Here’s some more from Mr. Gibson:
“A third problem is one that has to do with the rural school children themselves.
Many of these have had little musical experience. They have heard little music and taken part in less up to the time they enter school.
They come into school where there are chi8ldren in seven and eight grades, of varieties of voices of having no singing voices at all. The children are vocally and rhythmically awkward and self conscious as a result in their music efforts.
They look upon music with suspicion and often assume a trivial or fun-making attitude toward it. They are frightened at hearing both their speaking and singing voices because they have not been taught to use them. They have no intelligent basis for music appreciation and therefore little respect for it. They often make fun of anyone who tries to take part in the music lesson, until those who might develop themselves in this subject and help the less musical, give up because of this ridicule. Their habits of expression, or lack of them, are more firmly fixed than are those in less isolated sections, and it is hard to break through these fixed habits.
Meeting all this the rural teacher, unless she is a very determined and well-trained person, gives up in despair.”
Of course, we might say that this rural bias is a thing of the past, but I have heard similar judgements of rural students here at Northwest Missouri State University and elsewhere.
