Where children learn to sing again

In a small rural school in Central China, a group of children stood in a dim meeting room, raising their hands in unfamiliar signs — do, re, mi, fa, sol.

Their teacher, Wu Yuzheng, had never practiced these gestures herself until Edit Lanczky, a music teacher from the Beijing Hungarian Cultural Institute, arrived in Macheng city, Hubei province, earlier this year and introduced an idea rarely heard of in local classrooms: the Kodaly Method.

It was hard to imagine that the method, developed by Hungarian music educator Zoltan Kodaly in the last century, could take root in a school where most children had never sung a complete song.

Wu, now 28 and in her fifth year of teaching, began her career at Macheng No 2 Experimental Primary School in Hubei after graduating, where she was teaching music by the textbook.

However, when she lost her role as choir director last year she hoped a new environment might give her a fresh start, so she applied for a one-year placement to teach at Huangshi Primary School — about 70 kilometers away from the Macheng campus — on one condition: she would teach music only, because generally, teachers who volunteer in rural areas are also required to teach Chinese and math.

In 2023, Macheng launched an "Education Community" reform to integrate urban and rural schools and share resources. As a leading partner school, Wu's original campus was paired with four rural primary schools, one of which was Huangshi Primary School.

With seven classes and around 200 students, Principal Li Yi explains that most students at Huangshi Primary School are leftbehind children (whose parents work far from home and leave them in the care of grandparents or relatives), and the school is shorthanded across all subjects. He agreed to Wu's request simply because the school had never had a proper music teacher — Chinese or math teachers would just fill in when needed.

"Could I start a choir here?" The idea evaporated the moment Wu entered the classroom. Even the sixth-graders who were about to graduate could not sing a complete song. "The lyrics and rhythm were a total mess," she says.

Near the end of her first semester, she was not satisfied with their progress and was beginning to grow anxious. "If I keep teaching like this, they still won't be able to sing."

It was at this time, though, that a notice arrived from her original school: the Beijing Deqing Foundation was offering a three-day Kodaly Method training session in Huanggang, the city overseeing Macheng.

Her name was not on the list. Normally she would have just accepted the fact, but this time, she sent a long message to the school's leaders asking for a place in the program.

In January, Lanczky arrived in Huanggang. With no seats available, Wu sat on a tiny stool in the aisle among 365 music teachers from Hunan and Hubei studying the Kodaly pedagogy.

Lanczky has been promoting the Kodaly Method across Chinese counties since 2019 in a bid to support rural choral education. The method teaches music through games, body movement and the voice, with hand signs for pitches being its most famous feature.

After World War II, it became Hungary's dominant music education method and was inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2016.

In the first class, when Lanczky demonstrated Kodaly hand signs and asked for a volunteer, Wu was the first to step forward. She seized every chance to interact with Lanczky.

At the end of the course, Lanczky invited her and four others to an advanced class to apply the method to choir practice. When it opened in March, Wu was the only one without a choir and had to choose: form one immediately or wait for the next session.

"How could there be a 'next time'?" She refused to let it slip away.

Selecting choir members was the first step. She started simply, humming a pitch for each child to match, but out of 200 students, only about 10 were successful. Expanding her criteria to include good rhythm, she eventually chose 28 students, though some later withdrew under academic pressure, leaving around 20.

Every Wednesday at 8:30 am, Lanczky met Wu and the other teachers via a video conference call. During the three-hour class, she assigned homework, asking them to record their lessons and document their students' progress. She was professional and to the point, identifying mistakes immediately.

The course lasted three months, and Wu often felt overwhelmed by the assignments, especially because her students had the weakest foundation among the five choirs.

Rehearsal conditions were harsh. With no spare classrooms, they held rehearsals in the school's meeting room after lunch or after school. Equipment such as music stands and keyboards had to be bought with her or the principal's own money. They even had no choir risers — until the principal, who also taught art, drew the design himself and hired a village carpenter to build it.

Still, Wu insisted, "If our children can learn well, that will prove the method works."

And the students understood — one day, though no rehearsal was scheduled, she found the two section leaders themselves leading all the members in practice. She then promised to take them to perform at Macheng No 2 Experimental Primary School, which had an upcoming event.

She wanted them to look beautiful onstage, but the 100-yuan ($14.2) performance outfits were expensive for rural families, and one child even considered leaving the choir.

To gain their support, Wu held a parents' meeting and let them hear the children sing. As she conducted, tears streamed down her face, and soon the parents were crying too. One father said, "I'll buy it. I can't bear to not support her. She loves music so much."

On performance day, the girls wore white dresses and the boys wore vests as they stepped onto the "city school" stage they had long imagined. They were nervous, but their eyes searched the audience for familiar faces — former teachers, classmates who had transferred — hoping to be seen. They sang a piece adapted from classical poetry: "Green Trees Cast Deep Shade and Summer Days Stretch Long."

Their parting, too, would come in summer. The day before she left, students wrote her cards: some said she was a beautiful teacher, some called her strict, and others energetic.

The final Kodaly class was held offline. Wu presented her final assignment — a complete performance video. Lanczky asked, "Are these the same children you started with? If you hadn't told me, I would have thought they were different."

Lanczky says, "I know how difficult it was for Wu and her choir. You can see it in the video — their conditions are not good, and the children's foundation is weak." She hopes Chinese teachers will remain open and willing to try new ideas — even just once.

Back at her urban school, Wu now focuses on making sure every child enjoys music. Her year in the countryside reflects the defining line of Kodaly's theory: "Music belongs to everybody." It is the birthright of every child, no matter where they are from.

Bai Shuhao contributed to this story.