As usual, Steyn nails it.
Posted on 07/03/2012 6:13:35 AM PDT by Rummyfan
"How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" "Practice." It's an old line, and perhaps an obsolescent one. I can't recall the last time I heard anyone use it. Americans don't seem to want to get to Carnegie Hall, not if American Idol is auditioning round the block. And practice is one of those things, like math, the education system seems to have ceded to the Asians. These days, China not only makes most of the pianos, but plays them. David Goldman (the Internet's "Spengler") likes to point out the correlation between the study of Western classical music and success in science. "There's a difference," he writes, "between an engineer and an engineer who plays Bach." Whenever he makes his case, even those of a conservative disposition fill up the comments section with objections: There's nothing wrong with an engineer who likes rock-'n'-roll, or country, or thrash metal or gangsta rap or grunge . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
I've got me under my skin.
He doesn't even explain his title. Gradus ad Parnassum is a famous music textbook. Parnassus being the mountain where Apollo and the Muses hung out.
On the whole the Avengers was a good movie, but watching Scarlet Johansson. play the tough broad got old.
The tough broad is now a staple of current culture where a 110 lb actress takes out 250 lbs guys repeatedly with ease. Like the movie Brave, they don't need the sloppering fools put forth as men.
Steyn rules...
As usual, Steyn nails it.
Maybe they should have dropped out of school and read books like him.
And if you had Mrs. Nolting for a piano teacher, you were extremely familiar with Mr. Clementi's exercise book. It's still sitting on my piano.
How is a movie about a snow white girl even speaking to a white hunter even legal these days?
What passes for AP English these days was pretty much what we got in regular English. Honors English in those days was on a whole different level, and far more interesting, as I found out when I sat in on my friend’s Honors English class one day.
There was not a great deal of change between '73 and '06, except the 'politically correct' books had changed a little in my daughter's class - she had 'The Color Purple', we had 'Native Son'. But they were (a) avoidable; and (b) you could have fun criticizing them, although it's like shooting fish in a barrel.
Of course it's a top-flight private non-denominational Christian school, and it took us forever to pay off the tuition. :-(. But Atlanta public schools are not an option for anybody with a conscience or a brain - just one of the obligations you take on when you have kids.
Harry Potter.
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