Method in Music Education during the Postwar Educational Reform : A Content Analysis of the Magazine Kyoiku Ongaku (The Educational Music)

Abstract

This paper analyzes how music education in elementary schools was influenced by the unit study method and how it was integrated into other educational activities during the postwar educational reform, using the magazine Kyoiku Ongaku (The Educational Music) published by Kyoiku Ongakuka Kyokai (The Association of Music Teachers). This paper shows that there were some different phases in the application of the unit study method to music education. In the first phase (1946-48), music education consisted chiefly of singing songs as it was during the prewar period, mainly due to inadequate educational facilities. In the second phase (1949-52), the range of music activities was expanded, for example, using musical instruments, records, etc. Moreover, the unit study method was often applied to curriculum of music under the influence of the core-curriculum movement. Some teachers produced experimental practices in which music education was integrated into other kind of activities such as investigation, craft, poems and dances. However, not a few teachers opposed such a trend. They maintained that the unit study method was an obstacle to the acquisition of basic skills and knowledge which was indispensable for music education. Central concepts of integrative various activities were also unclear. In the third phase (1952-1960), the opposition against the unit study became dominant. Although a small part of teachers adopted the method, the experimental practices that sought the integration with other kind of activities was almost renounced so as not to obstruct the acquisition of basic skills. Here we can see the persistent ideas that music education should be essentially the reproduction of the existing music and need the acquisition of basic skills to perform the reproduction finely.