EDUCATION OF STUDENTS’ SPIRITUAL AND MORAL VALUES BY MEANS OF MUSICAL ART

In this study, the pedagogical potential of musical art which contributes to the education of students’ spiritual and moral values as well as students’ inner world and provides the formation of students’ active social position, was examined. The authors made an attempt to prove that the specificity of the perception of the world and the variability of activities, which the art academic subjects can offer, facilitate the education of students’ tolerance, humanity, readiness for mutual cooperation and a sense of human dignity, that is, moral values of students that are considered to be the essential elements of whole-person education. The ultimate goal of musical art is to convey positive spiritual experiences of generations concentrated in musical works. Therefore, while contacting with the contents of music pieces in class, students, through activities, perceive and actualize moral principles, form concepts, and build a paradigm of spiritual and moral values. The music teacher’s mission is to guide classroom activities so that the spiritual and moral contents of musical works could reach the soul of students. In this paper, a copyright curriculum and teaching methods of musical education in modern school are presented. Music pre-service teachers’ professional competency is determined. The principles of personal and activity approaches became the methodological basis of the research. The leading research methods implemented in this study were: psychological and pedagogical sources’ analysis, data compilation, questionnaires, pedagogical experiment. The results, obtained during the experiment, were evaluated by M. Rokich and M. I. Shilova methodology aiming at the identification of a personality’s moral culture. The test measuring the level of moral education was exploited to evaluate students’ moral and aesthetic appreciation of music pieces. The authors’ research, due to the theoretical and experimental studies, resulted in revealing the pedagogical potential and the effectiveness of means of musical art for educating students’ spiritual and moral values.