Rain

57Gregy


My house-mate's grandson is in his high school marching band. Since the school system no longer supports music education, each kid has to pay to be in the band.
For Winter Band, the kids had to sell Krispy Kreme doughnuts to pay the band director.

Really?!! Man, that's sad.


In Quebec, when I grew up, music lessons where part of the program until the 7th grade, then, optional. I'm not sure about nowadays. But as w/ anything public school, it was all very basic and by the end of your 7th grade, you could walk out of there not knowing a thing. Same way the majority of the people I went to school w/ can't speak english to save their life, even if we had the same lessons. 


I was talking to a friend from Switzerland a couple of years ago and their education system held students to a much higher standards. You couldn't just sit through, and you actually learned - so she did get a musical education, whether she wanted it or not. lol

No kidding...  You'd think the Taliban (who have laws against music) were in charge.

I remember music lessons at school where the teacher would bring in one of those little portable turntables (wooden box with oval shaped speaker on front), he'd put on some Debussy or Peter and the Wolf or something and we'd discuss what the composer was trying to convey and what was going on in the score. I doubt they do that much anymore. 

Also, we'd sing songs as a group from the sheet music, and even if you'd never read a note in your life, you could follow the melody from a combination of listening to everyone else and observing how much the notes went up or down. Somehow we all managed to sing the right tune. 

I also remember a music teacher at age 10, around 1983 or so, who played us reggae and gave us these cool textbooks that had pop quizzes about Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. We also sang a lot of Beatles songs. Sad if kids aren't getting music lessons like that now. 

I remember meeting my music teacher from 3rd grade years later at an event where I was playing w/ my band. He was happy to see that I'd finally gotten into music.

Poor man - teaching a bunch of hyperactive 8 year old brats how to play the recorder must have been a heck of a job. 4 or 5 out of 30 may have paid attention - usually they were the kids who also had private music lessons outside of school... They were easily spotted too - they were the ones who didn't play the same basic plastic recorders as the rest of us. 

Peter and the Wolf!  Ha!  I had that on an album and just about wore it out when I was young.  Good stuff.