ECME BLOG December 2011
Music: parents and children always love it! It looks "easy", "cute" and everybody has fun. But music education for young children needs professionalism, musicality, knowledge, flexibility, structure, …….
This is perhaps why we have a great amount of papers, workshops and poster proposals our next seminar at
So… the six ECME commission members have work to do and are reviewing all the submissions.
In my home country, The Netherlands, the interest in music education for children between 0-4 is still growing. The idea to stimulate innate musical possibilities before the children would enter elementary school arose "ages ago". Already in 1981 the Dutch Annie Langelaar – who stood at the cradle of general music education for children in the
Annie Langelaar wrote the following:
"Every child is born with a large number of very different talents, amongst which music. These talents need to be given the change to develop otherwise they will shrivel" (Langelaar, 1977, p. 14).
The quest anno 2012 has not changed a lot and music teachers want to develop the inherent capabilities of young children according to the children's own level of possibilities. We want to offer activities and songs that can be used in the home situation to continue the musical learning process. Activities that can be easily transferred to the home situation (like brushing your teeth) are a vital part of Early Childhood Music Education lessons.
I guess more countries have their "Annie's". People with vision, who are often "far ahead of time". Let's hope we can all share our knowledge during the next seminar and world conference in July 2012 and create more "master early childhood music teachers and researchers" for the benefit of all children all over the world!
Hope to see you in
The picture shows the activity belonging to the song "raindrops" and will be presented in
Margré van Gestel, chair ECME 2010-2012
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