“True happiness is not at all expensive. It depends upon that natural spring of beauty and of life, harmony of relationship. Ambition pursues its own path of self-seeking by breaking this bond of harmony, digging gaps, creating dissension. Selfish ambition feels no hesitation in trampling under foot the whole harvest field, which is for all, in order to snatch away in haste that portion which it craves. Being wasteful it remains disruptive of social life and the greatest enemy of civilization.” | Read the full lecture >>
Source: Rabindranath Tagore in “Robbery of the soil” (Calcutta University, 1922), posted by Tony Mitra on a blog “Exploring citizens duty on food security, environmental sustainability, covid and freedom issues” (27 September 2015) https://www.tonu.org/tag/robbery-of-the-soil/ Date visited: 12 January 2021
“Thinking and learning in South Indian Music” by Ludwig Pesch, chapter 4 in: Markus Cslovjecsek, Madeleine Zulauf (eds.) Integrated Music Education – Challenges of Teaching and Teacher Training Peter Lang Publishers, Bern, 2018. 418 pp., 29 fig. b/w, 2 tables MOUSIKÆ PAIDEIA Music and Education/Musik und Bildung/Musique et Pédagogie. Vol. 1 pb. ISBN 978-3-0343-0388-0
Contents & contributors
Starting point. The school’s disciplinary learning scaffold : a challenge for integrated education / Rudolf Künzli ; The intertwining of music, education, and integration / Madeleine Zulauf & Markus Cslovjecsek Step 1. Approaching integrated music education by exploring distant horizons. Integrating arts performance and education in communities of practice : a Brazilian experience / Joan Russell ; Thinking and learning in South Indian music / Ludwig Pesch ; Making connections : avant-garde visual artists and Varèse / Colleen Richardson Step 2. Encountering integrated music education: where school meets life. Cooperative learning in music : music education and the psychology of integration / Frits Evelein ; Music/arts/language interdisciplinary intervention : cultural, linguistic, and artistic development in Francophone minority communities / Anne Lowe & Monique Richard ; Promoting spirituality through music in the classroom / Diana Harris Step 3. Uncovering school models in integrated music education. Interdisciplinarity based on a deep understanding of disciplinarity : benefits for students’ self-development / Dagmar Widorski ; Considering frameworks for integrating music and the arts / Kari Veblen; Cross-curricular approaches in music teaching / Jonathan Barnes Step 4. Becoming familiar with integrated music education activities in the classroom. Activities which use and unveil cultural artifacts / Smaragda Chrysostomou, Colleen Richardson & Joan Russell ; Activities which explore links between music and one other subject / Markus Cslovjecsek, Ludwig Pesch & Joan Russell ; Activities which develop from the learners’ presence / Anke Böttcher, Frits Evelein & Diana Harris Step 5. Being invited into the minds of people engaged in integrated music education. Conceptions of integrated music education : models in dialogue / Madeleine Zulauf & Peter Gentinetta ; When teachers meet specialists : retrospect on the symposium ‘Practice and research in integrated music education’ as a form of professional development / Hermann Gelzer & Helmut Messner
This book was presented during the 33rd ISME World Conference for Music Education (isme2018.org) on Wednesday 18 July 2018.
About this book
Schools are generally oriented towards discipline-based programmes and therefore students often accumulate fragmented knowledge, disconnected from real life concerns. The eighteen contributors to this work suggest that music offers a highway to developing a more appropriate integrated education. They present a range of views on Integrated Music Education rooted in various cultural traditions, based on several interdisciplinary models and integrated arts curricula, inspired by psychological concepts and referenced to recent teaching experiments as well as original research.
In this innovative book, the reader is invited to go beyond the dichotomy between ‘education in music’ and ‘education through music’, exploring the opportunities put forward by Integrated Music Education thanks to a constant movement from the theoretical roots through a precise description of teaching activities to the benefits for students in terms of integration of knowledge, personal development, and social and cultural belonging. Lastly, there are some new and interesting ideas for training teachers.
Audio file: Lakshmi and Marma talas combined in an original rendition by Thrikkamburam Krishnan Marar, a hereditary temple musician in Kerala. Recording location: Natanakairali Irinjalakuda; described in the present publication: Vaitari: Syllable-based rhythm exercise from Kerala by Ludwig Pesch (pp. 290-4), Ch. “Activities Which Explore Links between Music and One Other Subject”
In October 1939, while the “storm of war was gathering in Europe”, Maria and Mario Montessori set off to India to deliver a training course and lecture tour. When Italy became involved in the war, the British rule of India did not give the Montessoris permission to leave; they were to spend close to seven years in India, which would become a defining period in Montessori’s outlook on life and education.
Maria & Mario Montessori with Rukmini Devi & George Arundale (Adyar/Chennai)
“Only the collaboration between the children and the adults will be able to solve the problems of our time.” Maria Montessori Writes to Her Grandchildren
The letters Montessori wrote to her four teenage grandchildren in Holland give a completely new, private insight into that compellingly interesting period. We see a woman who is deeply connected to her family and friends. We also see her strong commitment to bringing progress and fighting illiteracy in India, which grew into an enduring love for the country and its people. Montessori’s colourful descriptions of her journey and life in India, her worries about her grandchildren in war-torn Europe, and her son’s imprisonment make a fascinating read.
It is a great joy to hear from you and have your good wishes which I warmly reciprocate. As you know, I am a great admirer of your work in education, and along with my countrymen think it very fortunate indeed that India, at this hour, can get your guidance in creative self-expression. I am confident, that education of the young, which must underly all work of national reconstruction, will find a new and lasting inspiration from your presence.
May I hope that you will visit our Institution when you come to Bengal.
The lumbering structure of modern progress, riveted by the iron bolts of efficiency […] will fall in a heap of ruin and cause serious obstruction to the traffic of the world. Do we not see of this even now? [1917] Does not the voice come to us through the din of war, the shrieks of hatred, the wailing of despair, through the churning of the unspeakable filth which has been accumulating for ages in the bottom of this nationalism >>
“Gandhi is a universal figure. […] He is affirmed and avowed in many parts of the world while Indians might of course forget him or scorn him or defile him as they are doing now.” – Historian Ramachandra Guha in conversation with sociologist Nandini Sundar (The Wire, 21 March 2022) >>
I would go so far as to say that Western music which has made immense strides should also blend with the Indian. Visva-Bharati is conceived as a world university […] I have a suspicion that perhaps there is more of music than warranted by life, or I will put the thought in another way. The music of life is in danger of being lost in the music of the voice. Why not the music of the walk, of the march, of every movement of ours, and of every activity? […] So far as I know, Gurudev [Rabindranath Tagore] stood for all this in his own person.
From a letter to Rathindranath Tagore (dated 22 December 1945), quoted in: The Oxford India Gandhi: Essential Writings. Compiled and edited by Gopalkrishna Gandhi. New Delhi, 2008 (p. 568)
In true music there is no place for communal differences and hostility. True music is created only when life is attuned to a single tune and a single time beat. Music is born only where the strings of the heart are not out of tune.
I interpret image-worship in two ways, in one form of image-worship, the person who contemplates the image becomes absorbed in the contemplation of the qualities for which it stands. This is image-worship in its wholesome form – in the other form of it, the person who contemplates the image does not think about the qualities but looks upon the image itself as the primary thing.
Gandhi on image worship in Singing Gandhi’s India, p. 78
Born on October 2, 1869, the father of the nation is known of his struggles for non-violence, equality and freedom. However, does anyone know how good Gandhi was as a student?
Mahatma Gandhi was born in Porbandar on October 2, 1869 and received primary education in the city. He was not a bright student and used to learn by writing with his finger in the dust. He was neither considered to be very gifted in the classroom nor in the playing field. However, a book ‘Mahatma on the Pitch: Gandhi & Cricket in India’ talks about how his fondness of cricket. – Read more in the Indian Express (9 October 2018) >>
Unveiling of new UN stamps at “Non-violence in Action” (on the occasion of the International Day of Non-Violence)
“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” – Mahatma Gandhi quoted by H.E. Mrs. María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, President of the 73rd Session of the UN General Assembly on the occasion of the International Day of Non-Violence at the United Nations >>
Listen to Tagore: Unlocking Cages: Sunil Khilnani tells the story of the Bengali writer and thinker Rabindranath Tagore: https://bbc.in/1KVh4Cf >> The acclaimed BBC 4 podcast series titled Incarnations: India in 50 Lives has also been published in book form (Allen Lane).
“I was moved by how many of these lives pose challenges to the Indian present,” he writes, “and remind us of future possibilities that are in danger of being closed off.”
Gopalkrishna Gandhi on misquoting Mahatma Gandhi (addressing a gathering at Alladi Memorial Trust and the Centre for Human Rights of University of Hyderabad in 2017)
“Our moment calls for a bolder reimagination, based not on the constrained, degraded conditions around us but on a more expansive view of history and reality, considering as possible baselines both realities of the past and audacious visions of the future.” – Alexandra Kleeman in “Bolder Reimagining”: 55 Voices for Democracy (video 6:33)
