Klarinet Archive - Posting 000020.txt from 1999/11

From: "Rien Stein" <rstein@-----.nl>
Subj: [kl] Should the embouchure move - a far way off
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 03:04:59 -0500

I have followed the line about moving embouchures with great interest. I
already mentioned on this list, that I sometimes stand behind my pupil and
let him or her blow, whilst I play the notes. It is in this position
absolutely unnecessary to touch the pupil - I tried it today with a 38-years
old female saxophone pupil. I told her about this discussion, and asked her,
whether she was willing to take the experiment. Of course we know one
another rather thoroughly, so I could make this experiment. Her comment
afterwards was: "I had the same experience I think Martine - her ten years
old daughter, a student on clarinet - had: my elbows are hard in her side.

This however, is not what I want to relate to you. When reading the whole
discussion, also where it was diverging into a more or less "take care, or
you'll be sued" warning, some old feelings awoke in me. I worked in the USA,
in Atlanta, Georgia, to be precise, in 1968. One of the feelings that I
still have about that time, is, that the USA are a beautiful country, but I
wouldn't like to live there. One of the main reasons is exactly what has
been a topic in this line: sueing for things you maybe never did, but as you
cannot prove you didn't do it, you will have to pay for having done it.
Here, in the Netherlands, you are not guilty unless you have been proven to
be guilty. This point of view sometimes als leads to excesses, of course,
and to unfulfilled feelings of revenge, but gives you a lot more feelings of
safety. When I worked in Atlanta I became sharply aware of this difference.
And wondered even more, then I did before I visited the USA, how the
Americans came to the idea that they were living in "Gods own country", a
phrase, pronounced not only by Nixon, but also by that cowboy Reagan
(luckily it was not he, who was president at the outbreak of the Gulf War)
or his successor Bush, and even by Clinton. I was shocked to learn students
with the Georgia Tech could get credits by entering the ROTC, what has God
to do with armies? I am a protestant christian respecting other religions,
but with little respect for fanatism. And you "Americans" - the USA are NOT
America, mind! - had an almost fundamentalistic, religious belief this
country, the country of the founding fathers, was the best place on earth.

Now of course I must be honoust: when I was a teacher of mathematics in
secondary school I also had female pupils, of which I always clearly
announced I would take care never to be in a class room alone with. So when
one of these girls suddenly tried to bring me into court because I would
have tried to feel her breasts, among my colleagues many could wittness what
I had said about this girl. Now of course when you help someone to learn to
play an instrument, the situation is somewhat different.

Greetings

Rien

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