Teaching songs or teaching how to sing. The role of the children’s choir in Portuguese music education

Abstract

Singing is highly valued by the music teaching pedagogues of the 20th century, namely by Orff, Kodály, Ward and Willems. In Portugal, vocal education reached a peak during dictatorship, through the creation of a Choral Singing [Canto Coral, our transl.] course in the general curriculum; this course was replaced by a Music Education [Educação Musical, our transl.] course in the 1970’s, in which singing became merely one among other topics. At the present moment the document Essential Competences of the National Curriculum of Basic Education [Competências Essenciais do Currículo Nacional do Ensino Básico, our transl.] underlines that all children should have an opportunity to learn how to sing; however, the insistence of the Ministry of Education on an integrative approach to arts teaching has undermined each art’s individual value in the curriculum and has reduced singing in the Music Education course to the interpretation of songs, following a merely functional and entertaining perspective that has placed music at the service of other curricular subjects. This article questions the ways in which singing (or voice education) has been understood in Portuguese generic and specialized schools as well as the curricular and political results of those pedagogical choices.

O Canto é bastante valorizado nos modelos pedagógicos de ensino da música do Século XX, nomeadamente com Orff, Kodály, Ward e Willems. Em Portugal, a educação vocal teve o apogeu durante o Estado Novo com a implementação do Canto Coral nas escolas, substituído, na década de setenta, pela disciplina de Educação Musical tornando o canto numa valência entre muitas. Presentemente, o documento Competências Essenciais do Currículo Nacional do Ensino Básico sustenta que a oportunidade de aprender a cantar deve ser proporcionada às crianças; no entanto, a insistência num ensino das expressões artísticas integradas desvirtua o valor individualizado de cada arte, circunscrevendo a prática do Canto à interpretação de canções, numa perspectiva meramente lúdica ou funcional (como coadjuvante das aprendizagens de outras áreas curriculares). Questiona-se, assim, o modo como o Canto é trabalhado nas escolas portuguesas (ensino genérico e vocacional) a par do impacto curricular e político das actuais opções pedagógicas.