Monday, April 26, 2010

The Old and the New

From time to time I become cquainted with a different meaning of the word "antique". It used to be that antique stood for an object that was some one hundred years old. That concept was enlarged (many years ago) to include fluids and/or ideas.

As the P.B.S. Antique Roadshow tells it the American families have a never ending stash of antique objects in their homes that came down from parents and grandparents and further back still. We have no problem here even if that object has a monetary value many times the expectation of the present owner.

Our problem has to do with the fact that we, meaning parents and other middle aged adults, have difficulties with the new ideas that are cropping up regularly. I am far from an ace mathematistian and I can still vividly remember the day my children came home with a new concept called simply "the new math". I asked them what was new in this math. They tried to explain it but either I was "too old" to grasp this new idea, or the children were too newly acquainted with this new idea I never quite understood what the fuzz was all about.

In my days of teaching college level music courses and worked with church choirs there were always new ideas coming down the pike issued by well-meaning officials sitting ensconced in the higher echelons of governance over those situated on lower levels. There came a plethora of suggestions (read: directives) to use certain text books, more suggestions (read: directives) to use approved choral music and (and this I found even more galling) how to interpret that piece of music. What did these higher-ups think? That we who had received many years of training and practical work in various fields of music did not have what it takes to look at, say our choirmembers, and realize what they were capable of in the areas of musical understanding and of technical performances. Many of us were and are willing to take a look at new ideas. Many of us were and are still willing to give the new idea a try if it would fit in with our present ideas and techniques that work so well for us and for our choirs and classes.

I have said my say for now. As to the new math I work much better with the old, having not understood any of the benefits of the new math. But for those of you who understand the principles of the new math may it serve you well and may you find ways to teach it to my great-grandchildren in such a way that they will understand.

ah

1 comment:

  1. opa, i never got the OLD math, much less the new one!

    love you, hope you're well!

    ReplyDelete