It's a cold Saturday morning, at the end of the school holidays. As arranged, Joel brings me a strong cup of coffee at 7.15. We climb into the car. Its newly fixed thermostat registers 2 degrees. We pick up Meg, then head into the city and down Punt Road. The sky is pale but clear, and we see three hot air balloons in perfect triangular formation flying low across Parkville.
We are heading to a three-day music teachers' conference, being held at Melbourne High School. We arrive with plenty of time to spare, and sit in the car, marvelling at the school's enormous playing field, and the tall gothic brick tower of the main building. Our school is made of grey concrete blocks, doesn't have its own oval or gardens, really, and the kids use the public park a block away. This feels like a private school, though it's Melbourne's only selective boys' high school. Two different balloons are flying low towards us, and seem to skim past a block of flats on the other side of the oval.
The vocal group meets with Miriam in the foyer, surrounded by glass cabinets full of trophies, wooden honour boards, and memorials to the fallen. As they prepare, I walk into the main hall. A young girl is practising a violin solo with piano accompaniment. She plays with great accuracy and skill, but is still warming up to full performance mode. It is not yet 9.00 am.
Our kids rehearse. They are wearing their usual medley of clothes, supposedly in performance blacks and greys, but interpreting the colour code very loosely. They look a little withdrawn and distanced, standing apart from each other. Miriam checks their cues, the sound engineer jumps athletically up on to the stage several times as he checks levels, and adjusts their mike. They run through most of their set, just going over a few tricky entries. One of the girls can't be there, so Claudia steps in for her solo.
The conference begins, and our group is on first, as a kind of warm-up to the day's proceedings. The girls have brushed their hair, and everyone has taken off at least one outer garment. They walk on to the stage and Miriam announces the first song, modestly not mentioning that this group came second in a national jazz competition not too long ago.
I realise, at this point, that the battery on my phone is about to run out. I am sitting with Susie's mother in the front row, and the angle is all wrong, as I can't get all seven in the one frame and am looking up at them. So I record just the two middle songs from their bracket of four: "Sometimes I'm Happy" by King Pleasure, and "Rachel", by Trish Delaney-Brown. They sing well today, very well. They stand close together, and sing accurately in key and in time, which is hard when the piano is so far away, and of course, even harder when they sing a capella, and with no conductor. No one "sings out" (i.e. making their voice stand out from the group), but the parts and words are distinct. The solos work well, too. Claudia, Mary and Joel just step up to the mike and sing without fuss. "Rachel" is a show-stopper.
The music teachers in the audience — that's a tough crowd for kids to sing for — are warm in their applause, and the other parents and I follow the kids out in to the foyer. Miriam does a quick debrief, and the group breaks up with hugs and congratulations all round. I have been struck, as always, by the authority and confidence of this group of fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds, and the serious intent with which they sing, and sing with each other, listening so hard to each other. They don't all hang out together as friends. They are in different year groups and subject clusters. But when they sing together, there is often a great warmth and strength about their voices in harmony. Joel and Meg explain to me later how they have literally learned to breathe together, so they can all start phrases in the same second. The other parents and I have confessed we regularly cry when we hear them: it is the terribly beauty of their vulnerability and the fearful power of their strength, brought together by a wonderful teacher who guides them with skill and passion.
Marion and I take Susie, Meg and Joel to brunch in Richmond: Dench fruit toast with maple and vanilla butter at Richmond Larder, sitting outside in the sun. Then I drop Joel and Meg off in the city, and watch them head down Bourke St on their different expeditions. A good morning's work...
Double-click on these to get the full screen view which will show you the seven singers.
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Friday, December 04, 2009
In Praise of Public Education
A few days ago the excellent (rather, the honourable) Michael Kirby, former justice of the high court), gave a speech at Melbourne High school's speech night. I heard part of it on the radio the next morning, especially the bit in favour of public education in this country. Kirby said we should all blog and twitter in support of public education.
So here's my contribution.
Over the last week or so I've been to two school music concerts. The first was a cabaret organised by the parent-teacher liaison at Joel's school: parents loaned rice-cookers and a dedicated team cooked up wonderful curries to serve at the school canteen. The weather had been wild that afternoon, but we were able to sit outside and watch as the kids performed. I've written about the school's music before. What I loved on this night was to see the music staff up there on stage with the kids, playing along with them. And, when the parent who was going to MC the event had to withdraw at the last minute, and when Joel offered his services, there was not a moment's hesitation, and he was given the running sheet and complete freedom to compere. And his parents and friends all thought he was terrific, naturally...
Special praise for the year 8 student, Susie, who sang "Stormy Weather" with passion and verve, and the wonderful multi-talented Lena (trumpet, clarinet [and either trombone or saxophone, possibly both], who, sadly for the school, is leaving this year.
Then this week, one of the music teachers had organised an evening at Penny Black, a cafe in Brunswick. It began with the brilliant Claudia (year 10?) singing "I Heard it on the Grapevine" with great gusto and strength out in front of a band of about 16 musicians: keyboards, guitars, drumkit, and a fabulous brass section.
The school is stronger with jazz and swing and Latin ensembles than it is in orchestral terms: and the string ensembles can't compete in energy and numbers, though I like their ambitions (Barber's Adagio, for example). But the vocal performances are the most amazing to me: one after another kid — mostly girls - just stood up and sang, often quite difficult material. They don't always move with much confidence; and some struggle to perform the song's emotions. But they still blow me away. The kids are also encouraged to improvise and jam; so they have a wonderful facility with different styles.
This year one of J's electives has been a kind of music master class, where amongst other things, they were put into groups and asked to choose, arrange and perform a couple of numbers. Joel's group was a little diminished in size on Thursday night, so they just did one song: Tom Waits' "New Coat of Paint", with J on keyboard and vocals, sharing the stage with two close friends — Lenny, on scorching guitar solo; and the adorable Meg on lead vocals — as well as a couple of others. Oh, I did think it went very quickly. But it was lovely to hear these friends singing together: "You'll wear a dress; and I'll wear a tie".
I'm sure Australian Idol has played no small part in investing these young performers with a sense of what's possible, and what works when you stand in front of an audience to perform. But there was something magical about seeing them in a live, commercial venue, even if the entire audience was comprised of the school community. So while I understand this school is one of the better government schools, it still shows what is possible with energy and enthusiasm. And while I understand that not everyone in the school feels this way, there is an undoubted core of love for and identification with the school amongst its community: without badge or uniform to bind them together, and without the idea of financial investment in the young.
So here's my contribution.
Over the last week or so I've been to two school music concerts. The first was a cabaret organised by the parent-teacher liaison at Joel's school: parents loaned rice-cookers and a dedicated team cooked up wonderful curries to serve at the school canteen. The weather had been wild that afternoon, but we were able to sit outside and watch as the kids performed. I've written about the school's music before. What I loved on this night was to see the music staff up there on stage with the kids, playing along with them. And, when the parent who was going to MC the event had to withdraw at the last minute, and when Joel offered his services, there was not a moment's hesitation, and he was given the running sheet and complete freedom to compere. And his parents and friends all thought he was terrific, naturally...
Special praise for the year 8 student, Susie, who sang "Stormy Weather" with passion and verve, and the wonderful multi-talented Lena (trumpet, clarinet [and either trombone or saxophone, possibly both], who, sadly for the school, is leaving this year.
Then this week, one of the music teachers had organised an evening at Penny Black, a cafe in Brunswick. It began with the brilliant Claudia (year 10?) singing "I Heard it on the Grapevine" with great gusto and strength out in front of a band of about 16 musicians: keyboards, guitars, drumkit, and a fabulous brass section.
The school is stronger with jazz and swing and Latin ensembles than it is in orchestral terms: and the string ensembles can't compete in energy and numbers, though I like their ambitions (Barber's Adagio, for example). But the vocal performances are the most amazing to me: one after another kid — mostly girls - just stood up and sang, often quite difficult material. They don't always move with much confidence; and some struggle to perform the song's emotions. But they still blow me away. The kids are also encouraged to improvise and jam; so they have a wonderful facility with different styles.
This year one of J's electives has been a kind of music master class, where amongst other things, they were put into groups and asked to choose, arrange and perform a couple of numbers. Joel's group was a little diminished in size on Thursday night, so they just did one song: Tom Waits' "New Coat of Paint", with J on keyboard and vocals, sharing the stage with two close friends — Lenny, on scorching guitar solo; and the adorable Meg on lead vocals — as well as a couple of others. Oh, I did think it went very quickly. But it was lovely to hear these friends singing together: "You'll wear a dress; and I'll wear a tie".
I'm sure Australian Idol has played no small part in investing these young performers with a sense of what's possible, and what works when you stand in front of an audience to perform. But there was something magical about seeing them in a live, commercial venue, even if the entire audience was comprised of the school community. So while I understand this school is one of the better government schools, it still shows what is possible with energy and enthusiasm. And while I understand that not everyone in the school feels this way, there is an undoubted core of love for and identification with the school amongst its community: without badge or uniform to bind them together, and without the idea of financial investment in the young.
Friday, June 05, 2009
That Lonesome Road
A school concert is always a mixed bag. It started with an ambitious rendering of two segments of Vivaldi’s Gloria: a work in progress, as they will be working on this over the next few months. Played slow enough for the strings to keep it up, it became, I have to admit, somewhat turgid in the voices of the singers who themselves are mostly instrumental players doing some compulsory ensemble work.
Once they got going, however (and this was just the chamber music concert: jazz and band performers get a chance later in the year), we heard a number of phenomenal VCE students performing solos and duos, with some pretty wonderful accompanying, too. The concert was held in St Michael’s church, so the acoustics, resounding off the wooden roof, were lovely. So was the warm atmosphere of proud parents, grandparents and friends.
We are in the privileged position of living close enough to an excellent government school that is academically strong, while also taking its music and arts programme very seriously. A number of its students go on to the Victorian College of the Arts, and come back to help out, as did the brilliant guitarist accompanying a somewhat introverted solo performance of Leonard Cohen’s Allelujah. The school is pretty well resourced, so there was a harpsichord for the Vivaldi, and the announcement of some excellent results in the recent Flute competitions. A highlight was a wonderful performance of Ros Bandt’s Meditation for recorder, with Ros sitting in the audience.
The highlight for me, though, were the choral performances: two groups of Year 7 and 8 girls; and the mixed vocal group. All were great, but the vocal group (it needs a name!) was the most heart-wrenching for me, as my boy was singing. Six girls and three boys sang James Taylor’s That Lonesome Road a capella. It’s a most beautiful song, perfect for adolescents. As it happened, Joel is the only tenor in the group, and so he sang the first phrase and two lines later on as a solo (as sung by Taylor in this recording below). He sang with composure and strength, as the line of his parents and grandparents held their breath, as the tears pricked his mother’s eyes, and as shivers of mortality and pride criss-crossed her heart.
Once they got going, however (and this was just the chamber music concert: jazz and band performers get a chance later in the year), we heard a number of phenomenal VCE students performing solos and duos, with some pretty wonderful accompanying, too. The concert was held in St Michael’s church, so the acoustics, resounding off the wooden roof, were lovely. So was the warm atmosphere of proud parents, grandparents and friends.
We are in the privileged position of living close enough to an excellent government school that is academically strong, while also taking its music and arts programme very seriously. A number of its students go on to the Victorian College of the Arts, and come back to help out, as did the brilliant guitarist accompanying a somewhat introverted solo performance of Leonard Cohen’s Allelujah. The school is pretty well resourced, so there was a harpsichord for the Vivaldi, and the announcement of some excellent results in the recent Flute competitions. A highlight was a wonderful performance of Ros Bandt’s Meditation for recorder, with Ros sitting in the audience.
The highlight for me, though, were the choral performances: two groups of Year 7 and 8 girls; and the mixed vocal group. All were great, but the vocal group (it needs a name!) was the most heart-wrenching for me, as my boy was singing. Six girls and three boys sang James Taylor’s That Lonesome Road a capella. It’s a most beautiful song, perfect for adolescents. As it happened, Joel is the only tenor in the group, and so he sang the first phrase and two lines later on as a solo (as sung by Taylor in this recording below). He sang with composure and strength, as the line of his parents and grandparents held their breath, as the tears pricked his mother’s eyes, and as shivers of mortality and pride criss-crossed her heart.
Friday, November 28, 2008
More Momentous Days
This is a horrid time of year, really. We finished teaching weeks ago, but are still up to our necks in papers, meetings, graduate applications for next year, accounts to reconcile, reports to write, and all the rest of the end-of-year stuff that drags on and on. But today we started organising our Christmas lunch, so that felt a bit better.
It's also conference season, too, so I really must get down to writing the paper I'm giving in Hobart next week. I'm part of a panel on Bruce Holsinger's Premodern Condition (more on this in another post).
But I think a brief report on the trip to Canberra is called for. Suse and Pav have kindly asked for photos, but while a thousand official ones were taken, I forgot to take my own camera, so we might have to wait till I can persuade Joel and myself to dress up again...
We flew up with Deirdre, my wonderful new(ish) colleague: how I adore having another senior woman in the department, especially one so energetic and passionate and generous. We checked into the hotel, changed into our finery, then got a cab up to Parliament House.
From this perspective, you can actually see two Parliament Houses: first, the old one (wedding-cake style) then further up the hill, the surprisingly and charmingly modest new one, set, hobbit-style, under the slopes of grass. Well, modest from the outside: inside, it's all marble and quartz and wood, and corridors and courtyards filled with light. Quite beautiful, I think.
We had lunch and then queued up to sit in on Question Time. We ended up sitting in the gallery above the Gov't side, but had fun spotting the familiar heads and faces. Rudd was on his way back from Peru, so Gillard was acting PM, and very dignified and determined she was, too. Peter Garrett was easy to spot with the bald head, and we picked out lots of others. Tanya Plibersek took a great dorothy dixer and spoke movingly about domestic violence white ribbon day, and then Malcolm Turnbull made his only speech of the session we saw, saying, in effect, "me too". The real fun, though, was looking over to see Nelson, Costello, Abbott, all looking rather subdued, though Abbott was querulous in his challenges to the Speaker for his failure to reprimand Albanese, I think it was, who dared to suggest providing a cushion for Fran Bailey, I think it was, who seemed to be falling asleep. Well, then it was on for young and old...
After a while, Joel suggested we nip round to the other side, so we could see "our people", but by the time we got round, Question Time was over, and there was a steady emptying of the chamber.
We then headed off to the reception before the awards ceremony. There was tea and coffee and cheese and biscuits, and much checking-out of name tags and fashions. There was a fair amount of taffeta and tulle and lace, given that the note just said "smart or business dress", and one Islander and one Indian woman wearing beautiful long dresses and saris (ok: one each). But also some beautifully tailored suits and jackets.
We took our seats and the chair of the council announced that Julia Gillard would not be able to present the awards, as she was too busy being acting PM. I swear, there was an audible groan of disappointment, particularly among the women. We had been given our instructions, so it was pretty well run, as we lined up, moved forward, shook hands with Brendan O'Connor and received our surprisingly heavy trophies and certificates.
The big award, the Prime Minister's Award, was split this year by Marnie Hughes-Warrington, an historian from Macquarie, and Stephen Barkoczy, from Monash, who teaches tax law. Both gave fabulous impromptu speeches, and you could see instantly that they would be great teachers. I have to make a 12 minute presentation at the Vice-Chancellor's Colloquium on Tuesday (and accept my Grimshaw award: hey, another chance for my new dress, I think!), and I was inspired by both of these addresses not to make a powerpoint. I'm just going to talk. Well, I was also persuaded by the fact that they wanted the powerpoint by this morning...
We then walked down the hill to the old Parliament House, and sipped champagne and snacked on smoked salmon on melba toast, little pies and other nibbles, before proceeding into the old members' dining hall for enormous prawns or peking duck; baked salmon or lamb cutlets; rich chocolate pies or miniature tartes tatin.
In the morning, Joel took full advantage of the sumptuous breakfast buffet, and then we walked across the lake and then along past the National Library and the High Court to the National Gallery, where we paid appropriate homage to the Sidney Nolan Ned Kelly series, and pedantically corrected a tour guide who was explaining how Kelly's armour was now in Melbourne Gaol.
We then met Deirdre and Mary, another Melbourne colleague up at ANU for the day, for lunch at the National Library, in the coloured lights of the Leonard French windows there, before heading home.
It was a really lovely occasion. In the humanities, teaching awards are not regarded very highly. I think it's assumed we can all teach, and that good teaching is incommensurate with good research. If you're getting good "quality of teaching" scores, you're seen as putting time into your teaching that should go into your research. But I'm all in favour of them. There's no reason why the two should be mutually exclusive; in fact, most of us would argue that in fact, they depend on each other. Good researchers make good teachers; and vice versa. Anyway, any colleagues who are reading this: I'm going to be encouraging folk in my area to apply for these awards next year.
The other momentous thing this week was watching Joel in the Year 8 production of Midsummer Night's Dream last night. He has chosen drama as one of his elective subjects this year, and they clearly have very talented teachers at this school, who brought out some very good performances from these 13-year old kids. The play had been abridged, and there was lots of playground-style physicality amongst the rival lovers and the mechanicals. Of course Joel's parents, aunt and grandmother all thought his Demetrius was excellent. At least he didn't rush through his lines (a common enough mistake, to race through the metaphors to the principal verbs, whereas it's often the metaphors that carry the meaning). An excellent Helena, Lysander, Bottom, Titania and Puck (and Demetrius!) carried the play. There were some wonderful musical moments too: this school somehow makes it possible for even youngish kids just to get up and sing unaccompanied.
So it's been a big week chez nous. We are just now about to commence our weekend in the time-honoured way: doing the grocery shopping while Joel has his piano lesson; then catching up with our mirror family for pizzas, red wine, and lollies. Happy weekend, everyone!
It's also conference season, too, so I really must get down to writing the paper I'm giving in Hobart next week. I'm part of a panel on Bruce Holsinger's Premodern Condition (more on this in another post).
But I think a brief report on the trip to Canberra is called for. Suse and Pav have kindly asked for photos, but while a thousand official ones were taken, I forgot to take my own camera, so we might have to wait till I can persuade Joel and myself to dress up again...
We flew up with Deirdre, my wonderful new(ish) colleague: how I adore having another senior woman in the department, especially one so energetic and passionate and generous. We checked into the hotel, changed into our finery, then got a cab up to Parliament House.
From this perspective, you can actually see two Parliament Houses: first, the old one (wedding-cake style) then further up the hill, the surprisingly and charmingly modest new one, set, hobbit-style, under the slopes of grass. Well, modest from the outside: inside, it's all marble and quartz and wood, and corridors and courtyards filled with light. Quite beautiful, I think. We had lunch and then queued up to sit in on Question Time. We ended up sitting in the gallery above the Gov't side, but had fun spotting the familiar heads and faces. Rudd was on his way back from Peru, so Gillard was acting PM, and very dignified and determined she was, too. Peter Garrett was easy to spot with the bald head, and we picked out lots of others. Tanya Plibersek took a great dorothy dixer and spoke movingly about domestic violence white ribbon day, and then Malcolm Turnbull made his only speech of the session we saw, saying, in effect, "me too". The real fun, though, was looking over to see Nelson, Costello, Abbott, all looking rather subdued, though Abbott was querulous in his challenges to the Speaker for his failure to reprimand Albanese, I think it was, who dared to suggest providing a cushion for Fran Bailey, I think it was, who seemed to be falling asleep. Well, then it was on for young and old...
After a while, Joel suggested we nip round to the other side, so we could see "our people", but by the time we got round, Question Time was over, and there was a steady emptying of the chamber.
We then headed off to the reception before the awards ceremony. There was tea and coffee and cheese and biscuits, and much checking-out of name tags and fashions. There was a fair amount of taffeta and tulle and lace, given that the note just said "smart or business dress", and one Islander and one Indian woman wearing beautiful long dresses and saris (ok: one each). But also some beautifully tailored suits and jackets.
We took our seats and the chair of the council announced that Julia Gillard would not be able to present the awards, as she was too busy being acting PM. I swear, there was an audible groan of disappointment, particularly among the women. We had been given our instructions, so it was pretty well run, as we lined up, moved forward, shook hands with Brendan O'Connor and received our surprisingly heavy trophies and certificates. The big award, the Prime Minister's Award, was split this year by Marnie Hughes-Warrington, an historian from Macquarie, and Stephen Barkoczy, from Monash, who teaches tax law. Both gave fabulous impromptu speeches, and you could see instantly that they would be great teachers. I have to make a 12 minute presentation at the Vice-Chancellor's Colloquium on Tuesday (and accept my Grimshaw award: hey, another chance for my new dress, I think!), and I was inspired by both of these addresses not to make a powerpoint. I'm just going to talk. Well, I was also persuaded by the fact that they wanted the powerpoint by this morning...
We then walked down the hill to the old Parliament House, and sipped champagne and snacked on smoked salmon on melba toast, little pies and other nibbles, before proceeding into the old members' dining hall for enormous prawns or peking duck; baked salmon or lamb cutlets; rich chocolate pies or miniature tartes tatin.
In the morning, Joel took full advantage of the sumptuous breakfast buffet, and then we walked across the lake and then along past the National Library and the High Court to the National Gallery, where we paid appropriate homage to the Sidney Nolan Ned Kelly series, and pedantically corrected a tour guide who was explaining how Kelly's armour was now in Melbourne Gaol.
We then met Deirdre and Mary, another Melbourne colleague up at ANU for the day, for lunch at the National Library, in the coloured lights of the Leonard French windows there, before heading home.
It was a really lovely occasion. In the humanities, teaching awards are not regarded very highly. I think it's assumed we can all teach, and that good teaching is incommensurate with good research. If you're getting good "quality of teaching" scores, you're seen as putting time into your teaching that should go into your research. But I'm all in favour of them. There's no reason why the two should be mutually exclusive; in fact, most of us would argue that in fact, they depend on each other. Good researchers make good teachers; and vice versa. Anyway, any colleagues who are reading this: I'm going to be encouraging folk in my area to apply for these awards next year.
The other momentous thing this week was watching Joel in the Year 8 production of Midsummer Night's Dream last night. He has chosen drama as one of his elective subjects this year, and they clearly have very talented teachers at this school, who brought out some very good performances from these 13-year old kids. The play had been abridged, and there was lots of playground-style physicality amongst the rival lovers and the mechanicals. Of course Joel's parents, aunt and grandmother all thought his Demetrius was excellent. At least he didn't rush through his lines (a common enough mistake, to race through the metaphors to the principal verbs, whereas it's often the metaphors that carry the meaning). An excellent Helena, Lysander, Bottom, Titania and Puck (and Demetrius!) carried the play. There were some wonderful musical moments too: this school somehow makes it possible for even youngish kids just to get up and sing unaccompanied.
So it's been a big week chez nous. We are just now about to commence our weekend in the time-honoured way: doing the grocery shopping while Joel has his piano lesson; then catching up with our mirror family for pizzas, red wine, and lollies. Happy weekend, everyone!
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Muck-up day: loving and leaving the institution
This week was the last of formal classes for Year 12 students in Victorian schools. Many have "muck-up day", which can involve anything from throwing eggs, flour and water around the school, to practical jokes, fuelled by less or more alcohol, and carnivalesque reversals, with kids imitating teachers and conducting assemblies. Sometimes there's just drunkenness, of course.
Sometimes the jokes are clever. There's a story going round that involves either three chickens or three pigs being let loose around a school, with the numbers 1, 2 and 4 painted on their backs, so that teachers spend the day looking for no. 3. At Joel's school last year the Year 12 kids blew up hundreds of balloons and filled the staircases with them.
But at one of the most prestigious Catholic boys' schools in Melbourne last week, things got radically out of hand. A rough game sent one boy (who had previously been the victim of bullying) to hospital with multiple leg fractures; and there are multiple reports of intimidatory behaviour around the neighbourhood, extreme drunkenness and damage to property. Debates in the newspapers and on talk-back radio have been intense; and the story has been picked up internationally.
Is it just the inevitable result of the pressures of the VCE, which are probably more intense in private schools, given the underlying economics of paying big money to get your kid a good result? Are private schools more likely to insist on uniformity that results in this kind of mob behaviour? These kids are next year's P-plate drivers who'll drunkenly kill or maim themselves or their mates, and be roaming up and down around King St nightclubs. Of course it's not just the private schools who produce this behaviour, but given that the public schools have been systematically stripped of funds that are then poured into fee-paying schools on the assumption that they teach better (viz. Christian) values, it hurts like anything to see my taxpayers' money being abused like this. Are these kids the ones I want to support? Is this bullying culture worthy of my hard-earned taxes?
By contrast, this year the Year 12 kids at Joel's public school, which is a high-achieving academic school with a brilliant music and drama programme, celebrated by grafitti-ing the wall, in big 60s letters, with the legend "skule is cool". This school has almost no grounds: the kids go over to the nearby park for breaks. It's an ugly concrete block with no assembly hall. When the whole school gets together, it's once a year for a mass photo on the outside basketball court. Yet the kids love it. I've spoken to other parents about this too; the very strong institutional loyalty this school somehow manages to command, and which Joel also shares in.
Of course, as the child of academics, he's grown up in a household where people love their work, and identify strongly with their workplace. Those traditions are radically under fire at the moment, though, given the structural problems of funding our public tertiary system. My arts faculty is still hoping to sack 15 staff members, and there are literally hundreds of redundancies planned for two other Melbourne universities. It's resulting in a climate where it's hard to maintain those feelings of loyalty and identification that have characterised most of my working life. Both policies (for the funding of secondary and tertiary education), I need hardly remind readers, are legacies of the Howard years...
I recently received an invitation to apply for a job in the US; and while I've said thank you very much, it's not possible at the moment, I do sometimes fantasise about working part-time somewhere else, in some kind of shared appointment. And I think a lot of Australian humanities researchers must wonder, as I do, how different it might feel to work in a better funded environment, in a university that is not so deeply constrained by national politics, where humanities management isn't under such pressure to conform to funding models that blatantly favour science and medical research models.
Sometimes the jokes are clever. There's a story going round that involves either three chickens or three pigs being let loose around a school, with the numbers 1, 2 and 4 painted on their backs, so that teachers spend the day looking for no. 3. At Joel's school last year the Year 12 kids blew up hundreds of balloons and filled the staircases with them.
But at one of the most prestigious Catholic boys' schools in Melbourne last week, things got radically out of hand. A rough game sent one boy (who had previously been the victim of bullying) to hospital with multiple leg fractures; and there are multiple reports of intimidatory behaviour around the neighbourhood, extreme drunkenness and damage to property. Debates in the newspapers and on talk-back radio have been intense; and the story has been picked up internationally.
Is it just the inevitable result of the pressures of the VCE, which are probably more intense in private schools, given the underlying economics of paying big money to get your kid a good result? Are private schools more likely to insist on uniformity that results in this kind of mob behaviour? These kids are next year's P-plate drivers who'll drunkenly kill or maim themselves or their mates, and be roaming up and down around King St nightclubs. Of course it's not just the private schools who produce this behaviour, but given that the public schools have been systematically stripped of funds that are then poured into fee-paying schools on the assumption that they teach better (viz. Christian) values, it hurts like anything to see my taxpayers' money being abused like this. Are these kids the ones I want to support? Is this bullying culture worthy of my hard-earned taxes?
By contrast, this year the Year 12 kids at Joel's public school, which is a high-achieving academic school with a brilliant music and drama programme, celebrated by grafitti-ing the wall, in big 60s letters, with the legend "skule is cool". This school has almost no grounds: the kids go over to the nearby park for breaks. It's an ugly concrete block with no assembly hall. When the whole school gets together, it's once a year for a mass photo on the outside basketball court. Yet the kids love it. I've spoken to other parents about this too; the very strong institutional loyalty this school somehow manages to command, and which Joel also shares in.
Of course, as the child of academics, he's grown up in a household where people love their work, and identify strongly with their workplace. Those traditions are radically under fire at the moment, though, given the structural problems of funding our public tertiary system. My arts faculty is still hoping to sack 15 staff members, and there are literally hundreds of redundancies planned for two other Melbourne universities. It's resulting in a climate where it's hard to maintain those feelings of loyalty and identification that have characterised most of my working life. Both policies (for the funding of secondary and tertiary education), I need hardly remind readers, are legacies of the Howard years...
I recently received an invitation to apply for a job in the US; and while I've said thank you very much, it's not possible at the moment, I do sometimes fantasise about working part-time somewhere else, in some kind of shared appointment. And I think a lot of Australian humanities researchers must wonder, as I do, how different it might feel to work in a better funded environment, in a university that is not so deeply constrained by national politics, where humanities management isn't under such pressure to conform to funding models that blatantly favour science and medical research models.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Venus and Adonis
... is the title of a short masque by John Blow, written in 1683 for Charles II. According to the Rough Guide to Opera, it is "full of quirky and unpredictable shifts in harmony", and was one of the inspirations behind Purcell's much better known Dido and Aeneas.
You wouldn't necessarily expect such a work to feature in a school concert, but Joel and I have just come home from hearing most of this performed by a group at his school. The student cast and orchestra were assisted by a few staff performers (on harpsichord, for example), but generally these year 8-12 students did a terrific job with some very difficult music. There are some really lovely sopranos at this school, though all soloists did well; and the chorus was brilliant. I'm so thrilled Joel has, or will have, the opportunity to make music of this kind.
He wasn't in the Venus, but the Year 7 and 8 strings played three Handel minuets to start out the concert. Just a small event, in the school's main music rehearsal studio, but honestly, what a testimony to the enthusiasm and confidence of this school's music programme, to tackle such a work, and to play with such panache.
This is what a well supported state school can do; and I'm just so proud to be part of this community of musicians.
You wouldn't necessarily expect such a work to feature in a school concert, but Joel and I have just come home from hearing most of this performed by a group at his school. The student cast and orchestra were assisted by a few staff performers (on harpsichord, for example), but generally these year 8-12 students did a terrific job with some very difficult music. There are some really lovely sopranos at this school, though all soloists did well; and the chorus was brilliant. I'm so thrilled Joel has, or will have, the opportunity to make music of this kind.
He wasn't in the Venus, but the Year 7 and 8 strings played three Handel minuets to start out the concert. Just a small event, in the school's main music rehearsal studio, but honestly, what a testimony to the enthusiasm and confidence of this school's music programme, to tackle such a work, and to play with such panache.
This is what a well supported state school can do; and I'm just so proud to be part of this community of musicians.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
