Here are some anti-rural views from Thomas L. Gibson, Maryland State Supervisor of Music, in 1925.
“First, there is the problem of the adult rural people.
A very large number of this class have had little or no musical experience. They are illiterate in the subject and see no sense in teaching it. There is also a strong prejudice among the residents of some communities toward music. They still regard it as a fad, a frill or a ‘folly.’ In their opinion it does not contribute toward ‘making a living,’ therefore it is a waste of time to teach it.
Then a number of rural people have formed a habit of spending all their ‘waking’ hours under what someone has called ‘the burden of the cry of the soil.’ They have not learned how to relax. They find no time nor have they any disposition or training for recreation. They just sleep, eat and work, day after day throughout all their years.
There is also in some rural families a rather morbid feeling toward life growing out of constant isolation. These families live in themselves and their circle of social sanity and wholesomeness becomes smaller and smaller until they brood in theri own silence, a state of mind far from normal.”
Gibson, Thomas L. (1925). Rural School Music Problems. School Music, 124(6), 32-48.
Wow! I was searching in the archives for an anti-rural-bias. I had no idea I would find anything this “good”.
