Music education in primary compulsory schools in Croatia and Serbia from 1945 to 1990, in the context of school curricula

After the Second World War, one of the priorities of cultural policy in the domain of music was the music education of young generations, which was essential to begin with at an early age. Its goal was to form a versatile person prepared for future work and social tasks, an active participant in the cultural and artistic life of his/her environment. Due to the insufficient researches conducted so far on musical education practices in the immediate post second World War period, in this paper we track the contents of the curricula in Croatia and Serbia. It’s our intention to emphasize the similarities and the differences in the music educational processes in the two biggest republics of the former Yugoslavia - from the initial lining on the soviet pedagogy trough reforms and changes to a unified conception of schooling on a federal level. The research shows that the curricula were constantly changed and supplemented in the first years after the war. Numerous changes resulted in the changed number of teaching hours and the teaching content, which year by year became more ambitious. The analysis of the curricula from the sixties onwards pointed to new guidelines which advocated the shift from active music playing and acquiring musical literacy to the concept of auditory perception and learning of musicological terminology. Each new syllabus was modified in accordance with the previous one, while taking into account the possibilities of their implementation in practice. Approaching contemporary pedagogical approaches was reflected in the requirements for the application of the model of active participation in the teaching process, the introduction of technological tools and openness to popular music practices.