Due to the end of the home school year fast approaching...Hallelujah!...the posting is becoming sporadic at best.
Allow me a slight dip into nostalgia as I surf the "In My Youth" play list on my iPod.
When I was in the 8th grade Pink Floyd came out with The Wall. I was the DJ at one of our school dances. I was never allowed to be DJ again. Any guesses as to what I played? Yep.
"We don't need no education.
We don't need no thought control.
No dark sarcasm in the classroom.
Teacher leave them kids alone.
All and all you're just another brick in the wall."
Already the establishment was against (future) home schoolers...ha ha ha.
Actually, I think the teachers saw that one coming. It was when I let the album keep going and the song Mother came on that my career had its abrupt ending. That's when our principal, Mr. Peterson, made the needle jump across my new album in an attempt to protect the student body from songs that all of us had already memorized.
"Mother do you think they'll drop the bomb?
Mother do you think they'll like this song?
Mother do you think they'll try to break my ba......."""Screeeech-skip-scratch!"
Great memories. The best - When Malcolm and I laid head to head between two huge Bose speakers and listened to the entire album...three times.
God has brought me a long way from those days.
But there is a point to my musing. Many of my fellow home schooling friends are quick to hand their kids "classics" to read. OK, I'm one of those home schoolers. But some of the authors of these "classics" led suspiciously immoral lives, at best. So why should their works be considered classics? I've been pondering this as I sit and compile my kids' book lists for next year (and listen to my ITunes library).
I ask this question on the heels of a friend's raised eyebrows at my exposing my kids to various musical artists from my 'unregenerate' past. I just shrugged, smirked, and said, "It's for the guitar riffs." But honestly, shouldn't the same eyebrows be raised in response to some of the books so universally called "classics"? Just look at the lives of Tolstoy, Whitman, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald. Not exactly a group of people you'd want mentoring your kids. And let's not leave out those books from antiquity; Oedipus Rex anyone? But so many parents/educators pass the 'classic' works off as "commentary on society during that time in history". I think a similar argument could be made for Gilmore and Waters (Pink Floyd). While unsettling, The Wall is more insightful than some want to admit. You don't need drugs to figure that one out.
Now I'm not justifying an anything-goes policy concerning music. There has to be some (lots of) discretion. My kids aren't listening to the Rolling Stones (mainly because I don't like them) or Metallica (again, no love), but they do appreciate a little Springsteen, Bad Company, Supertramp, and a little Cold Play interspersed ever so lightly throughout their David Crowder, Third Day, and Chris Tomlin.
Likewise, I don't advocate the anything-goes-because-its-a-classic mentality and blindly hand my seventh grader A Tree Grows in Brooklyn just because some book list touts it as a must read classic for that age.
I know there are strong arguments (ones I still use to this day) against the rock music culture, starting with drugs, sex, groupies, and gallons of alcohol. But if one carefully researches, the same could be said about the circles of Hemingway, O'Connor, and Whitman. They just did those things in a socially acceptable manner...
My point? Well, I'm not sure I have one, really. (Remember, this started as musing.) I'm just sitting here enjoying a blast from my past.
