s
to look about and realize as never before that the profession as a whole
has no organization and no fixed educational standards. Every teacher
fixes his own standard and is a law unto himself. The standard is
individual, and if the individual conscience is sufficiently elastic the
standard gives him no serious concern. But as a result of this awakening
there is a concerted action throughout the country to standardize, to
define the general scope of learning necessary to become a music
teacher. The trend of this is in the right direction, and good may be
expected from it, although at best it can be but a very imperfect method
of determining one's fitness to teach. The determining factors in
teaching are things which cannot be discovered in any ten questions. In
fact an examination must necessarily confine itself to general
information, but in teaching, the real man reveals himself. His high
sense of order, logic, patience, his love and appreciation of the
beautiful, his personality, his moral sense, the mental atmosphere of
his studio, these all enter into his teaching and they are things
difficult to discover in an examination. Unconsciously the teacher gives
out himself along with the music lesson, and it is equally important
with his knowledge of music. Therefore it is as difficult to establish
definite standards of teaching as it is of piano or violin making.

In attempting to establish standards of voice teaching the problem
becomes positively bewildering. The voice is so completely and
persistently individual, and in the very nature of things must always
remain so, that an attempt to standardize it or those who train it is
dangerous. Yet notwithstanding this, voice teachers are the most
industrious of all in their efforts to organize and standardize. The
insistence with which this aim is prosecuted is worthy of something
better than is likely to be achieved.

That there is no standard among voice teachers save that of the
individual will be admitted without argument; and until there is such a
thing as a fixed standard of musical taste this condition will remain,
for the musical taste of the teacher is by far the most potent factor in
the teaching of tone production.

Of late there have been vigorous efforts to establish a standard tone
for singers. This, according to the apostles of "Harmony in the ranks,"
is the one way of unifying the profession. As an argument this is
nothing short of picturesque, and can b