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Pastimes : SI Grammar and Spelling Lab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cliff Daniel who wrote (1531)	9/7/1998 10:24:00 AM
From: Yamakita	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4711

What are the five books?

To: Cliff Daniel who wrote (1531)	9/7/1998 11:06:00 AM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4711

Cliff-- They will be taught the proper way to write down the road. It's much harder to change poor and ingrained habits than to begin with the correct techniques. This year, with some hesitation, I took on an adult as a piano student. He plays well, but has never been formally taught. It's very difficult for him to go back and relearn and it's also boring. He wants to play "his" way. His fingers don't want to start over, but without the fundamental theory and fingering, he is unable to play beyond a certain proficiency. Creativity isn't really taught, but encouraged. There is no reason it can't be part of the formal grammar course. A lack of structure and control would be more chaotic than creative and would eventually limit the creativity it was intended to nurture. I think many of the education methods of the last twenty or so years have been well-intentioned but misguided. One needs a balance of discipline and freedom. It's a lot harder to add discipline to a skill (or to a life) when one never experienced it!

To: Cliff Daniel who wrote (1531)	9/7/1998 3:59:00 PM
From: Stan	Respond to of 4711

Cliff, In my opinion, it is not important to express one's creativity at first. If I understand correctly, classical music training in past centuries disallowed any creation of lyrics by the student until he was far advanced. For a long time, only the scales, keys, timing and the other techniques could be learned by the student until they became second nature to him. I heard that a student could be expelled if caught attempting to write original music before the time. If this is so, compare the music from that era with our popular music. I still listen to Rimsky-Korsakov and Beethoven and Bach and the rest. After hearing them hundreds of times, I still capture nuances and subtleties that I've never appreciated before. However, I have never listened to any popular song that often without eventually hating it. Why? I think that although they may be likeable, they too often lack depth of expression. Therefore, I don't expect pop tunes to become classics in the same sense two to three hundred years from now. If they did, I would not want to live in a society that would embrace them as such. Stan

To: Cliff Daniel who wrote (1531)	9/7/1998 8:51:00 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4711

Cliff, Yes and no. Trying to teach students to express themselves without the tools to do so can cause a great deal of frustration. Imagine sitting a child down at a piano to make music. After a few disjointed notes, the child will get irritated and walk away. I think it needs to be a step-by-step process: learn a tool, learn to use it. Learn another tool, learn to use that. And on down the line. The reason I suggest oral storytelling as a first step to creativity is that talking is a tool we all learn. It's also very true that even a complete set of tools for expression is useless if there is nothing to express. Storytelling helps to build a sense of content. The great advantage of reading early and often is that it becomes second nature, like breathing. A teenager picking up a book for the first time is so busy plowing through words one at a time that the process becomes laborious, and the story cannot truly be enjoyed. People who find reading difficult can never gain access to the more complex and rewarding works of the imagination. Steve