This article is an attempt to explore what we Secondary School Music Teachers should do in our music lessons. To illuminate this problem the author postulates two rôles which he believes many music teachers adopt more or less whole-heartedly: the ‘Instructor’, who passes on a body of received skills, information and perhaps values; and the ‘Enabler’, who sets up conditions in which his or her pupils may discover music.

Although both rôles can be fruitful in some areas of the music curriculum, the author considers them inadequate, and attempts to describe a new role which teachers might find more helpful. He outlines ways in which the teacher who adopts this role might operate when teaching Composition, Literature Studies, Audition, Skills and Performance (C(L)A(S)P).

The article begins with a justification of peripatetic instrumental teaching in maintained schools, and counters the two-pronged attack of financial cuts by local education authorities, and the accusation of ‘elitism’.

Much of the information concerning selection for instrumental tuition was gathered by means of a questionnaire amongst the peripatetic staff from nine L.E.A.s. A summary of the results appears in the article.

One of the main recommendations suggests the setting up of a ‘preliminary instrumental course’, which uses the results of the investigation to provide a more efficient method of selection.

The popular view that ‘the gifted can look after themselves’ is considered with reference to the identification of gifted orchestral instrumentalists. Among agroup of professional orchestral musicians, a substantial number are found to have started lessons on their principal instrument not on their own initiative, but on that of their school. The absence of a ‘method’ for the identification of gifted instrumentalists is considered, and some ways whereby the music teacher may develop an environment in which more gifted instrumentalists identify themselves are suggested.

The development of the guitar in the twentieth century has been sufficiently significant to warrant inclusion at all levels of music education. This article considers the extent and manner of its educational involvement and questions whether the response to the instrument has reflected its true potential.

‘Project’ is something of a misnomer for the complicated string teaching organisation which now involves some thousand young string players, twenty ILEA schools in and around the Tower Hamlets area, and 35 qualified string teachers, mostly on a part-time basis. At no time in the early days was any such structure projected: it has grown up as a result of experience and considerable generosity on the part of the ILEA in allowing scope for experimentation and expansion.

For seventy years of my life I have been a supporter of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music examinations: first as a pupil, going through Grades 1–8, and then the L.R.A.M., and then as a teacher, guiding my pupils through the grades and stopping at the diploma. So I have had many, many opportunities of evaluating the work of the examinations, and to a lesser extent those of Trinity College of Music, theirs appearing less frequently. What strikes me – after probing in my memories – is how little they have changed! Surely some new thoughts should peep through the pages!