Which part of Conference Season 2010 is more fun: experiencing the new conventions or returning to the ones we first visited in 2009? The answer is “both.”
It’s rewarding to look up and see the families we first met in 2009 who ordered Discovering Music during the pre-publication phase. That made you co-pioneers with us!
It’s equally fun when the people we chatted with last year walk over to our booth, pick up the course, and say: “Ah-ha, that’s how it came out! It looks good. Tell me about it again.” We are happy to oblige.
Our current mission is to gain the confidence of the new families we meet. So many parents do recognize the well-established fact that study of the Fine Arts (cultivation of the Right Brain) enhances the academic and spiritual development of a child. When they spot Discovering Music, they often exclaim: “Where have you been? We’ve been looking for a course like this for years.” You can imagine how gratifying that is.
But for students and families who haven’t had direct contact with the Fine Arts, the task is trickier. Our message is simple: the Fine Arts are not a frill. But the battle to get the message across has to be waged on several fronts. It’s a mission many of you share.
Many people see words like “music” and think “extracurricular.” But the Fine Arts have traditionally been at the core of a well-rounded education, or a true academic education. The nuts and bolts of history, geography, literature, and technology are the columns that support our multi-media study of the Fine Arts.
In fact, it’s interesting how our corporate name, “Silver Age Music,” gets a reaction very different from my trade name “Professor Carol.” We borrowed the corporate name from one of my favorite periods of Cultural History, the Russian “Silver Age”—the decades around the turn of the 20th century when artists as varied as Chekhov and Stanislavsky, Stravinsky and Prokofiev, Chagall and Kandinsky fashioned a revolution nearly as far-reaching as the political bomb Lenin unleashed.
But while “The Silver Age,” is a pretty phrase to the ear, it isn’t a well-known cultural description. (Someone asked me if we were promoting “geriatric music.”)
Meanwhile, the students using Discovering Music seem to like the “Professor Carol” nomenclature. It’s serious but fun, which is always my goal. Secondary-school aged students using our curriculum for college prep know that their lives soon will be shaped by a stream of professors, so they’re ready for the term. The younger kids are comfortable with it too—maybe it strikes their ear as funny. That’s my best guess.
Speaking of younger students, I love the emails from the elementary-aged kids who connect so strongly with the video component of the course: “Professor Carol, why do wave your hands so much?” Or, “Professor Carol, I like the unit on the French king who was so good at dancing [Louis XIV]. Can you do another one like that?” Or, (if they read my bio), “Professor Carol, why do you like goats so much?”
My unruly goats! That’s a topic for another post. But let me close this post by thanking each of you who has been a part of this adventure. Whether actively using the course with your families and co-ops or just following the Circle of Scholars, you have been instrumental in our growth and we thank you.
And we certainly are growing, both in the US and across the globe. (Welcome Australia!) Much is on tap for fall, and we’ll be telling you about it soon. Meanwhile, if you haven’t read the posts below, read on.
