It is now becoming generally recognised that the interest of the young in music may be expressed in intellectual and emotional enjoyment, and not only instrumentally and vocally. In other words we realise that good listeners and appreciative understanders of music are, in their way, as essential as executants. "Shocking as it may seem, hundreds of children 'learn music' for the length of their school life and never hear a masterpiece, and indeed, hear no music at all except such as their own untrained musical sense and half-trained fingers can compass."[21] In increasing measure the teaching of music appreciation is coming into vogue, and as an aid to this the piano-player and gramophone are demonstrating their value. The slogan of the musical advance guard is "a gramophone in every school." Teachers who are competent to give first-class expositions of the classics in schools are naturally few and far between, and it would be impossible for even the first-class, with the best will in the world, to cover a range in any way commensurate with that which can be reached mechanically. Therefore the mechanical piano-player with a constant change of rolls, and the gramophone with its ever-increasing list of records, are adjuncts to education which are at present only in the stage of small beginnings. They possess drawbacks and disadvantages, of course, but these are far outweighed by the many solid points that tell in their favour. [Note 21: Percy Scholes. "Everyman and his Music."] The standard of musical accomplishment to be found in the various schools is of very wide range. In the elementary schools there is a certain uniformity of scheme, if not of achievement. But in the Public Schools, and in the preparatory schools which act as feeders to them, there is no uniformity of scheme, and the range of achievement is from a very great deal to just nothing at all. Too much depends upon the individual outlook of the Headmaster. If he be musical, then the music prospers: but if he be not interested in the subject, then the music languishes accordingly. This is not rational. Either music has its value as an educational subject, in which case it ought to be in the curriculum independent of the vagaries of the Headmaster for the time being; or else it has no educational value, and should never be there. Whims in such a matter are out of place: but they are nevertheless too often a deciding factor. In many schools music is frankly regarded as a nuisance, a sort of frilling that is inappropriate to the rigid texture of education. It touches the emotions, and the Public School man has a horror of being even so much as suspected of having emotions.