Klarinet Archive - Posting 000284.txt from 2000/12

From: "Jennifer H. Jones" <jjones@-----.EDU>
Subj: RE: [kl] Legere Reeds
Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2000 20:19:11 -0500

Lelia,

I find it rather ironically amusing that you don't include in the list of
responses below, the one you exhibited as the "War of the Tony and the Neil"
started to smolder again. Surely, the child could remain silent, prosper on
the clarinet and interject a clever statement or two that convinces the adults
that there may be a better way to exchange ideas, even if they have to be a
bit more disciplined in expressing their frustrations.

-Jennifer H. Jones

Sophomore botany major, wannabe double music major
University of California, Riverside
Co-principal UCR Orhestra

>@-----.org =====
> 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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