High school musicals (not Disney’s)

When I was in high school, I had no interest in being in the yearly musical production. I had acted in school plays in younger grades, but drama was really not my strength or my interest. I liked to sing, but I had chosen orchestra rather than chorus as my musical focus in high school. And I wasn’t a good enough violinist (in large part because I didn’t practice enough) to be in the pit orchestra for the musical.

I never even attended the musicals – at least not while I was in high school. When I was home on spring break from college and found out they were doing Camelot, I went and enjoyed the show, and was proud of what my high school could do. What I didn’t realize at the time was how common high school musicals were.

My husband, an excellent singer and a pretty good actor as well, performed in high school musicals – but of course I never saw them, not having met him until we had both finished grad school. I knew he had gone to a high school even larger than mine, so it didn’t seem surprising they could put on those sorts of productions.

Then when he had graduated from seminary, and we were traveling to interviews at churches looking for a pastor, in one town they invited us to the high school musical being presented that night. It was a smaller town than I had grown up in, but they did an excellent job, and I was quite impressed. I began to realize that what I had associated primarily with my own high school must be a much more widespread tradition.

Here in Muscatine, not only the high school but both middle schools also put on a musical each spring. My son has had a part each time – more because of his love of music than his interest in drama, and I am again impressed each time with both the talent these young people have and the quality of the production, evidence of a high level of commitment not only from the students but their parents and the schools.

TGIF

I know, it’s not Friday. I was too tired last night to post. TGIF means “Thank goodness it’s finished.”

I just completed a big project. Now, I didn’t know it was that big when I volunteered to do it. This coming weekend is our high school’s annual musical theater production, and for once they’re doing a musical I’m familiar with, Meredith Willson’s The Music Man. As a parent of one of the actors (Constable Locke), I looked for any area to help with that fit my interests and abilities.

The past two years I have limited my efforts to good intentions (never fulfilled) to help with the set, and bringing soda pop and cookies to be sold at the concessions table during intermission (this is required of all cast parents). I justified my minimal involvement because I am already busy enough with Cub Scouts and teaching Sunday School – plus my son’s interest in the drama program is limited to its musical aspects.

This year I volunteered to help with a show choir invitational (directing buses in the parking lot, which seemed within my capabilities), and even – reluctantly – helped supervise students at another show choir competition (this had the advantage of getting me in to the performance at no charge). When it came time to sign up to help with the musical, I was happy to find out there was a need for someone to type the program. I made sure I was at the front of the line to sign up to help so I could do that instead of feeling obligated to try to sell ads, organize volunteers, or help with costumes or makeup.

Of course, putting the program together turned out to involve quite a bit more than typing. I discovered that I had to figure out how to arrange the ads (some of which were not submitted in Word format as per stated specifications), compile a list of scenes and songs from my son’s script, and get it all put together in a form ready to be run off on the school Xerox machine.

I am reminded again why I prefer “followership” positions to leadership positions. I’m told that the cast members did a good job of getting their work done – writing out their bios for me, and learning their lines and songs for the production. But the adults are another matter. Of course, they’re all volunteers like me, each busy with work and family, trying to squeeze in the time needed for this major project along with all their usual responsibilities.

Birthday of a Polymath

I took an online vocabulary quiz some time ago (I forget at what site, I was trying out several of their quizzes), and one word I was unfamiliar with was polymath. My first thought was of mathematics, and then of polynomials, but as the quiz was multiple choice (what other kind can you put on the web and have it scored by computer?), I could tell that wasn’t the answer. But I was able to figure it out: a person whose knowledge is not restricted to one subject area, and generally used to refer to someone who excels in a wide variety of subjects or fields. (I wondered where the “math” fit in, but I just learned that it comes from the Greek polymathēs, πολυμαθής, “having learned much” – and now I remember from my New Testament Greek that mathētēs, μαθητής, means “learner” or “disciple.”)

I also just learned that today, besides being Tax Day in the U.S., is the birthday of probably the most famous polymath in Western civilization, Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci. Usually he is referred to as the quintessential Renaissance Man, rather than a polymath, but I rather like the shorter term. He certainly knew math – along with being a scientist, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer. I never had any ambition to study engineering, anatomy, or botany, but I did aspire to study both broadly and deeply. I’m not sure how well I have achieved that, but I’ve also learned that just learning a lot is not worth all that much unless you can do something worthwhile with your life.

I think da Vinci might have agreed with that. I found a variety of interesting quotations by him at wikiquote.com (under April 15, his birthday), including this one:

Shun those studies in which the work that results dies with the worker.

If the learning only benefits me by giving me more knowledge and the satisfaction of knowing many things, then certainly all that will die with me. On the other hand, attempting to do worthwhile things without having the proper knowledge is not good either.

Those who are in love with practice without knowledge are like the sailor who gets into a ship without rudder or compass and who never can be certain whether he is going. Practice must always be founded on sound theory, and to this Perspective is the guide and the gateway; and without this nothing can be done well in the matter of drawing.

He seems to have been speaking of drawing in this context, but the principle applies equally well to other fields of study and practice. He had quite a bit to say about study, knowledge, and wisdom.

He who thinks little, errs much.

Music in our schools

Our high school band director sent out an email this week about the upcoming high school musical, and he also included a link to a petition supporting music education in our schools. He emphasized that he appreciates the strong support he has in our community, so the link to the petition is not a reflection in any way on that. But he knows that people supporting our music program would also want students elsewhere to have the same kind of wonderful opportunities.

I followed the link, thinking I would probably want to sign the petition. I’ve loved music as long as I can remember – though I found that I usually didn’t enjoy the same kind of music as my classmates. I grew up singing choral music in church, as well as attending organ recitals (our church had a beautiful pipe organ and an excellent organist). In the early grades I participated in a community children’s theater group, each year performing a musical not only in our own community but travelling to other towns as well. Later I started playing the violin, which I continued through college, and I came to love classical music.

I married a man with a wonderful tenor voice, and not surprisingly our older son is also gifted musically (he now sings bass, and participates in four extracurricular vocal groups, as well as playing the French horn). Our younger son recently joined the 3rd-5th grade song and dance team preparing for a special program on Mother’s Day at church. Physical coordination is not his strong point (nor mine!) but he loves to move to music, especially songs of praise to God.

I’ve read about how studies have shown the importance of music for learning. It’s not just the music itself that they learn, or the cultural benefits it gives them – though those are important by themselves. Music helps students with math, language, and other subjects. So efforts to cut money from the music program in order to strengthen core subjects such as reading and math are misguided, because the money spent on music education is actually helping students in those other areas.

Turn your brain on

Actually, you already did. Turn your brain on, that is. At least according to Steve Jobs (born Feb. 24, 1955), who said in an interview four years ago, “We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on.” Since you’re here reading my blog, instead of watching whatever there is on TV, you must want to turn your brain on. I hope it’s working.

Steve Jobs clearly doesn’t have a high opinion of TV.

When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It’s the truth.  (Interview in WIRED magazine (February 1996)

There is some decent stuff on TV, though I think most of it is on cable, not network TV (and there’s plenty of trash on cable, too). But computers certainly give a lot more scope for your mind to learn, analyze, communicate, and create. Jobs also said, regarding computers, “What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”

Catholic Schools Week (Part 3)

[As I wrote at the conclusion of yesterday's post, this will be on school choice, rather than Catholic schools specifically. But it was reading about Catholic Schools Week at a Catholic education site that got me thinking about it - so here it is.]

School choice has been a hot-button topic for at least the past two decades (though the movement can be traced all the way back to a 1955 article published by Milton Friedman). I’ve heard it discussed mostly by evangelical Christians, often in the context of private Christian schools or homeschooling. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to discover that the Catholic Church also supports school choice, since Catholic parents face much the same issues in deciding whether to enroll their children in a public or faith-based school.

I wouldn’t think too many people would oppose school choice per se: that is, enrolling one’s children in a school that seems well-suited to their needs. (There are valid concerns that people would tend to self-segregate by race, religion, or socioeconomic status, but I don’t think this is a primary argument for those opposed to school choice in most cases.) The arguments arise over matters of cost and unintended consequences.

Even without considering private schools, there is disagreement about the extent to which parents with more money should be able to use that money to provide better schools for their children. People who can afford to buy a home in a wealthier school district want their higher property taxes to benefit the schools their own children attend. Other people argue that this isn’t fair to the children who live in poorer districts, and that it tends to perpetuate socioeconomic disparity because the poorer children get a poorer education and have less chance to get the better jobs.

Of course parents who can afford private school tuition are free to do so; the question is whether they should get any break on their taxes because they are saving the government the money it would have cost to educate their children. Or whether poorer parents should be able to use public funds to send their children to a school that includes religious education.

Catholic Schools Week (Part 2)

I’ve been thinking more about William McGurn’s statement, in the WSJ column I linked to yesterday, that “simply by acknowledging Catholic schools as a national treasurethat should be preserved, Mr. Obama would give them a badly needed shot in the arm.” [emphasis mine]

I asked myself whether I’d be likely to read a similar statement about the value of evangelical Christian schools, and it seems pretty unlikely. Now, McGurn is Catholic himself, and sends his daughters to a parochial school (though he attended a public high school), so it’s not surprising that he would have a high opinion of Catholic schools. I would expect an evangelical Christian whose children attend a Christian school to see them in a positive light. But to call them a national treasure?

So I asked myself how the two kinds of schools compare. Their stated purposes are similar. Catholic schools exist to “provide high-quality education for all of their students in a context infused with Gospel values.” A typical evangelical Christian school mission statement is “to provide an educational program which combines high academic standards with God’s Word of Truth in an atmosphere of love.”

But Catholic schools have been around a lot longer than most other private Christian schools. In the mid 19th century, “Catholic schools began in the United States as a reaction against a growing publicly-funded school system that was essentially Protestant.” This also accounts for their stronger presence in inner cities, where the successive waves of Catholic immigrants often settled.

Catholic Schools Week (Part 1)

I found out from this morning’s Wall Street Journal that this week is Catholic Schools Week. I’ve heard about Catholic schools all my life, but I have no personal experience of them. What I do know is a combination of what I’ve heard from friends who had attended them as children or whose children attend them, and what I’ve read in articles about low-cost education that really makes a difference.

[Note: digression ahead]
Actually, it’s not quite accurate to say I have no personal experience of Catholic schools – what I have no personal experience of is Catholic education. In 1962 the maternity ward of Hartford Hospital must have been busy, because in 1967 there were too many five-year-olds for Newington’s elementary schools to accomodate them all. Two classrooms were apparently available in the Catholic junior high school, so I attended public school kindergarten at St. Mary’s.

[1/28/09 My sister tells me that it was not a higher birthrate in 1962, but a change in state law in 1967 that resulted in an unusually large group of kindergarteners. The previous year, the cutoff date for entering kindergarten had been the start of the school year. But Connecticut began requiring all school districts to use a cutoff of December 31, so in 1967 Newington had 16 months worth of kindergarteners to enroll instead of the usual 12 months.]

Then when I was thirteen, my dentist was not happy with the way my front teeth were growing, and he referred me to an orthodontist. I was relieved (and I’m sure my parents were also) when he did not recommend braces, but I wasn’t sure I was so happy with the alternative, which was weekly visits with a speech therapist. I don’t remember her name, but she was a nun, and since we met in a classroom of some sort it was probably in a Catholic school.

I hated the exercises I had to do, especially I could talk perfectly well and I couldn’t see how the way I said words had anything to do with my teeth. But over the course of several months I learned not to push on my front teeth with my tongue, and at the next orthodontist visit I was thrilled to find out that the exercises (even though I had not exactly done my homework faithfully) had done the job.

My only other memories of Catholic schools are from the Math League competitions I participated in as a high school student. Newington High was part of the Capitol Area Math League, which held (and still holds) monthly contests for area math students. Participating schools take turns hosting the events, and some months we sat down to do our math problems in a classroom where a crucifix looked down on us from the wall.

When does eternal life start?

Eternal life
When I was a teenager, in the church where I came to faith in Jesus Christ, they liked to emphasize the present tense of the verbs in 1 John 5:14: He that hath the Son hath life (they only used the King James Version). As I remember, this focus was about having the assurance of salvation and eternal security – the present possession of the gift of eternal life meant that one could say with confidence, “If I were to die tonight I know I would go to heaven.”

Eternal life itself seemed to be viewed primarily in the future, however. It was rather like a minor knowing that a large fortune has been set aside for him in a trust fund, available to him only when he becomes an adult. He knows it is there, and is guaranteed that he will be able to live comfortably on it then, but its benefit to him right now is limited to having that confident hope for the future.

Not that hope isn’t a wonderful thing to have. (It’s on my H list for three days from now.) But in other churches I learned later to see 1 John 5:12 in a new way. Eternal life is a current possession, something I have and can enjoy right now. It starts when I become a Christian, and simply never ends. Physical death entails some kind of change in its nature – a change all for the good from my perspective. But physical death isn’t the beginning of eternal life, only the end of mortality.

So what makes eternal life here and now different from life here and now without it? Words that come to mind are joyful obedience, answered prayer, Spirit-empowered (to serve, not to control). Only problem is, those are more descriptions of what I know abundant life in Christ is supposed to be like than a report of my own experience.

Certainly my life today is more in line with this than before my conversion at age 14. But then, thirty plus years of living might have something to do with that. Not that people always mature as they age, but there is no way I can say how my life today might compare with what it might have been if I had continued as a somewhat religious agnostic.

C what I’m thankful for

Church
This is another easy one to pick out for the top of the list. (See my Thanksgiving ABC’s post if you’re wondering what list I’m talking about.) I’ve been part of one church or another since I was an infant (not that I remember much of the first couple years, but I do remember playing in the toddler nursery and singing Eensy Weensy Spider and getting graham crackers for snack).

As a teenager and young adult I found role models in the church, adults who helped fill in some of the rather significant gaps in my social and emotional development, as well as encouraging me in my spiritual life. I’ve always wanted to be able to pass on that gift of caring and encouragement to some other confused young person, but either most young people aren’t as confused as I was, or God knows I’m still not ready to have that kind of influence on a young Christian.

Most of my best friendships have come about through church. I met my husband at a young adults group at church. And I met God at church. I’ve been welcomed, challenged, instructed, and nurtured in the churches where I have worshipped and served. Church is a second family, and a second home. When I’m new at a church (I’ve lived in six different states since college, and each move means a new church) it can feel pretty lonely, but in time I get to know my new brothers and sisters.

Cedarville University
When I graduated in 1982 it was called Cedarville College. It’s a lot bigger now (the last time I was on campus was a very brief visit in 1998, it had already grown a lot, and I know from reading alumni magazines that it has continued to grow), but so far as I can tell from its website, it is still faithfully teaching young people to pursue excellence in their education and in their service to God.