Music in Early Childhood class in Merida, Vz January 23, 2012

The Morality of Pay-to-Play

January 14, 2012

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Margaret Tobolowska and Orkidstra - from the Ottawa Citizen, photo credit: Bruno Schlumberger

There’s a lot of money in private music instruction. It’s one of the most stable and lucrative educational markets, and could present a very valuable income stream to Sistema programs while diminishing the “poor kids only” perception, promoting integration and mollifying sponsors too.

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Top 10 of ’11

January 1, 2012

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January 1 2011, not 2012. Sophie sleeps through the night now.

Here is something completely arbitrary, compiled in an utterly unscientifically manner bereft of statistical methodology or evaluative metrics. Ten thoughts from 2011, ten memories or developments or events or discoveries that I think might be worth mentioning

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A Christmas Present – Free El Sistema Logic Model

December 29, 2011

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Logic Model Banner2

A free logic model for El Sistema programs, usage of which is governed by a Creative Commons License.

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Posting 108 – in which a modest domestic dispute spills out into the blogosphere

December 18, 2011

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Exhibit A on my wife's behalf

Anybody who thinks I dwell in an ivory tower of music education, content to comment from afar, is sadly mistaken; as one of perhaps two Abreu Fellows who have at least one child, I’m aware how profoundly my daughter will be affected by all the choices my wife and I make for her.

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The Morality of “Paid to Play”

December 16, 2011

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The latest concept in American educational reform

We should pay children to read great literature. It has manifest educational and social benefits. It’s not a foreign idea to be immediately despised; it was hatched in America. It’s not socialist or morally objectionable; it’s just early exposure to capitalism in that it concretely rewards effort.

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The Why of Sistema

December 6, 2011

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The Jefferson Memorial

The answer isn’t a Marxian redistribution of wealth, but improving and leveling educational quality. Not achieving equalization of educational outcomes, the unobtainable and highly socialist fantasy of No Child Left Behind, but ensuring equalization of educational opportunity - a process that demands equal access to music education.

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Sistema and the Professional World – plus an apology

November 28, 2011

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In rehearsal with the PGSO

Orchestras are living, thinking organisms, all related biological entities of a clearly defined, if endangered genus, but each unique, with a distinct character and temperament. They aren’t mass-produced hunks of machinery, no matter how fine the engineering.

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We are the 18

November 9, 2011

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UVic Poster

In an era of great social challenge, music educators and professional musicians have by and large been relegated to the sidelines, lacking not the will but the knowledge of how to help as society has bled out in front of them.

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Dollars and Sense Part 4 – Paying for the pipes

October 27, 2011

1

If only it were so..

Instruments represent the number one capital expenditure of any Sistema initiative, even very few purchase them new. The default option, the “instrument donation drive,” has evolved into a rite of passage as part of a program launch. It’s excellent publicity, and it reduces start-up costs considerably, although not entirely. There’s no such thing as a free viola: the instruments that are donated always require some degree of maintenance or repair, especially strings. Even once restored to playing condition, they continue to need constant care, especially strings. They’re also extremely fragile…especially strings

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