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Music as the Educational Mean in the Making of the "Socialist Man": Music Education in Primary Schools of Croatia (1945-1965)

The task of education and the school system in the first two post-war decades of the Communist Party rule in Croatia was to create “all-round developed socialist men” who would suit the community’s interests by their characteristics. The whole teaching process should have been synchronised to the politics of the ruling class, and to transmit by the school system the ideological principles to younger generations and thus guarantee the implementation of party directives. The curricula in primary teaching proscribed the realisation of very ambitious aims and tasks. A new concert public belonging to the widest working layers of people should have been educated by music teaching, music should have been made a cultural need for all citizens of the country. Such a projection was hardly achievable. The discrepancy between high art and wider layers of society, also visible in the area of music education, could not have been surpassed quickly and easily. The few and insufficiently professionally trained and competent teachers’ personnel did not succeed to adapt quickly enough to ambitious curricula and the educated public’s demands. Enthusiasm and belief in new art’s tasks helped a great effort to be put in the attempt to bring music closer to the young, but despite all the anticipated music education results were humbler than expected. Based on the curricula and cultural and pedagogical magazines texts, this article has offered an insight into the aims and tasks of music education and by using archives documentation and personal testimonies it has considered the results of their implementation in the teaching process.

Primary School ; Teaching process ; Musical education ; Socialism ; Communist Party ; Croatia ; XXth Century

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