I recently found this article (http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/story/2010/03/04/classical-music-punishment.html?ref=rss#ixzz0hWr49Mrx) that is a MUST read for all educators, not just music educators. The article explains one school administrator's decision to use classical music as a means of punishment. Apparently, the headmaster decided to pipe "classical" music into the detention hall. He reports that the number of infractions that violate school rules "[has] dropped by about 60 percent since he began the special detentions."
The reporter likens this discouraging practice to the therapy given to the protagonist, Alex, in Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. Some twisted musical/violence therapy makes Alex hate his beloved Beethoven much in the same subliminal way piping "classical" music into the detention hall makes students hate "classical" music.
A comment was posted about the article that read, "Mozart is good for the truants, certainly better than Rap, which is probably all they hear and is what probably incites them to cause trouble."
This practice is carving new voids between "school music" and "out-of-school music" as we know them. Students will begin to associate "classical" music with punishment and high society, the Man, authority, and they will have no interest (beyond what they do now) to learn about the great Western Canon.
The reporter references Brendan O'Neill's article Weaponizing Mozart. (http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/24/weoponizing-mozart)
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