Once Upon a Time, Beyond the Curriculum… Hungarian Folk Tales as the Framework for Lessons in Folk Flute

Author(s):

István Ferenc Bíró(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

29. Research on Arts Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

29 SES 02 B, Music Education

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-22

15:15-16:45

Room:

W2.05

Chair:

Margarida Dourado Dias

Contribution

The title suggests that, besides the fact that our research is related to folk tales, methods always recurring beyond the curriculum are also going to be addressed. Institutional folk music education has a past of about four decades in Hungary.

The basis of the concept of our musical education is a way the transition between pre-school and elementary school can be made smoother with the help of art education. It is imagined in a framework which provides a familiar setting for the child with the help of folk songs. The framework which is able to give the folks song, severed from its natural context, a natural setting (meant in a spiritual way) is nothing else than the folk tale, more precisely its identical language, vocabulary and literary roots. Much has been said about the educational role of folk tales in nursery schools. Taking this into consideration, folk tales can be regarded, still in a spiritual meaning, as a safe, nurturing and constructive environment for the child.

Laying emphasis on aesthetic education, the aesthetic content, refined ways of expression and archaic vocabulary of folk tales shall be mentioned. Folk tales, and specifically, fairy tales, offer an outstanding opportunity to experience new functions in educational work. The hero in the folk tale is the child, the one who helps the hero (mostly, let us say, an old man with grey hair) is the educator. If this function is realized, the activity comes about which Rogers describes as the facilitation of learning. So the teacher (the hero’s helper) takes the role of a facilitator.

Folk tales reveal a lot about times past, the people, its certain customs, way of life, and the list could be continued. This is exactly what is appealing for teachers of folk music, since these tales provide the learners with ethnographic background information, beyond the musical experience of playing the flute. All this is done without any artificial intervention.

During the first two, preparatory years of folk music learning, the student gets to know nursery rhymes. This statement gains significance if, referring back to what has been mentioned above, it is noted that musical education in pre-school is also based on nursery rhymes. Thus, the child skills in form, structure and note set of folk songs are already available in a vocal form. The essence of our concept is to be found exactly in this: it transforms the folk song, already known by the child in a vocal form, into an instrumental version. This is the realisation of a traditional learning style, present in rural societies, that is, flute players “find” the familiar tunes on their instrument. In this way, the highest form of learning of our instrumental training is already there in the first years of music school. Naturally, all this is interpreted within the child’s own musical culture, which, in the present case, means the musical world of nursery rhymes.

According to our concept, the pre-school years of children learning with the new method can be expanded from the aspect of learning forms and the first two years of musical education can be made to resemble nursery school education. The number of unknown words occurring in folk songs will decrease significantly, since the vocabulary and narrative of folk tales provide enough background knowledge and they need little or no explanation. The child does not think in tunes but they try to interpret those tunes instrumentally that they know in a vocal form anyway. So they do not know only one bi-chord tune but they are able to play all vocally interpreted and familiar tunes on an instrument.

Method

Our research can be divided into three main phases. 1. Setting up hypotheses. Reviewing scholarly literature pertaining to education theory, philosophy of child development, psychology, ethnography (more precisely, folklore). Elaborating the method of folk music education. 2. Applied methods: pedagogical experiment. As for its structure, it is a dual-group experiment. 3. Analysing, evaluating and publishing the results. It was Lujza Tari who called attention to the folk music instruments appearing in folk tales, doing a folklore-based research. This is important from the aspect of our research because this gave the idea to my colleague, Pálma Márton, and myself to collect folk tales in which folk music instruments occur. Following this, we examined the collected folk tales from a structural point of view, considering whether they are able to provide a suitable framework for lessons teaching the folk flute. Ildikó Boldizsár has already called attention to the order prevailing in folk tales, but she was doing research mainly from psychological and folklore aspects. Based on the results by Pálma Márton, we carried out a didactic-based research, which resulted in the assertion that the order to be found in folk tales can be grounded didactically as well. It has been found the distinct phases in a folk flute lesson correspond to certain phases in the folk tales. We did the tasks outlined in section 1, and the educational concept and methodology were published in 2015, which is available free on the Internet. Broad accessibility was of paramount importance, because this way, the educational concept can reach a wide range of motivated educators, can be tried by almost everyone, and the users can make comments so that we can do the necessary adjustments. The preparations for the pedagogical experiment have been done. The school where the experiment is going to take place and the leading teacher of the experiment have been chosen. Determining the groups participating in it is in progress.

Expected Outcomes

Based on the preliminary investigation, it is supposed that the pre-school years of children learning with the new method can be expanded from the aspect of learning forms and the first two years of musical education can be made to resemble nursery school education. The number of unknown words occurring in folk songs will decrease significantly, since the vocabulary and narrative of folk tales provide enough background knowledge and they need little or no explanation. The child does not think in tunes but they try to interpret those tunes instrumentally that they know in a vocal form anyway. So they do not know only one bi-chord tune but they are able to play all vocally interpreted and familiar tunes on an instrument. It is also supposed that folk music education cannot “only” be interpreted as a form of music education but that it provides an opportunity for acquiring more complex knowledge, with the help of which children can get a more refined picture and deeper knowledge about the way of life, customs, tools, etc. of rural communities. Placing and interpreting folk music education in the field of folklore gives a chance to reveal the false paths of folk music education and to correct the mistakes. The results can be a basis of initiating curriculum reforms and introducing innovations in methodology.

References

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Author Information

István Ferenc Bíró (presenting / submitting)

University of Debrecen

Doctoral School of Humanities

Nyíregyháza

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