Monday Monday
Greetings,
You join me after an unacceptably time-wasting music session: first voice, then violin. I'm still trying to work out whether I'm a tenor or a bass or something in between (note to self: the word is 'baritone'); what really matters of course is which gets the girl. (In Acis & Galatea, Acis has the girl, but only until he gets squished under a boulder by Polypheme. I'm sure there's a lesson in that for all of us.)
As for the violin, I'm never sure whether it's bad to play because I realise how bad I am / have become, or good because otherwise I'll only get worse. It's probably a bit much to expect myself to make a passable attempt at the Mendelssohn concerto, too. I never did practice enough but now I play hardly ever, rather than every day - which shows in the much-extended life of my strings these days! I'd like to find an orchestra for this term, but the most likely-looking one can only be contact by phone, not email. Not much good.
Then I got to thinking, perhaps it's not really fair to compare myself too unfavourably with everyone else and their apparent successes. I reckon I'm still about the most neurotic person I know, even though I've improved enormously in confidence and security in the last five years or so. There's still a significant (and not unjustified, I'd say) ever-present fear of negative evaluation.
Which doesn't at all lead me on to the subject of PSRE, but I was thinking about that too. And what a waste of time a lot of it was for me. The RE bit was good - we kind of needed to be taught about religions since there weren't any actually around us. (In a school of 1500, there was one Sikh family, and presumably some of the other were Christians, but that's is). We had to travel about 25 miles just to find a Hindu temple or a synagogue to visit. Anyway, the PSE was rather less helpful - what did I need to know about contraception, or the street names of various drugs? Especially at thirteen? The point is of course that some of the others did need to know, and you can hardly trust or expect kids just to attend those lessons that are going to be relevant to them. I did wonder whether there'd be a better quality of discussion, and perhaps a better tailoring of content, if PSRE was taught in English sets rather than mixed-ability classes. But then I suppose that would limit the viewpoints one was exposed to, and the more articulate wouldn't hear from the less articulate, and so on. So basically I have no valuable comment to make on this subject. Makes you wonder why I bothered typing this, doesn't it?
Must be off, I'm out of Earl Grey and Assam and running low on some others so it's time for a trip to Oxfam.
You join me after an unacceptably time-wasting music session: first voice, then violin. I'm still trying to work out whether I'm a tenor or a bass or something in between (note to self: the word is 'baritone'); what really matters of course is which gets the girl. (In Acis & Galatea, Acis has the girl, but only until he gets squished under a boulder by Polypheme. I'm sure there's a lesson in that for all of us.)
As for the violin, I'm never sure whether it's bad to play because I realise how bad I am / have become, or good because otherwise I'll only get worse. It's probably a bit much to expect myself to make a passable attempt at the Mendelssohn concerto, too. I never did practice enough but now I play hardly ever, rather than every day - which shows in the much-extended life of my strings these days! I'd like to find an orchestra for this term, but the most likely-looking one can only be contact by phone, not email. Not much good.
Then I got to thinking, perhaps it's not really fair to compare myself too unfavourably with everyone else and their apparent successes. I reckon I'm still about the most neurotic person I know, even though I've improved enormously in confidence and security in the last five years or so. There's still a significant (and not unjustified, I'd say) ever-present fear of negative evaluation.
Which doesn't at all lead me on to the subject of PSRE, but I was thinking about that too. And what a waste of time a lot of it was for me. The RE bit was good - we kind of needed to be taught about religions since there weren't any actually around us. (In a school of 1500, there was one Sikh family, and presumably some of the other were Christians, but that's is). We had to travel about 25 miles just to find a Hindu temple or a synagogue to visit. Anyway, the PSE was rather less helpful - what did I need to know about contraception, or the street names of various drugs? Especially at thirteen? The point is of course that some of the others did need to know, and you can hardly trust or expect kids just to attend those lessons that are going to be relevant to them. I did wonder whether there'd be a better quality of discussion, and perhaps a better tailoring of content, if PSRE was taught in English sets rather than mixed-ability classes. But then I suppose that would limit the viewpoints one was exposed to, and the more articulate wouldn't hear from the less articulate, and so on. So basically I have no valuable comment to make on this subject. Makes you wonder why I bothered typing this, doesn't it?
Must be off, I'm out of Earl Grey and Assam and running low on some others so it's time for a trip to Oxfam.
posted by Z31 at 12:41 pm
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