John D writes in response to me:

>Dr. de Silva: either in your last posting, you were entirely honest (the
>less likely option), or you laid on the sarcasm pretty darn thick.  I'll
>assume it was the latter, and defend myself...

I was being brutally honest.  Let me clarify where necessary:

>>And at half time, you don't want to hear CM.

I intended to say the at halftime the vast majority of sports fans do not
want to hear CM.  This may not be true in your enlightened locality, but
I strongly suspect it's true most other places!

>On the contrary, every major school in my city (and the state, I think),
>plays some sort of CM (whether it be light CM or not), as I said in my last
>letter on the subject.

Er, at half time? I take it all back.  I should get out more.  Perhaps
your classification of CM is a little more liberal than mine!  The more
inclusive one is in one's definition of what CM is, the happier one is
likely to be in the state of the world.

>>What we need is a charitable foundation that establishes free classical
>>music programs all over the country (and the world); ...
>
>If you are honest, get a grip on yourself, that's not very feasible.

Why not?  For roughly $10, a kid can get six weeks of tennis instruction
in any one of thousands of public courts throughout the country; that's
about 30 hours of mixed instruction and entertainment (and babysitting).
Surely for a little more money we can do a little less?  And keep our
music professional in the style to which they are accustomed?

I'm deadly serious.  Our problem is that we want to dictate what other
people should be doing, and the kind of music that other people ought to
be listening to instead of thinking of what WE can be doing.  There is a
new wind blowing today.  Ask not what other people's tax dollars can do
for our kids, but what WE can do for other people's kids.

Suppose the members of this list all paid $25 to a fund once a month.
Would we be willing to do something like this in order to establish a means
for providing Classical music programs all over the country for kids at a
nominal rate?

People are too imaginative when it comes to spending public money.  In the
last analysis, how public money is spent has to be decided politically,
which means it will not be spent the way a small minority likes it spent
(unless it's the small minority that's willing and able to get on a schol
board).

>If you're being sarcastic, well, you totally misunderstood my posting.
>First of all, shouldn't the public music programs have, as part of their
>goal, music appreciation? I sure think so.

Appreciation of what?  It behooves the music teacher to be popular with the
parents and the kids (we're talking of a person's livelihood here), so it's
as important, or more important to concentrate on such things as B. B. King
and Joplin than Mozart Bach and Beethoven.

I realize you don't want to relinquish your idealism.  But you have to
temper it with a little pragmatism.  Classical music in schools can happen,
and does happen.  There are a few --unfortunately, not very worthy--
motives that operate in favor of classical music:  the desire to give the
impression of being "classy", the desire for a few rich parents to show off
their classically trained children, the desire of the school administration
to accomodate a particularly pushy board member's darling, etc.  In
addition, there are some music teachers who just plain like classical
music, and present it in class in spite of all the good, practical reasons
for NOT doing so!  Thank heaven for such idealists!

We have to applaud such people whenever we find them.  But we must realize
that in modern american society, nobody will do anything without some
tangible reward.

Archimedes
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