As much as I need the time, I was glad to see the symphony schedule—Beethoven. Good. All those years in the practice room and on stage will come rolling back, focusing my attention on the necessities of professional performance, and on music that deserves that kind of attention. Lots of work, but oddly relaxing. Meditative.
And so it started. Thursday night’s rehearsal was a welcome release—I didn’t even mind the second bassoonist playing games on his cell phone at every opportunity or the new principal flutist, still a kid really, struggling with the New York Times crossword puzzle (why do people pursue professions that bore them—especially professions that don’t pay well?).
The program was a bit odd—After the Prometheus Overture, we’d play the Violin Concerto. At its premiere, the musicians were sight reading, and the soloist decided to sneak his own composition into the cadenzas—so it didn’t go off well. Beethoven shelved the violin version and converted it into a piano concerto. The violin version was forgotten. Fifty years later, however, the violin version was rediscovered, and the piano version was shelved. This concert would feature both.
Then Friday we met the soloists, a brother and sister team: Franziska Koenig on the violin, Iwan Koenig at the piano. OK.
The violin version went OK—she’s all about notes instead of the beauty of the phrasing inherent within those notes, but not bad. She can, at least, play those notes (and there’re lots of them), and overall, fine. A regional orchestra can’t pay the fees major artists charge, so management settles. It’s OK.
Then her brother takes the stage. Oy. “Attacking” the notes takes on new meaning, and it isn’t good. Noise. No phrasing at all. Nothing. Notes.
Beethoven added an extensive tympani part to the piano cadenza. News to the conductor and the timpanist, who had no such part. Iwan insisted on rehearsing this. The conductor explained that wouldn’t be possible until the next day. Iwan insisted. The conductor repeated that this wasn’t possible, adding that we were under time constraints and that the next day we could rehearse to his heart’s content.
“What kind of a rehearsal is this?” Iwan complained. “I have never played this with orchestra before. Tomorrow we must perform it.” He left the stage.
Just in case you’re wondering, no, this isn’t common behavior for a “professional.” One of the horn players behind me remarked, “Well—I haven’t seen THAT since college…”
Iwan’s parents were there (no, that’s not normal either--both siblings are adults) and (in German) turned him back to the stage.
Rehearsal finished. The next day, Iwan got all the time he wanted. Not a hitch (our timpanist is a professional). We played. She played. He played. We went home.
So much for a break from the bullshit.
Writer
Showing posts with label cell phone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cell phone. Show all posts
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Why "Can’t" (Doesn’t/Won’t) Johnny Write Well?
I’ve been listening to complaints about student writing for a few decades now. Professors complain that students can’t compose sentences, can’t construct paragraphs, can’t even demonstrate a command of seventh grade English grammar, and eschew anything resembling critical thinking or revision. Employers complain that colleges award degrees to functionally illiterate graduates. Students complain that high school doesn’t prepare them for college writing, and at the same time, complain that their courses require too much writing. High school teachers frantically try to teach writing while mostly teaching to the New York State Regents exams, all while handling large classes and behavior problems.
The usual culprits are the Internet, Instant Messaging and cell phone text messaging. Students are used to short, abbreviated language (lol, btw, and so forth), runs the argument, thereby atrophying written language skills.
I don’t buy it.
“I can design an assignment to interest and involve any student,” boasted a colleague, a student teacher supervisor, at a recent small group meeting for the National Writing Project (designed to bring high school teachers together with college professors to address the quality of student writing). “It’s just not that hard.” But this is the problem. Sure, engaging students is important, but often their entire high school education is nothing more than assignments such as these. Students write little more than agree/disagree statements, personal reflections, and other self-indulgent writing that dances along the surface of real issues, repeating stereotypes and generalities, rather than broaching any true analysis.
High school students then bring these habits to college, convinced that every article by a Native American is about getting kicked off the land, that every article about women is about how the media forces them to live their lives as bulimic Barbie dolls, that poverty exists because some people are lazy, that all the world’s problems would vanish if everyone would just support the President. The textbooks reinforce such superficial thinking, organized in pro/con fashion, promoting the simplistic view that every issue has two sides instead of delving into the multiple positions reflected in true debates.
Perhaps even worse is the commitment to the “Self Esteem Movement,” the idea that education should continually reinforce students’ self image. Who invented this nonsense? Granted, attacking students would be counterproductive, just shutting them down, but how does THIS help: “That’s OK, dear. I understand that you’re doing the best you can, so we’ll just lower the standards to your level so that you will then be doing well. Feel better?” That’s not encouragement. That’s not building self-esteem. That’s patronizing. That’s telling students, “I know you just aren't good enough to learn this material, so just never mind—it doesn’t really matter anyway.” It’s an insult, and a horrible thing to do to a child—or to a college student. Yet, SAT scoring was revised for exactly this reason.
So students learn to play the victim—and get rewarded for doing so. “I don’t get it,” they claim. “What specifically?” I ask. “Any of it,” comes the answer. A college student can’t understand a single word of an article. “Well then—there’s no way I can help you,” I inform them. That’s the point, right? They’ve completely blocked any avenue except telling them what to write. You should see the look of shock on their faces. But it’s true—once they throw their hands up, game over.
They’ve been taught to play the angles. Got behind? You had “family problems” or “personal issues.” Got a test, or a paper due? You weren’t feeling well that morning—but you’re feeling better later in the day and can get the paper done then. Challenged too much? Turn to your parents, or the Chair, or the Dean. Log on to professors.com and warn your classmates that this instructor teaches for real, and try (as the site explicitly notes) to get such instructors fired.
Current college structures aggravate the problem. Administration leans heavily on student evaluation of courses to assess instructors, ignoring the obvious point that students don’t yet have the skills to effectively judge faculty. So, the predictable happens—the goal is keeping students happy, not education. Reading assignments address students’ preferences instead of challenging them. Writing assignments are predictable and avoid any real difficulties. Students are given specific step by step guidelines to follow, instead of organizing their thoughts themselves. One of my colleagues stresses that she doesn’t worry about specifics, teaching instead “the joy of writing.” Give me a break. If you need a friend, get a dog. Students have friends—they need teachers.
I’m all for building self-esteem, but REAL self-esteem. Set high standards. Help students learn the skills needed to reach those standards. Let them try. Gently redirect them when they fall short. Have them try again. Encourage them. Have them try again, and again, until, as one of my students noted on her final assessment of her writing in my course, they “earn the coveted ‘Good.’” THAT’S self-esteem, knowing they’ve faced challenges and successfully mastered them, not just told so. After all, in the “real world,” they need demonstrable skills, not platitudes. True education should provide those skills.
I’m all for models, too, but not “Here, just do it this way” formulas. What true music teacher would teach an instrument without demonstrating that instrument for the student? Writing teachers must do the same—write for students. Explain the process as it unfolds. Note that the “answer” isn’t to “do it this way” but rather to begin to understand the abstract principles involved. And once learned, those abstract principles won’t mean instant success. Can a piano student master scales just because the teacher explained how to play them? Obviously not—weeks and months and years (depending on how high the students wishes to rise) of practice lie ahead.
And finally, writing instructors must themselves write. Would you take guitar lessons from someone who never played? Then why writing? No wonder students decide that since they’ve had a writing course in the past, they’re all set. What musician doesn’t realize that continual improvement is mandatory, and that excellence just means “get in line with the other excellent players”? Writing instructors must recognize the same--and maybe they'd stop teaching such damaging misinformation as "put a comma where you want a pause" instead of looking at sentence sense, or "forecast the next paragraph by abruptly changing the subject in the last sentence, repeating it in the first sentence of the next paragraph" instead of composing writing with clear direction, or "write a bunch of general sentences to slowly get to a point, then go back to general statements" instead of clearly developing ideas. Reaching a minimum word count doesn't equal effective writing.
How else can we show students that writing is a process, that writing well involves thinking and analysis, that writing can always improve—and that the journey is worth the effort?
Writer
The usual culprits are the Internet, Instant Messaging and cell phone text messaging. Students are used to short, abbreviated language (lol, btw, and so forth), runs the argument, thereby atrophying written language skills.
I don’t buy it.
“I can design an assignment to interest and involve any student,” boasted a colleague, a student teacher supervisor, at a recent small group meeting for the National Writing Project (designed to bring high school teachers together with college professors to address the quality of student writing). “It’s just not that hard.” But this is the problem. Sure, engaging students is important, but often their entire high school education is nothing more than assignments such as these. Students write little more than agree/disagree statements, personal reflections, and other self-indulgent writing that dances along the surface of real issues, repeating stereotypes and generalities, rather than broaching any true analysis.
High school students then bring these habits to college, convinced that every article by a Native American is about getting kicked off the land, that every article about women is about how the media forces them to live their lives as bulimic Barbie dolls, that poverty exists because some people are lazy, that all the world’s problems would vanish if everyone would just support the President. The textbooks reinforce such superficial thinking, organized in pro/con fashion, promoting the simplistic view that every issue has two sides instead of delving into the multiple positions reflected in true debates.
Perhaps even worse is the commitment to the “Self Esteem Movement,” the idea that education should continually reinforce students’ self image. Who invented this nonsense? Granted, attacking students would be counterproductive, just shutting them down, but how does THIS help: “That’s OK, dear. I understand that you’re doing the best you can, so we’ll just lower the standards to your level so that you will then be doing well. Feel better?” That’s not encouragement. That’s not building self-esteem. That’s patronizing. That’s telling students, “I know you just aren't good enough to learn this material, so just never mind—it doesn’t really matter anyway.” It’s an insult, and a horrible thing to do to a child—or to a college student. Yet, SAT scoring was revised for exactly this reason.
So students learn to play the victim—and get rewarded for doing so. “I don’t get it,” they claim. “What specifically?” I ask. “Any of it,” comes the answer. A college student can’t understand a single word of an article. “Well then—there’s no way I can help you,” I inform them. That’s the point, right? They’ve completely blocked any avenue except telling them what to write. You should see the look of shock on their faces. But it’s true—once they throw their hands up, game over.
They’ve been taught to play the angles. Got behind? You had “family problems” or “personal issues.” Got a test, or a paper due? You weren’t feeling well that morning—but you’re feeling better later in the day and can get the paper done then. Challenged too much? Turn to your parents, or the Chair, or the Dean. Log on to professors.com and warn your classmates that this instructor teaches for real, and try (as the site explicitly notes) to get such instructors fired.
Current college structures aggravate the problem. Administration leans heavily on student evaluation of courses to assess instructors, ignoring the obvious point that students don’t yet have the skills to effectively judge faculty. So, the predictable happens—the goal is keeping students happy, not education. Reading assignments address students’ preferences instead of challenging them. Writing assignments are predictable and avoid any real difficulties. Students are given specific step by step guidelines to follow, instead of organizing their thoughts themselves. One of my colleagues stresses that she doesn’t worry about specifics, teaching instead “the joy of writing.” Give me a break. If you need a friend, get a dog. Students have friends—they need teachers.
I’m all for building self-esteem, but REAL self-esteem. Set high standards. Help students learn the skills needed to reach those standards. Let them try. Gently redirect them when they fall short. Have them try again. Encourage them. Have them try again, and again, until, as one of my students noted on her final assessment of her writing in my course, they “earn the coveted ‘Good.’” THAT’S self-esteem, knowing they’ve faced challenges and successfully mastered them, not just told so. After all, in the “real world,” they need demonstrable skills, not platitudes. True education should provide those skills.
I’m all for models, too, but not “Here, just do it this way” formulas. What true music teacher would teach an instrument without demonstrating that instrument for the student? Writing teachers must do the same—write for students. Explain the process as it unfolds. Note that the “answer” isn’t to “do it this way” but rather to begin to understand the abstract principles involved. And once learned, those abstract principles won’t mean instant success. Can a piano student master scales just because the teacher explained how to play them? Obviously not—weeks and months and years (depending on how high the students wishes to rise) of practice lie ahead.
And finally, writing instructors must themselves write. Would you take guitar lessons from someone who never played? Then why writing? No wonder students decide that since they’ve had a writing course in the past, they’re all set. What musician doesn’t realize that continual improvement is mandatory, and that excellence just means “get in line with the other excellent players”? Writing instructors must recognize the same--and maybe they'd stop teaching such damaging misinformation as "put a comma where you want a pause" instead of looking at sentence sense, or "forecast the next paragraph by abruptly changing the subject in the last sentence, repeating it in the first sentence of the next paragraph" instead of composing writing with clear direction, or "write a bunch of general sentences to slowly get to a point, then go back to general statements" instead of clearly developing ideas. Reaching a minimum word count doesn't equal effective writing.
How else can we show students that writing is a process, that writing well involves thinking and analysis, that writing can always improve—and that the journey is worth the effort?
Writer
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
The Rewards of Rain
Everyday I take my dog down to the trails around Stony Pond for an hour or so, where I run or ski, depending on the weather. Much of the time we’re left to the geese, ducks and beavers, but now that the weather has turned sunny and warm, people regularly camp there, enjoying the peace and beauty of nature by building large fires, blaring radios and drinking lots of beer—often leaving the bottles and cans littered behind them the next morning, the remains of the fires still smoldering.
A family goes fishing, and crowds around the battery-powered TV they’ve brought, watching sitcoms. We pass a young woman on horseback, talking on her cell phone. Getting away from just some of it all, apparently.
During deer season, hunters park their campers here, choosing to hunt by walking the well-worn foot paths around the pond, waiting for the deer to give themselves up, rather than traveling into the woods where the deer live, coming out at night by the hundreds to graze in the fields. It’s just easier, I guess, near the comfort of the camper.
Leaving the comfort of the noise, the truck cabins, the telecommunications and the sunny weather has its rewards. One rainy spring morning, for instance, my dog found a fawn hiding just around a tree trunk (we apparently surprised the doe)—just about 18” long. When I investigated, the fawn bellowed (damn, those things have lungs!) and wobbled to its feet—it could just barely stand—and bellowed again. It was the cutest little creature—head far too large for its body, legs far too skinny—the usual “I’m small now but I’ll soon grow big” syndrome we recognize in puppies of large breeds. I quickly led my dog away, leaving the youngster to the unseen doe, but those few precious moments remain a happy memory.
Before I moved to the country, I regularly escaped on weekends to the Adirondacks, especially to hike in the High Peaks region—Giant, Marcy, Wright Peak, and other mountains in the Lake Placid/Keene Valley area. One Saturday, desperately needing to get away and clear my head, I decided to ignore the rainy weather and climb Algonquin Peak, the second highest point in New York State and doable within a day (the drive there and the climb). Of course, climbing in a drizzle means walking in a dense, gray fog, and today was no exception. I saw none of the spectacular views—I could barely see twenty feet ahead, just following the trail (and my dog) as trees continually emerged from the mist. This became a real problem when I reached the tree line, nervously trusting my dog’s nose to find the trail, now just rock, trees gone, using the occasional cairns as confirmation rather than guides as intended. I started to worry about finding the trail down again, when the fog started to clear a bit. As I climbed higher, I saw why, and scrambled to the summit—we had climbed above the clouds, and were now standing in bright sunshine on an island of rock surrounded by a fluffy white carpet stretching across the sky in every direction. It remains to this day perhaps the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.
Not that I’m recommending climbing the High Peaks alone in the rain—on another occasion, an excursion up Mt. Colden, I got turned around in the fog and wandered about for a few scary hours before finding the proper trail again. I forced myself to stop and change into fresh, dry polypropylene underwear and wool clothing. Freshly dressed, warm and dry, I started shivering nonstop—I had been in the initial phase of hypothermia, the first sign of which is poor judgment. (Ironically, I had stopped to change only to ensure that doing so would be a habit in case I ever did get hypothermia. “Ah,” I noted to myself, “THAT’S why I have that ‘make it a habit’ rule.”) I hurried down the mountain to a lean-to, built a fire, laid out my thermal pad and sleeping bag, and prepared a warm dinner. Crisis averted, but lesson learned—almost the very hard way.
Back home, away from the spectacular views and the dangers of the mountains, rain can certainly be a nuisance, turning the clay soil into a soggy, muddy mess for days at a time, making dry feet impossible unless I keep a pair of socks and shoes in the car. In the spring, I don't even try for clean clothes, as a single splash will muddy my pants. But at the same time, relaxing in a lawn chair, watching the birds dart through the tree branches, taking in the fresh scent, listening to the sound of rain on my shed’s aluminum roof, catching up on some reading–this is not a bad way to spend an afternoon.
Not counting when my wet, muddy dog rushes into my lap.
Writer
A family goes fishing, and crowds around the battery-powered TV they’ve brought, watching sitcoms. We pass a young woman on horseback, talking on her cell phone. Getting away from just some of it all, apparently.
During deer season, hunters park their campers here, choosing to hunt by walking the well-worn foot paths around the pond, waiting for the deer to give themselves up, rather than traveling into the woods where the deer live, coming out at night by the hundreds to graze in the fields. It’s just easier, I guess, near the comfort of the camper.
Leaving the comfort of the noise, the truck cabins, the telecommunications and the sunny weather has its rewards. One rainy spring morning, for instance, my dog found a fawn hiding just around a tree trunk (we apparently surprised the doe)—just about 18” long. When I investigated, the fawn bellowed (damn, those things have lungs!) and wobbled to its feet—it could just barely stand—and bellowed again. It was the cutest little creature—head far too large for its body, legs far too skinny—the usual “I’m small now but I’ll soon grow big” syndrome we recognize in puppies of large breeds. I quickly led my dog away, leaving the youngster to the unseen doe, but those few precious moments remain a happy memory.
Before I moved to the country, I regularly escaped on weekends to the Adirondacks, especially to hike in the High Peaks region—Giant, Marcy, Wright Peak, and other mountains in the Lake Placid/Keene Valley area. One Saturday, desperately needing to get away and clear my head, I decided to ignore the rainy weather and climb Algonquin Peak, the second highest point in New York State and doable within a day (the drive there and the climb). Of course, climbing in a drizzle means walking in a dense, gray fog, and today was no exception. I saw none of the spectacular views—I could barely see twenty feet ahead, just following the trail (and my dog) as trees continually emerged from the mist. This became a real problem when I reached the tree line, nervously trusting my dog’s nose to find the trail, now just rock, trees gone, using the occasional cairns as confirmation rather than guides as intended. I started to worry about finding the trail down again, when the fog started to clear a bit. As I climbed higher, I saw why, and scrambled to the summit—we had climbed above the clouds, and were now standing in bright sunshine on an island of rock surrounded by a fluffy white carpet stretching across the sky in every direction. It remains to this day perhaps the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.
Not that I’m recommending climbing the High Peaks alone in the rain—on another occasion, an excursion up Mt. Colden, I got turned around in the fog and wandered about for a few scary hours before finding the proper trail again. I forced myself to stop and change into fresh, dry polypropylene underwear and wool clothing. Freshly dressed, warm and dry, I started shivering nonstop—I had been in the initial phase of hypothermia, the first sign of which is poor judgment. (Ironically, I had stopped to change only to ensure that doing so would be a habit in case I ever did get hypothermia. “Ah,” I noted to myself, “THAT’S why I have that ‘make it a habit’ rule.”) I hurried down the mountain to a lean-to, built a fire, laid out my thermal pad and sleeping bag, and prepared a warm dinner. Crisis averted, but lesson learned—almost the very hard way.
Back home, away from the spectacular views and the dangers of the mountains, rain can certainly be a nuisance, turning the clay soil into a soggy, muddy mess for days at a time, making dry feet impossible unless I keep a pair of socks and shoes in the car. In the spring, I don't even try for clean clothes, as a single splash will muddy my pants. But at the same time, relaxing in a lawn chair, watching the birds dart through the tree branches, taking in the fresh scent, listening to the sound of rain on my shed’s aluminum roof, catching up on some reading–this is not a bad way to spend an afternoon.
Not counting when my wet, muddy dog rushes into my lap.
Writer
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