How Eduardas Balsis' system of teaching music to children was created
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Eduardas Balsis was an excellent teacher. He constantly emphasised that he created and practised a methodology accessible to any teacher, suitable for any school. Everything that can be seen and heard in music lessons in Lithuanian schools is not a single success of one person, but the success of a special system of teaching music at school. A system that has found support both from other teachers and from the city administration.
"I have to literally kick the children out of class," said E. Balsis and told of a school where, to the amazement of the principal, the best, most perfect discipline always reigned in music lessons. At that time, that school had just been built. It was a magnificent building, a school palace. It came into operation after the beginning of the school year. The school was built not in a new district, but in the centre, and all the children, of course, had previously studied in other, neighbouring schools, which were now being unloaded. It is clear that no one wanted to get rid of the best students, and that is why the new school now has a higher percentage of "difficult" children.
And so it was with such uncompleted, uneasy groups of fourth-graders that the teacher started lessons in late autumn. Until then, the children were familiar with ordinary music lessons, where a few of them might be singing, and most of them were having fun as they could.
The children's successes are the result of just three or four months of work. And Balchitis is a principled opponent of lessons beyond the hours allocated to music in the programme: otherwise, he says, other teachers will not trust my methodology.
How Eduard Balsis created a new Lithuanian music teaching system
Having set out to develop his own methods of teaching music - or rather, methods of developing a musical thinking Eduardas Balsis was armed with a deep knowledge of music education in the school classroom. He graduated from the Vilnius Pedagogical Institute with a specialisation in music, then completed postgraduate studies in Moscow, at the Research Institute of Art Education, and then obtained a PhD in pedagogical sciences.
He taught extensively in schools and observed children's perception of music. E. Balsis headed the Department of Music Siauliai Pedagogical InstituteHe has worked with future primary and secondary school teachers and taught lessons to schoolchildren. He is one of the authors of music textbooks for Lithuanian schools.
Develop new system - it is designed in great detail, down to the exact hourly and even minute-by-minute breakdown of the programme, and, most importantly, to convince of its viability has been uneasily. But E. Balsis relied on the help and support of those enthusiasts in Lithuania who were working in the same direction as he was.
These are Vilnius teachers A. Peliciauskas, I. Piatrošius (he invented many simple and convenient devices for music classrooms), teachers 3. Rinkevičius, V. Surgautaitė, S. Sinkevičius and many others, as well as a number of others. Lithuanian composerswho write music for school books and manuals.
The time that has passed since the beginning of this tremendous work has made it possible to see that beneficial changes have affected everything related to children's music education: the music education of future teachers; music classes in children's institutions; and music lessons in secondary schools.
