Oct 21 2024 - Lessons of the Unlearned Lessons

 

Such a brilliant phrase.  It is on the editorial page of the Globe and Mail this morning. I went looking for it to find out more, but it doesn't retrieve a definition. It retrieves interesting articles. Lessons learned and unlearned from history Lessons taught, learned, forgotten and ignored History is not a teacher but a warden The Lesson(s) to unlearn from school - there are a lot of these articles  There is the unlearned lessons syndrome - it is about learned helplessness.  But mostly unlearned lessons come under the history section or the psychology section.  The psychology section wants people to detail their most difficult lessons they learned and the most difficult lessons they unlearned.   The Globe and Mail was pointing to the recent report on the COVID-19 pandemic. Using this phrase -  the lessons of the pandemic lessons unlearned - certainly draws attention to it.  It would be great to find a "lesson unlearned" joke, but that is too sophisticated a topic.  Jokes are by definition simple in content and theme.  I did see this as the lead-in line for Reditt's Upjokes: I taught my son a valuable life lesson by eating his homework. Tomorrow he will learn that many people will not believe you, even when you tell the truth. That joke is a relief from all of the feel-good "Learn, Unlearn, Relearn"  words and pictures out there.  Here's a picture from a few years ago.  It is taken through the car windshield with heavy rain, causing the abstract shapes of the autumn tree.

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Sep 28 2021 - Toe Tapping to the Music

 

Somehow my parents determined that their children would get music lessons and play music.  Perhaps this was a popular notion in the 1950s.  Perhaps they wanted to continue an old tradition of music in the house.  They also sent my sister and I took dance classes.  That seemed unusual and I think was influenced by the musical movies at the time.  I think that as my parent gave every indication that they did not have any spare money, or even enough money.  I wore my sister's hand-me-down clothes, and got new shoes and a new winter coat each year.  Here we are again - that could easily have been a deep tradition in their generation which went through the great Depression.  They were entranced at Christmas time when we sang Christmas carols in three-part harmony and my sister entertained them with accordion songs.  The singing didn't last very long as my sister and brother were mostly not in key.  Linda, my older sister, had an early musical career as she had an abundance of musical talent.  The great German instrument is the accordion, and she played in accordion bands and at music festivals, winning prizes and scholarships.  She went on to playing the pipe organ in churches, but dropped music by university.   My brother, Brian, was interested in science activities. He got an ulcer from accordion lessons.   So they were concluded quickly - that was before universal health care.  My parents bought a piano and I took piano lessons.  It went with me from my parents' home, and I eventually got a grand piano and an electronic piano, playing all through my adult years.  I sang in a choir for a few years, but the pandemic has suspended all of that. Research has found that music lessons improve many key skills, and increase IQ scores.  Things like language skills, verbal memory, spatial improvements, focus/attention, creativity, cognitive performance, and so on.  There is research in abundance. Music School Central has gathered 71 studies showing music lessons are the best thing for your brain HERE. The studies indicate that skills are improved for all ages, so dementia and Alzheimers sufferers benefit from music lessons.  Should music be a mandatory subject in school if it ranks up there with physical activity/sports in terms of benefits?  It has long been a debated subject.  How we view subjects is most interest: Can you imagine if dancing became an accepted physical activity/skill in public and high schools?  Doesn't that put in perspective our focus on sports as the primary delivery vehicle of physical fitness and skill. Our picture today is music in the garden at the Watering Can, Vineland.  This was part of their mosaic sculpture display.  The most recent display has a VW camper and a canoe planting.

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