The Manhattanville Music Curriculum Program の幼児・児童教育観 : 幼児・児童用カリキュラムであるInteractionに着目して

The Manhattanville Music Curriculum Program (MMCP) was one of the most influential projects in music education in the context of the curriculum reform movement in the 1960s in the United States. The most famous curriculum developed by the MMCP was Synthesis for grades 3 to 12; however, the MMCP also created the curriculum named Interaction for younger children. This study aimed to clarify the MMCP’s educational view of preschool-age and school-age children by examining the structure of Interaction. An analysis of the curriculum revealed the following three distinguishing characteristics: (1) the goal of Interaction was to offer the experience of the creative process itself; (2) by way of preparation for musical improvisation, the curriculum included stages of exploration that examined the character of sounds in a physical way; and (3) the class units were referred to as “encounters,” and the main activity in those encounters was improvisation in a non-Western musical fashion. The result was that the MMCP brought flexibility into its educational view by avoiding conventional sounds in the classroom.