Klarinet Archive - Posting 000185.txt from 2007/02

From: kurtheisig@-----.net
Subj: RE: [kl] Band Directors-Help needed
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2007 05:14:48 -0500

List---you can ignore this if you want, but George deserves an answer from =
someone old enough to have been there. My apologies, and you don't have to =
read this!

George,

With due apologies; I am not trying to attack you, only present a very diff=
erent view.

I'm going to disagree vehemently with you. But I WILL explain why.

I believe the anti 13 thing was a post 13 tantrum syndrome.=20

As far as California schools being that good...I came here from New England=
in 1964 to finish my senior year--class of '65!

I was absolutely shocked at how bad Leigh High School in San Jose was. My s=
enior year in high school was a total waste.=20

At San Jose State College when we took our Secondary Ed Music class for fut=
ure band directors we got to visit many high school bands. Again, I was app=
alled at how bad the teaching was. The thing that particularly surprised my=
class partner and I was how many of the teachers, now all retired, had had=
Dr Harrison for Secondary Ed, as we were now having. We also had Tony Cirr=
one for percussion, Clem Hutchinson for conducting, and beginning woodwinds=
, which was team taught, with Clem and W. Wayne Sorenson. We had Symphonic =
Band under Dr Vernon Read. We had the same professors, yet most of these te=
achers were doing a bad job. Why, I don't know. It is much harder to do a p=
oor job, than to do the job right. Russ Harrison was shocked to hear how po=
orly his old students were doing in their work, and we agreed with him to N=
OT write up observation reports on some of them because their performance w=
as so bad. There were exceptions. Bill Trimble had the same professors and =
classes as his classmates and we had, and was a fantastic teacher. Of cours=
e ROCCO DiSTASSIO from Minnesota was amazing!

In 11 years of full and part-time study, except for professional music cour=
ses, I learned less at San Jose State College than I had learned in 1 1/2 y=
ears at Weymouth High south of Boston. Why did I attend that long and take =
almost 2 years of extra credits? I wanted to learn more. I had paid for an =
education and I wanted it. I now have that education. I have spent a lifeti=
me of research in history and in instrument and mouthpiece design and studi=
es on many instruments with world-famous teachers. Also over the years, I p=
urchased 7,000 books and I read a lot, but I did NOT get what I paid for at=
San Jose State, even with taking an extra 50 semester hours!

If there WERE good schools in California in the '60's I did not see them. I=
have heard claims that Palo Alto, Los Gatos, Saratoga and certain LA schoo=
ls were good and I believe them. However, I saw so many poor schools that I=
do not believe California was anywheres near good in general.

The need for prop 13 was immense. People all over California were losing th=
eir homes to rapidly increasing property taxes. I well remember a family in=
Saratoga, that had sold a home in Santa Clara and purchased their dream ho=
me in Saratoga.
He was 75 and a real craftsman, rebuilding Vallejos settle and many other a=
ntiques and wood panelling rooms. He was retired, but would work all day re=
-making junk antiques into museum pieces. She was disabled, but worked in a=
dental lab at low wages. They had 3 children who studied sax and clarinet =
with me, at greatly reduced rates. Ages were 11-14. One Saturday they invit=
ed me to dinner. I was the honorable music teacher, a special guest. When I=
was offered seconds of chicken I saw the kids hungry gaze as the chicken w=
as offered to me and I remembered family stories of the depression. This wa=
s their big meal of the week! One chicken for 5 people. The gov't was rapin=
g these people of their hard earned property. Their property tax had gone f=
rom $600 to $2,000 in about 3 years! That gov't largesse came right out of =
the mouths of the children!

If I were to buy a typical tract home in this area I would pay $8-10,000 a =
year in property taxes---THE GOVERNMENT IS DEPRIVED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DEPRAVED? YES!!

Right after 13 was passed a lot of us teachers in colleges and public eleme=
ntary and secondary schools started a private survey from NON-school phones=
. What we found was that in district after district, the number of administ=
rators had been increased shortly before the election and these were demote=
d back to classrooms after the passing of 13. We also found that most distr=
icts had increased administrator pay and percs shortly before the election.=
We even found one district that had illegally given these percs to the SCH=
OOL BOARD! Of course, because of 13 cut-backs they had to roll back these a=
dministrative percs and extra positions. (clever!) We took about a year. We=
even reviewed some private Christian schools. What we found were self-serv=
ing administrators. We did not find 13 shortages. We did find post 13 tantr=
ums, and manipulation of the public. One example of that is the school I me=
ntioned with 6 full -time music teachers in the Jr High school. Funds would=
be mis-managed and the Music Supervisor would then get all the executives =
in that town together to have fund-raising. After the third year of these e=
mergencies he went to the parents and said he was tired of being used, and =
then he scheduled his retirement. There was NOT a lack of funds in that dis=
trict! There was manipulation of the public.=20

Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann authored 13. I had the honor of meeting each of=
them later. I met Gann by phone days before his heart attack in 1982, when=
we volunteers were trying to get around gov't mis-management of emergency =
protocol in the floods in Santa Cruz County where 36 people had died and th=
e County gov't was preventing federal help from getting to the people. That=
is quite a story! I was a key witness at the Grand Jury investigation late=
r.

I had met Howard Jarvis at a public meeting just before Thanksgiving 1980. =
I stood up and called him publicly to task for not protecting future home b=
uyers from rapacious taxes-ME! He was man enough to apologize to me and the=
whole audience for not doing 13 better.

As far as the quality of instruments in the schools, it is certainly possib=
le that in LA they were good way back when, but I have looked at school ins=
truments for teachers since 1964, and what I have seen is mostly bad choice=
s of instruments, and repairs by less than qualified repairmen. I have seen=
a few good instruments, Like a Selmer Mk VI bari sax, that is marched in a=
junior high band that has a choir teacher running the band. Pitifully beat=
up horn.

Did 13 hurt the schools? I don't think so. As I said, we spent a year surve=
ying school districts, quizzing teachers evenings. We found gross mis-manag=
ement and deception in almost every district we surveyed. Notably we could =
not find any fault in the Berryesa School District in San Jose! It was like=
Mayor Janet Gray Hayes did in downtown San Jose in her post-13 tantrum. Sh=
e pulled the regular cops out of downtown and had rookies and desk clerks t=
ake the duty. She announced on tv that gay-bars were not a crime, and that =
prostitution was victimless crime. In downtown San Jose the next night we h=
ad 100 prostitutes from Berkley newly arrived in our city. We had tricks be=
ing turned in front of my store in cars for our young customers to see, fir=
e-bombings, drive-by shootings, muggings (all THREE happened to my store an=
d me!) and the cops told us--"Sleep light!" Downtown San Jose may have been=
frumpy, but it had almost no crime. After the manipulation of the public..=
..well. This was intentional to try to get the public to raise taxes again.

What I do see is hideously bad administrative decisions, like all students =
being required to take exploratory band programs, or random computer placem=
ent of kids that don't want to be in band to band and kids that DO want to =
be in band denied access.

Most respectfully,

Kurt

-----Original Message-----
>From: George Huba <ghuba@-----.com>
>Sent: Feb 21, 2007 5:50 AM
>To: klarinet@-----.org
>Subject: RE: [kl] Band Directors-Help needed
>
>Kurt, if the California voters had not been stupid enough to be pigs at a
>trough and pass the infamous Proposition 13 in the 1970s (limiting propert=
y
>tax to a percentage of what you had paid no matter how long ago that was -=
-
>thus guaranteeing that someone sitting in an $8,000,000 house in Brentwood
>living next to a famous movie star for 20 years (my boss at the time) was
>paying less property tax than I was paying for a starter condo near the
>freeway in Culver City -- the California schools might actually have enoug=
h
>money for extracurriculars and to even teach students to read, write, and
>calculate. At the time Proposition 13 passed, my two step-children were in
>late elementary school and junior high school playing in school bands with
>literally dozens of kids in each band. There were lots of good school
>instruments and even though we purchased a trumpet and I gave my
>stepdaughter a professional level flute I had, there were also lots of goo=
d
>school instruments to be "rented" for probably something like $30 a
>semester. Within 3 or 4 years -- about the time the kids hit high school -=
-
>the HS band had been reduced to 15 kids standing in the middle of a footba=
ll
>field on Friday nights playing what amounted to a bass drum solo. And that
>was before another 30 years of increasingly impoverished funding, the need
>to provide special programs for the dozen immigrant minority groups coming
>into California, and no new local taxes basically destroyed a public schoo=
l
>system that had been the best in the U.S. and moved it to near the bottom =
of
>the rankings. There is a fairly obvious solution here -- pass a voter
>resolution superseding Proposition 13 and raising property and other taxes
>to pay for education -- that would go a long way to fixing these problems,
>especially if somebody would do the right thing and control the teachers
>unions. This is not about music education -- it is about all the forms of
>education in California that suffered greatly over almost 30 years because
>the voters basically decided that it was more important to save a thousand
>dollars each year than it was to educate the future generations to the sam=
e
>standards to which they (and their own children) had been educated.
>Proposition 13 went a long way to destroying the quality of life in
>California. George=20
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: kurtheisig@-----.net]=20
>Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2007 7:53 AM
>To: klarinet@-----.org
>Subject: Re: [kl] Band Directors-Help needed
>
>MADNESS # 2!!!!!!
>
>THIS ONE IS COMING---YOUR WAY!
>
>An old experienced teacher that studied how to be a better band director
>with me came to me with this one.
>
>A district in East San Jose had a BRILLIANT idea.=20
>
>Instead of signing last year's kids up in this years band (woodshop, art
>class, sewing.......), the computer would randomly assign kids to elective=
s.
>
>Kids that had been in band might now be in art, or woodshop! Kids that had
>been in woodshop might be assigned to art or band.
>
>This band director this year got back ONE kid from his previous band! (Kid
>does like band though and just bought a new HEISIG FLUTE, so he won't have
>to play the school-issued junk)
>
>They had tried it last year and he had gotten back so few, that they had n=
o
>band for the entire first semester! The teacher ---full time band director
>for years----wound up teaching math for the NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND sillyness=
.
>
>His beginning class was also random. Of course, the parents who had not
>wished to have their kids in band did not wish to rent or purchase an
>instrument. I have evaluated and repaired many of the school instruments
>that would then have to be issued. Methuselah may have been alive when the=
se
>were made and they have been abused for decades!
>
>He was told by administration: "You're a good teacher, it's YOUR JOB to MA=
KE
>them LIKE it!"
>
>HAVE FUN KIDS!!!!!!!!!
>
>This is part of the new plan to wreck our schools. When will this nation
>wake up?
>
>Kurt
>
>(831) 425-5658
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Bob and Deborah Shaw <theshaws10@-----.net>
>>Sent: Feb 19, 2007 5:33 PM
>>To: Trombone-L <trombone-l@-----.edu>, Klarinet List=20
>><klarinet@-----.org>
>>Subject: [kl] Band Directors-Help needed
>>
>>Our school district is currently going through some major changes (not=20
>>good I am afraid!) and replacing 6th grade band, choir and orchestra=20
>>with exploratory band, choir and orchestra. We will have 30 days of=20
>>instruction to introduce all of the instruments in the subject that we=20
>>teach, along with music theory, etc. Each teacher (band, choir,=20
>>orchestra) will have the same class in a rotational exploratory wheel.
>>
>>Who out there has something similiar that we can use as a model? We=20
>>need some good information as to what has been done, and what works?=20
>>Has it worked, what was the outcome, etc.
>>
>>We have fought long and hard to keep our programs, but, it seems that=20
>>our expertise is not being honored. The middle school concept is more=20
>>important to our district than what is best for our music programs and=20
>>what we think is best for our students.
>>
>>If you have participated in a program like this, please respond and=20
>>tell me what your experience has been and what the outcome has been.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>Deborah Shaw
>>Band Director
>>901 N.13th St.
>>Lingle Middle School
>>Rogers, Arkansas 72756
>>
>>
>>
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