The Future of Education

This article used the principles of ethnomusicology study such as documentary and fieldwork studies. This article aims to demonstrate the teaching process of Lao traditional music that preserves present Lao society. The result shows that the teaching process of Lao traditional music has two teaching processes that are from government and private schools. In the past, before becoming music students, the students of both processes had to pass the teacher’s selection process and the Wai Kru ceremony before commencing their study. In the teacher’s selection process, teachers would evaluate how determined the candidates were, and if they passed this process, they had to join the Wai Kru ceremony to become music students completely. The Wai Kru ceremony is the ceremony in which students pay respect to their teacher. In the end, if they underwent the ceremony, they would completely become music students. In the teaching process, teachers in each institute taught by oral teaching, which is one of the most common teaching processes in South East Asia, especially in Lao, Thailand, Myanmar, and Cambodia. The teacher hummed, sang or played an instrument for a musical phrase or melody to students, and then they had to play along that melody until finishing the piece without notation. At present, in the government teaching process, they open the National School of Music and Dance for youths who are interested in music and performing arts to conserve and improve music art. They have created the curriculum including general subjects and professional subjects. In the professional subjects, they have kept the oral teaching process up until present. Nowadays, they have developed their notation for saving their pieces and then used those scores for teaching. Therefore, since the past to present, they have maintained the traditional music culture and also developed their teaching process to pass on the art of music to the next generation.

Keywords: Teaching process, Lao traditional music;