Klarinet Archive - Posting 001209.txt from 2004/03

From: ormondtoby@-----.net (Ormondtoby Montoya)
Subj: RE: [kl] not just the music department
Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2004 23:55:41 -0500

Karin=A0Berman wrote:

> [snip about her own experiences] A lot
> depends on the personality of the child with
> the difficulty.

Today I spent 6 hours at a rehearsal with a mixture of high school kids,
some with real skills and some with handicaps. It's not appropriate to
recount the details here; but if I wasn't already convinced, I would now
be !Absolutely! convinced how valuable it is to mix children of
different abilities together.

At some point farther down the line, you need to choose the best
performers and urge them to strive for excellence.... there's no
argument there. But in the earlier stages of education (such as today
was for me), I saw first hand how both the skilled and the unskilled
profited by working together. It was spectacular. The unskilled had
good examples to emulate and they improved, but the skilled faced the
challenge of meshing with performers less talented than themselves
without shortchanging their performances; and they learned something(s)
in the process that they would never have learned while rehearsing only
with equals. It made me think about a virtuoso who hogs the show
rather than learning how to use his/her skill to support the
performance. I learned something myself today. :-)

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