music lesson

Storytelling is this month's Mother's University topic. I just pulled out a book I've recommended before: "What Music Can Do For You"--It's filled with good ideas, not just for music but all learning. Like this:

"Forcing is of no avail. It has to come through naturally, and the function of the teacher is to awaken, not to instruct."

"You cannot force children to learn anything, but you can so present a thing to them that you will arouse their interest and cause them to undertake the subject of their own free will. At first they may seem uninterested, but give them a chance to act on their own impulse, have faith in the child and his unerring feeling for beauty and truth, and this will pass."

So how do you 'arouse an interest'?? Storytelling is one of the most effective ways!! Read if you must, but telling 'by heart' is even better.

And one more gem:

"Motherhood is to the race what the keynote is to music. ..The right attitude toward motherhood is a subject that we are just beginning to treat with any degree of intelligence and common sense.

"Why, when everything depends upon bringing a better type of human being into the world, do we treat the subject of sex and children as though it were something to be ashamed of? The greatest of all teachers called the body the temple of the Holy Spirit, and yet . . . people have married and children have been born one might say carelessly, without preparation.

"We educate our young girls in all sorts of surface ways, give them social savoir faire, teaching them all sorts of superficial things, and leaving the great subject of motherhood and preparation for it, untouched."

What Music Can Do For You by Harriet Seymour

Art credit: Music Lesson by Lord Frederick Leighton (artrenewal.org)