Klarinet Archive - Posting 000257.txt from 2000/12

From: rgarrett@-----.edu
Subj: Re: [kl] Legere Reeds
Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2000 11:47:25 -0500

Nancy -

Didn't you say this student is a 4th grader?

RG

At 10:45 AM 12/5/00 -0500, you wrote:
> Nancy Buckman wrote,
> >This instructor had the nerve to suggest that the child would be better off
> >with another private teacher. Maybe I'm wrong, but I have no time to spend
> >trying to educate someone with this mindset. This child has been accepted
> >into the clinic orchestra of our local training orchestra, plastic reed and
> >all. If she chooses to end participation in this man's class, it won't be
> >any great loss to her. He is the one who loses out.
>
>This power stuggle gives you and the band teacher such a perfect opportunity
>to help this child learn, at an early age, an important lesson in how to deal
>with being powerless and trapped between two authority figures who force her
>to choose between them. This sort of thing will happen to her again and
>again in life. Better she should learn early. No doubt she will be grateful
>to both of you later.
>
>Your student now has at least five equally attractive options:
>
>1. She can learn to play, "Oh, Poor Little Helpless Me," by passively
>leaving the decision up to her parents. Then anything that goes wrong will
>be their fault, not hers. Blaming other people will no doubt prove a
>comforting strategy in the future, whenever things go wrong.
>2. She can bravely take sides and prepare to justify her decision against
>either the band teacher's partisans or your partisans, who will villify the
>child for her disloyalty no matter which of you she chooses. Standing up
>against heavy pressure from adults and her peers will be a character-building
>experience for her.
>3. She can take responsibility, blame herself for everybody's anger, and
>suffer an injury, get sick, go crazy, or maybe even try to kill herself.
>That way, she avoids making a bad decision, while she inspires pity.
>Everyone knows the old saying, "Pity is akin to love." Learning how to wish
>disability on herself in order to do penance or escape a no-win situation is
>such a useful skill!
>4. The simplest solution: Quit the clarinet. Of course, that would make her
>a quitter, but who cares? Even if she does care, she can always decide that
>she has no talent anyway (or else she would have played much too well to have
>gotten herself into this mess, right?), and therefore quitting now is nobler
>than wasting more of her parents' money, isn't it?
>5. She may be clever enough and mature enough to figure out which side is
>stronger, then side with the winner. It's never too early to learn hypocrisy
>and cynicism, the foundation blocks of the win-at-any-cost personality so
>covetted in today's business world.
>
>Which do you think she will do?
>
>Lelia
>
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Roger Garrett
Assistant Professor of Clarinet
Director, Symphonic Winds
Head, Recording Studio
Illinois Wesleyan University
School of Music
Bloomington, IL 61702-2900
(309) 556-3268

"A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes
another's."
Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825)

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