A LESSON IN MODULATION 
As against the view of extreme eugenicists, that musical ability is an inherited trait, which you 
either do or do not get from your parents, many psychologists claim that music is a universal, 
natural method of self-expression, and that every normal individual possesses the ability to 
develop it just as he possesses the ability to develop the power of expressing himself in 
English, or whatever his mother tongue may be. The numerous individuals who are 
considered or consider themselves ‘‘absolutely unmusical”’ are held to be the results of lack 
of education, or wrong methods of education, in this form of expression. Mrs. Fletcher- 
Copp has found that children, if allowed to develop their ability in a natural way, can soon 
reach achievements that many adults of long training cannot surpass. This photograph 
shows one of her means of teaching children modulation. By this simple piece of ap- 
paratus, on which different chords can be represented by movable pegs, no less than fifteen 
different simple ways of modulating can be easily taught to any child. With such a 
stock of experience, he will know more than the average teacher. Of 700 music teachers. 
Mrs. Fletcher-Copp says she found only three who could modulate easily and happily, 
and they did not pretend to understand what they were doing. (Fig. 6.) 
learns to read. English easily and well 
during the first six years of his school 
life (thac is from the age of six to twelve) ; 
he might just as easily learn during the 
same time to read fearlessly and well 
the universal language of Music. 
If you were to visit a public school 
and express surprise that the wash- 
woman’s daughter reads as well as the 
child of your own cultured neighbor, 
you would be told that “thanks to the 
System,”’ the advantages of birth are 
being wonderfully counterbalanced; 
that, though the effects of a few gen- 
erations of culture may tell in other 
ways, no one is dependent upon his 
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