The adoption of the principle of group instruction at this level has had many significant advantages. It draws large numbers of pupils into group activities for the social value of the activity in itself and for the social value of participation in public life. It has lessened the cost of musical education many times over by training ten or a hundred pupils in a group as effectively, in many respects, as they could be trained by individual instruction. Group instruction has, perhaps, been the strongest leverage for the motivation of musical pursuits in the school. It has increased the pursuit of individual instruction on the basis of discovered needs, for example, in the mastery of a particular instrument for participation in the band or orchestra or in the development of a voice discovered in the group. The individual instruction has thus been motivated and made to fit into particular niches in the musical groups or in the choice of vocational pursuits in society. _Contests._ The development of contests both in individual and in group performance has had a profound effect on the development of music in youth and is destined to serve in large part as a clearinghouse. Educators recognize many drawbacks in the plan of contests. Preparation for the contests requires excessive time and highly trained teachers. A contest becomes an occasion for the revelation and the objectifying of differences in individuals and groups. It involves some little expense. It tends to discourage the pupils who cannot qualify. But let us look at the other side. In the state of Iowa, for example, the state-wide contests, which have been conducted for about the past ten years, have done far more than anything else to vitalize music education in the high school. Four years ago I became acquainted with a group of ten girls who came from a little town three hundred miles away. They had not placed in the contest; they had had no chance. I supposed that this contest would be the last that we should see of them, but the next year they appeared in a body--happy and optimistic, in a fighting mood--and won honors. I asked how they accounted for their success, and they said, "When we got home and reported that we had had no chance in the state contest, the commercial club of our town raised a purse and employed a teacher to come into the high school and train us in music." When the commercial club goes into its pockets in the interest of putting music on the map in its community, music is beginning to function in that community.