We have been calling western music music , and our own music traditional music. This shows that out society is dominated by western music. Every person, however, should be able to understand his own traditional music and to express his feelings wit...
We have been calling western music music , and our own music traditional music. This shows that out society is dominated by western music. Every person, however, should be able to understand his own traditional music and to express his feelings with the music. It is because traditional music is the best means to express a person s feelings naturally. Recently there is a new awakening and effort to restore traditional music in schools. To evaluate this effort, this paper investigates the traditional music curriculum at schools. Also the paper analyzes the music textbooks of elementary schools and finds out problems in traditional music education. The interest in traditional music arose in Japan as well. Because what happened to Japanese traditional music may help understand our situation, the paper analyzes the traditional music curriculum and music textbooks at Japanese elementary schools of Japan.
According to the music textbooks, the problems of traditional music educations of Korea and Japan can be summarized as follows:
1) Both in Korea and Japan, western music dominates traditional music. This is true not only of singing and listening, but also of instruments, musicians, vocalization methods.
2) Both in Korea and Japan, the western music notation is used to represent traditional music and it is difficult to capture characteristics of traditional music in this western music notation.
3) In Korea, traditional music (singing and listening) is 14.6% of all, while it is 8.1 % in Japan.
Based on the above findings, the paper presents the following suggestions for effective restoration of traditional music.
First, 50% of the time should be allocated to Korean music.
Second, there should be two separate music curriculums, that is, western music and Korean music like there are both western hjstory and Korean history in history education.
Third, the music teachers should be re-educated in Korean music, and for the future teachers, education universities should emphasize Korean music education.
Fourth, we have many traditional children songs and plays. Lower grade students should be taught these songs and plays.