HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1995-06-14, Page 5....11ZEN, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 14, 1995. PAGE 5.
I'd love to hear
your thoughts
on modern music
When you're 35, something always
happens to the music.
A Canadian musician, lyricist and
composer by the name of Gene Lees wrote
those words â and if, like this scribbler, you
are over the age of 35 then you know only
too well whereof Mister Lees speaks.
When my father was 35, a hillbilly truck
driver from Tennessee was zooming up the
music charts. I loved Elvis. My father feared
I'd lost my mind.
But then when his dad was middle-aged,
weird aberrations with names like Rudy
Vallee and Ethel Merman were turning
teenage heads with their songs.
T'was ever thus. No doubt when Romeo
was serenading Juliet, some Venetian on a
nearby balcony was yelling "WILLYA CUT
OUT THE %#@ *& RACKET!"
Plus ca change. Take my son. Please. He
is 20 and he listens to...I don't know what he
listens to. The sounds that rattle our fine
china and shiver the timbers of our house are
like nothing I have heard on this earth.
And I've attended a bagpipe recital.
If I had to categorize his music, I'd call if
two-fifths heavy machinery, one-fifth
fingernails on a blackboard and two-fifths
Homework
throughout school
No matter what country I was going to
school in, and there were many of them, I
did a lot of homework. Fortunately at a
relatively early age I realized that I was not
going to breeze through school like some of
my classmates seemed to be able to do; I
settled down to make sure that my
homework was done and that I did not fall
behind.
When I hear, however, how much time
some of my students spend and how they go
about studying, I wonder whether a closer
look might be taken at the quality of the
work being done. I have found, for example,
that quite a few students literally do not
know how to study and remember that we
are talking about the post-secondary school
level. Small wonder that there are a
considerable number of dropouts during the
first year of studies at any university or
college.
At any rate I have been interested in some
of the research being done on studying in
various countries. For openers it is
remarkable what differences there are in the
time spent during the week in preparing for
the next day's studies.
Countries such as Japan, Hungary, Israel
and Holland have their students in the high
school system doing about nine hours a
week. This is about double the amount spent
by North American students.
Even lower are those in Sweden where the
average is just over four hours. Countries
such as Britain, Finland and Norway have
calculated that their students do about six
hours.
Assuming that students do a reasonable
job at studying when they are at it, what do
tomcat in heat.
I know, I know...I sound just like my
father, my grandfather and Juliet's next door
neighbour.
How about you? Are you bewildered by
the musical sounds you hear these days?
Panic not. I've been doing some research
into the whole subject of modern pop music.
Just let me slip out of these industrial-
strength earmuffs and I'll tell you all about
it.
First off, I'll assume that, like me, you
have no trouble differentiating among
Country and Western, Rock and Roll and
Easy Listening music. Chances are you
could even tell a polka from a ragtime from
a bluegrass tune.
Such rudimentary knowledge was good
enough to carry you through the 50s, 60s,
70s and 80s, but it won't help you nowadays.
Nope, to navigate the Pop World of the 90s,
you need the Basic Black Musical Identikit.
Does the noise you hear seem to involve a
lot of accordions plus a washboard or two?
Then chances are you're hearing Zydeco - a
form of music spawned in Cajun country.
Or perhaps you're listening to what seems
to be a Polka with rabies? That's what they
call Banda - kind of sounds like Canadian
Brass meets Lawrence Welk and everybody
gets drunk on cheap red wine.
A slightly more sophisticated new music
genre features both accordions and a polka
beat but modernized with synthesizers and
the like. This is called TeJano. Very popular
the research projects show about homework
throughout the world?
A study by the University of Illinois in
Chicago of about a dozen of these projects
revealed that a student who would be in the
middle for his age group if he did no
homework will find himself in almost the
top third if he does an average amount of
homework.
Another study shows that the influence
homework has on performance ranks second
only to ability and ahead of such things as
race and family background. Homework has
turned out to be a great educational leveller
and, what is more important, it levels
upward.
A study in Great Britain demonstrated that
working class children benefitted more from
homework than did their wealthier
classmates. The study went on .to show that
working class boys, who spend an hour a
night on homework, achieved just as much
as did middle class boys.
On the other hand, the same could not be
said for the low homework boys. Hence the
upward levelling effect.
A great deal of publicity was given to the
fact that, last year, an 11-year-old Chinese
boy in Hong Kong committed suicide by
jumping 34 stories. Behind was a note
saying he was afraid to go back to school
because he had not finished his homework.
This was not the first suicide, only the
latest, and it is easy to lead to the impression
that excessive homework can be counter-
productive or oppressive.
Another study, this time by the University
of Michigan, found that Taiwanese
(Chinese) students do twice, as much
homework as their counterparts in Japan.
The Japanese, in turn, do twice as much as
students in North America. Yet, when
interviewed, the Taiwanese reported liking
homework the most; North American
students like it the least.
The report expressed the belief that a
on the West Coast, and in certain rural areas
of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.
Then of course there's Bhangra. This is a
hybrid musical form that marries
contemporary Western rhythmics with
Asiatic instruments and vocalization. You
may have heard of Punjabi By Nature?
That's a group that's doing a lot to make
Bhangra as familiar as Bossa Nova.
So what is that earsplitting jabberwocky
oozing out from under my son's bedroom
door? None of the above. As near as I can
decipher, the stuff he listens to is called
Club Music. That's the umbrella name. Club
subdivides into various schools known as
Techno, Jungle, Rave, Dub, Tribal and
Ambient.
How do you tell if what you hear is Club
Music? Well, it's easy if you happen to have
access to a passkey to the National Research
Council Instrumentation Laboratory. Club
Music is indentifiable by the hundreds of
beats per minute it fills.
That's how you can tell Club Music if you
can lay your hands on an oscilloscope, but I
have a simpler rule of thumb for the
Instrumentally Challenged.
If the music sounds like a migraine feels,
it's Club.
You have any thoughts on modern music?
I'd love to hear them. Why don't you get in
touch?
But drop me a line. Please don't try to call.
I can't hear the telephone.
Not with these heavy duty earmuffs on.
culture which was devoted to education need
not be one where children find studying to
be either excessive, pointless or annoying.
One education historian has pointed out
that as late as the 1960s many progressive
educationalists considered homework to be
unhealthy for children; for one reason it
invited amateur parents to interfere with the
work of expert teachers. The latest findings
indicate that these "experts" were wrong.
Now if I can only find the name and
current address of that parent who lambasted
me in a letter for loading up their daughter
with homework because she was not
working in school.
I think that the acid test of my attitude
toward homework came when in
Switzerland I was trying to juggle my
studies and playing hockey for a team which
was 80 km. away from St. Gall. I take credit
for the fact that at no time did I ever
consider my homework secondary.
For someone who loved sports as much as
I did (I played soccer and basketball for the
school team too), I take this decision as one
of the wisest I ever made.
Trying to persuade some of my students
today of this necessity is a hard chore
indeed.
Letter to
the editor
Continued from page 4
of Grey Twp. from election polls 34 and 35.
Election polling officials are not allowed
either.
As I mentioned in the beginning of this
letter we elect government to represent our
best interest and if they don't we make
changes.
Municipal government works the same
way.
Yours truly,
A polling official with dirty feet.
The
Short
of âşt
By Bonnie Gropp
In recognition
of fathers
Recently I wrote a column about the
glories of motherhood and mothers. My
verbosity on that subject is the result of a
two-fold experience â I have one and I am
one.
Dads on the other hand are a bit of an
enigma to me, as I only know what I've seen
and what my own means to me. But I did
promise in that earlier column to give them
equal time come Father's Day.
This Sunday is it, so here goes.
What I have observed about Dads is that
they are the unsung heroes of the family,
often men of few words and great strengths.
Though the patriarch of the family is more
involved in the rearing of his children than
his ancestors were, mothers are still
generally better communicators and
mediators.
But Dad is always there, larger than life.
My earliest memories of my father are of a
big guy 'who worked hard and didn't talk
much. When something was broken it was
just a given that he would know how to fix
it, even though, like any good repairperson,
it was not usually precisely when Mom
would like to have it fixed.
In the years since, I have come to the
conclusion that this must be a fairly accurate
depiction of most dads, because the ones I
know, including the one I married, are pretty
much the same way.
There's not a woman alive who doesn't
realize what a soft touch Dad can be for his
daughter. A sweet innocent smile and a soft-
spoken request preceded by the word
"Daddy" will almost certainly turn these big,
burly guys into silly putty.
From tough German stock, my father
seldom speaks what's in his heart, but
whenever I asked he gave. If I needed an
advance on my allowance, I certainly didn't
go to Mom.
In no situation is the bond between father
and daughter more amusing, yet endearing,
than when it comes to meeting her suitors. I
know of one example where the young boy
was invited to go on a trip with the family.
As Dad approached the car, he grunted a
gruff "Hello", then passed by. The youth,
feeling somewhat intimidated, looked at his
girl, who informed him that was probably all
the conversation he was likely to get. It was.
My brother-in-law recently described what
it was like meeting my dad for the first time.
"All I saw was a guy with huge hands, who
owned a body shop and a stem expression."
My Dad?! The same man who loved to
play the piano, is a veritable Astaire on the
dance floor and gave me horsey back rides
whenever I asked, no matter how tired he
was? Couldn't be.
Another thing I have noticed about most
Dads is that for all their strength, they're still
harbouring a child inside. Though Morn is
the one who tended to my hurt, who
organized my life arid saw that my needs
were met on a fundamental level, it was
usually good old Dad who could be coerced
into acting â well, a little bit silly. Whether
taking a spin in the lake as (No, I don't mean
in) a motorboat or teasing the dog you could
get him to do the damdest things to entertain
you.
My Dad, like those of the majority of my
readers, was from a pre-feminist time. His
role was as breadwinner, handy man and
protector. And even though his part in
bringing me into this world is fairly
insignificant when compared to Mom's, his
contribution to my life is not.
Happy Father's Day, Dad.
Arthur Black
International Scene