I was reading my Time Magazine today while my computer booted up, hoping that my cable modem would behave today (that was why there was no entry yesterday. No problem yet today, perhaps the Time-Warner cable approves of me reading Time Magazine) In the magazine there was a small inset on Artie Shaw, a big band leader who died last month. (More info, the NY Times and Ken Burns’ PBS Jazz website have interesting synopses of his life.)

I found the article somewhat amusing because it discussed how he was trying to expose his swing audiences to classical music, similiar to how arts organizations try to grab new audiences by offering popular pieces and hoping people will experiment with unfamiliar territory.

Shaw’s experience went something like this:

“Bandleader Artie Shaw had tried feeding long-hair music to short hair audiences, [but] he had discovered that ‘It is necessary to give an audience some familiar points of reference before you can expect it to go along on new things’…He thought…playing old Shaw specials…might lure strayed followers back into the tent. Once they were in, perhaps he could give them [classical works] in small doses. Last week…on the opening night of a nationwide tour, the first part of Artie’s experiment worked. A record breaking crowd, including a good many of the jammy jitterbug type..was lured into Boston’s huge Symphony Ballroom. The Shaw faithful, plus a few horn rimmed jazz intellectuals, clustered around the bandstand…Right there, any semblance of success stopped. When Artie’s boys began unraveling Ravel’s Piece en Forme de Habanera, the crowd around the bandstand applauded politely, but even the most ardent jitterers had to stop dancing. Cried one in petulant exasperation: ‘Artie you suck'”

I don’t know if arts managers will take heart in the fact that hurdles they face in widening the perspective of their audiences are nothing new. Or if they will see this article from 1949 as validation that their efforts are hopeless.

Okay, I have been having the dangest time with my cable modem keeping a connection so I am gonna make this quick and hope I can squeeze it in before things break down again.

Courtesy of Artsjournal.com I found a great article on arts education in the spirit of the one I found locally a month or so ago. This one is in Minneapolis/St.Paul where the program is using the arts to teach critical thinking skills. The article points out that in an age when schools need to meet standardized testing, the skills gained are hard to quantify, though certainly valuable in the job market if they are cultivated.

As I am trying to be brief, all I will say is please, read it. And maybe drop a line to the paper praising them for spending so much space in the Sunday paper to discuss this topic.

In a related story, a study by the University of York has found that teaching students grammar actually has very little beneficial effect on the quality of the students’ writing. What does improve writing skills–getting the students to do a lot of writing.

Just like the first story–it is hard to objectively measure the benefits on a standardized test, though good writing skills are definitely marketable.

I talk about marketable skills because that seems to be the big gripe of job seekers and employers–college doesn’t seem to be providing students with marketable skills (I can do a whole series of blogs expressing my thoughts on that topic). As much as I am leery about the whole No Child Left Behind thing, I have to admit, whatever the schools were doing before wasn’t working too well. Students’ abilities and habits were so ill suited to college, the only benefit I could see was that my own skills would be in higher demand as time progressed.

At this point, if I can convince students to cultivate their critical thinking and expressive powers by using money as an incentive, I will toss the phrase “marketable skills” around until it goes passe and comes back into vogue again.