In taking a fairly advanced class a teacher is often worried because there is not enough time in a single forty-minute lesson a week to touch on all of such subjects as chords, cadences, extemporizing, transposition, &c., in addition to sight-singing and dictation. It is certainly quite impossible to do so, and this is one of the reasons for apparently slow progress. But there is, however, a good side to the difficulty, for such work ought not to be hurried, and it is well to leave a little breathing space between the references to it.
Teachers are sometimes heard to speak with regret of the high spirits of their classes, which lead to restlessness. But we should never regret _force_ in a child, and we must realize that all pent-up force needs a safety-valve. It must be our business to direct such force into safe channels. Keep the children really busy, give them plenty to do, and there will be no cause to regret their vitality.
It is impossible, within the limits of a chapter, to do more than dwell on a few practical points connected with the teaching and organization of this work in a school. As was said in the preceding chapter, the ideal for all young children who are about to learn the piano is that they should first go through a short course of ear-training. If this be done, the progress in the first year's work will be about three times what it would otherwise be. If the ear-training be done along the lines suggested in earlier chapters, the child will have been taught to sing easy melodies at sight, she will have approached the question of time by means of the French time names, she will have learned to beat time with the proper conductor's beat, to find notes on the piano, and, what is more important, to know these notes by sound, in relation to fixed notes.
In this way some of the processes which a child goes through in beginning to learn the piano are taken one at a time, in company with other children, and are therefore not hurried.
When the time has come to begin the piano, the child should join a _class_ for this for one year. Such a class should not exceed six in number. During this time she will add to her knowledge the first principles of fingering, will play easy exercises for fingers, wrist, &c., and will learn a few easy pieces and duets.