Hmmmm, your point is well taken ... I too do not know the answer for
sure. Either way, it sounds to me as if you had one hell of a
program in place for those young people, for which you are to be
commended.
Dean
On May 26, 2007, at 8:13 PM, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote:
At 12:02 PM 5/26/2007 -0700, Dean M. Estabrook wrote:
I would think, if anything, that their views would widen when exposed
to tonal music, IF they had the previous training you gave them.
Just to clarify, though I taught music, I didn't give them training
in the
traditional sense. I gave them opportunities to put hand-to-music,
as it
were, and to engage a wide variety of sonic experiences -- including
listening into how their favorite pop songs worked. It was a
process of
ongoing discovery. Everyone learned to play an instrument and to
read music
as well as to write music; even the third-graders had to suggest
and even
to some degree defend their choices of notation, for example. I
avoided as
much as possible an implication of judgment while providing tools of
discernment. (Yeah, my whole approach crazified the lesson-plan-bound
administration.)
Sorry for the long preface, but here's an analogy: Even with an
intense
early training in a language, even where it was the first language of
children in a household, a language can be forgotten when
overwhelmed by
the dominant language of the culture.
My father grew up speaking Hungarian and going to a German-speaking
school
(in rural New Jersey, not Europe), and only started to learn
English after
he was ten years old (when the family moved to New York in 1928). His
German was long gone by the 1950s, and after his father died, the
Hungarian
started to disappear as well.
It doesn't even take that long. I have some friends in the
Netherlands, one
of whom has been working in England for the past five years. When
we were
all visiting in Utrecht a few weeks ago, his brother-in-law
complained that
his Dutch had really gone to the dogs -- no longer properly idiomatic.
One would hope early experiences provide a basis for a wider view,
but I'm
not optimistic about how much pressure a dominant culture can exert.
Dennis
Please participate in my 2007 project:
http://maltedmedia.com/waam/
My "We Are All Mozart" blog:
http://maltedmedia.com/bathory/waam-blog.html
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Dean M. Estabrook
http://deanestabrook.googlepages.com/home
Of all hoaxes, the one which is my most vexing bête noire on a
quotidian basis, is the cereal box top which informs simply,
"Lift Tab to Open." Then, "To Close, Insert Tab Here ." Yeah,
right! In attempting to accomplish the first direction, not only
the tab but also the slit intended to accept the aforementioned
protuberance have both been irreparably disfigured and rendered
dysfunctional. This debacle is then amplified by the misbehavior
of the recalcitrant inner bag, which can not be unsealed sans
mangling it, and hence, will not disperse its contents without
exiting the box itself. All I wanted was a bowl of cereal.
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