The purpose of this study is to further prosper and raise educational effects of
Korean traditional music education for the secondary students at schools for the
visually impaired. To achieve the purpose, music teachers from schools for the
visually impaired have participated in the research to answer a questionnaire designed
to show the state of Korean music education in their school. Analysis and
consideration over answers on the questionnaire led to following results.
First, participants were well aware of the value of teaching Korean traditional
music as more than half of them agreed that Korean traditional music should be given
with equal ratio in the curriculum as western music. They also had common idea that
poor educational environments mainly cause from teachers' low proficiency and lack
of educational tools for teaching Korean traditional music. Therefore, it seems urgent
to enhance teachers' skill and to raise professionalism of the lesson through a
solution like inviting professional Korean traditional musicians to school. Moreover, it
is also highly recommended that schools have a separated classroom to teach and
practice Korean traditional music and be prepared with a wide variety of traditional
musical instruments considering the fact that schools mostly have very limited
choices for the instruments except Janggu(Korean drum).
Second, according to participants' answer about curriculum, they comparatively
seemed to be satisfied with the quota that Korean traditional music has in the
curriculum and they generally thought the purpose of Korean traditional music education should be helping students to better understand Korean traditional culture,
to gain higher creativity and to develop their talent. For the ways to perform more
effective tutoring, teachers wanted to improve their skill in advance of teaching
Korean classical music to students by joining workshop or practical lesson, and they
also said teaching and evaluation to students must be done individually by
one-to-one tutoring system for the sake of practical skills.
Third, Korean traditional music lesson helps students to gain more favorable
impression about classical Korean music, to better understand overall music
education, and also sometimes does remarkable role for letting students find their
talent that may lead to professional level. Still, there were factors that rein in
normalization of Korean traditional music education. Current Korean society
excessively favors pop culture over it's cultural heritage, and policy supports for
Korean traditional music education are generally less than expected. As for valuable
suggestions, participants in the study asked for appropriate extra music lessons,
after-school activities, and more professionalized personnel.