The music playschool’s first steps

Young people starting to teach in music playschools nowadays have four and a half years of training behind them and have clear ideas about what they should do with children, how to do it, and why. Things were different in 1964 for Ritva Ollaranta, the grand old lady of early childhood music education in Finland.

Back then, Ritva Ollaranta was faced with a tricky problem: she had been asked to teach in a music playschool that was to be founded in Vantaa. Her music teacher training at the Sibelius Academy had to a large degree concentrated on her own instrumental training. She had not often been faced with children, especially not small ones. 

She had to start everything from scratch. Almost no one in Finland at the time, except for Sirkka Valkola-Laine, had yet analysed how children should be taught music. ‘It was necessary to learn how to teach through trial and error,’ Ollaranta remembers.

And many mistakes were indeed made in the beginning. ‘On the first days of the music institute in Vantaa, everything went as wrong as it could. A hundred children stormed in, and we didn’t know how to control the situation,’ Ollaranta laughs.

But things began to work out, for ‘the music began to speak’. And already a year later, the composer Ahti Sonninenasked Ollaranta to found a music playschool in the new East Helsinki Music Institute.

Sonninen was the director of the new music institute, and he had ambitious plans for his school. The teachers were given a free hand to experiment and explore, but Ollaranta was nagged by the same thoughts as before; she felt that the activities should be more organised, the development stages of the children should be taken more into account, and the pedagogy should be more thorough.

Uncharted territories

Help came in the form of Géza Szilvay, who became director of the same music institute in 1970. This Hungarian and his conviction in Zoltán Kodály’s methods became an important pathfinder for Finnish music education. As a result, the ideas of Ritva Ollaranta and her colleagues began to snap into place.

One of the most important ideas presented by Szilvay was to teach music by means of singing. The only problem was that Finnish children were taught songs that were too difficult according to Szilvay.

‘Géza asked us for Finnish songs with only three to five different notes, but we didn’t know any. Everybody was rummaging through piles of music at home,’ Ollaranta remembers.

Now it is no longer necessary to look for songs. Singing has become an essential part of Finnish early childhood music edu-cation; everything starts here.

Géza Szilvay’s use of folk music and the 5-stringed kantele (Finnish psaltery) also helped to make these part of early childhood music education. Ritva Ollaranta says that the outlines of her pedagogical ‘map’ began to become clear due to those years spent in the East Helsinki Music Institute. But we are all still like explorers in uncharted territories, reflects Ollaranta, who is dubbed Finland’s first real music playschool teacher and who has written many of the field’s key books.

New professionals

When Ritva Ollaranta began her career, music playschool teachers received no specific training. Children were taught music by kindergarten teachers and music teachers. ‘It soon became clear that kindergarten teachers don’t know enough about music and music teachers don’t know enough about children,’ Ollaranta laughs.

Starting in 1971, the first music play-school teachers were trained in continuing education courses held at the Sibelius Academy on weekends. This form of training was continued until 1987, when it was transferred to the conservatories of Lahti, Jyväskyla, and Pietarsaari. The following year, it also began at the Helsinki Conservatory, where Ritva Ollaranta received the task of designing a training programme.

She is now a senior teacher for early childhood music education at the Helsinki Polytechnic Stadia. Ollaranta’s job consists of training the field’s new professionals, whose studies take 4.5 years and include instruction in everything from pedagogy and their own instruments to puppet theatre and business training.

Music education in day-care centres

‘Music playschools have sprung up like mushrooms after rain, they have good facilities, the teachers’ skills and know-how have improved…,’ are the changes listed by Ritva Ollaranta. A lot of progress has taken place in forty years.

A few things nevertheless worry the grand old lady of early music education. She would like to do something about the continual rush in music play schools. In many places, children receive only one hour of lessons per week, and groups are changed on the fly. The teacher does not have time to get to know the parents well.

The experienced educator is also not enthusiastic about music playschools in the evening, which are becoming increasingly common due to the parents’ work schedules. Ollaranta feels that in the evening children should be allowed to experience the sense of security provided by being at home and with their parents.

Many problems would be solved if music education could be provided in day-care centres. ‘Day-care centres should each have their own music educator; I think they’re the best place for music education,’ Ollaranta says.

The most important task

Ritva Ollaranta will not necessarily participate in this next transition period in music education; she will soon be going into retirement. That is a good vantage point from where to look back on the chain of development that she has helped bring about.

But the future retiree has a wish: ‘I hope that teachers do their job so well that children will continue to cherish music later as adults too, the long-time music educator sighs. Because that’s our most important task – inspiring love towards music.’

Featured photo: Antero Aaltonen. Source: Finna. 
Translation: Ekhart Georgi