opening a Window

Katalin Kiss: I think Kodály is about literacy and music: studying music instead of skills, meeting artistic pieces and great masters. The goal is not just to read and write faster, but to really know the literature. It's a musical approach, a philosophy, a concept. It's not just about the music: it's a culture.

susan Brumfield: so the idea is that you can learn as you read and write music without ever having to encounter great music. Raising the standard of musical taste is more important than any breakdown of any musical skill. What is great music? It’s more to do with elevating the human spirit and finding the music that transforms people’s souls. It’s important to take really great care with children, because they are very young and impressionable. They need to be able to do more than just listen to it. so the whole purpose for developing musical skills was that the great masterpieces could be accessible.

The certification Workshop better prepared us to be teachers and gave us some very useful tools we could use in the classroom. We gained a framework for developing a curriculum and learned how to make efficient, layered lesson plans. We learned how to sequence lessons by preparing concepts first, then presenting them, and finally practicing what has been learned. one of the most helpful skills we learned was how to analyze songs pedagogically and then how to organize our analyses through an indexing system. sound before symbol suddenly became so much more than a music education mantra- it became something we knew how to achieve in our own classroom. It has greatly impacted our outlook on music education. as teachers brought the Kodály methodology to the united states, it has been adapted to our culture and educational needs. There are several certification courses available in the us. For more information about the Kodály methodology or certification courses, please visit: www.oake.org.