They beg the question "when should you let kids fail?" I say early and often. We know in most cases its not a talent issue -they weren't grading tone. So an effort issue? Most classes come in here in excess of 120 people. I was talking to a friend who is now a senior, her class is down to 60-70.
So, the most ethical issue is "should you, by giving the kids who failed of their on accord a second chance, effect the grades of those who passed the first time?"
To take some of the ego out of this I know I missed several notes myself and know I didn't get an A, probably not even a B+ but should I (we) go through this again (Let alone twice) because some people didn't practice?
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the reason for the hearing is so that you learn the piece. it's nothing serious. There may be some principle in what you're saying but I just to respond in regards to the issue. I remember getting an A in on hearing and receiving an A that semester. I also remember failing my hearing in second semester and still receiving an A. Choir is about singing together, so you must know your notes; if you do not know them, you will fail.
Ok so some didnt practice. Im upset also but i didnt have a good hearing. this lets some of us redeem ourselves. Remember the day when professor Lee ask how many people listened to the recordings? Well I did! So what now? Why did i have to deal with the first hearing! Lets all just deal with the hearings and learn our music.
REMINDER MEMORIZE THE SONGS
Squiggy
Okay, lets over look the hearings and look at the other question; When should we let children fail?
I don't think that some of that was our fault. I mean these hearing settings were also very awkward and not very well planned out, and some of the conducting was not what we were used to. So about that, we should definately have a second chance, since some of us have never even been in a choir before.
but letting kids fail is a nice topic. i dont think we should LET them fail, but if they failed with our help, then we didn't LET them fail. they failed. but we should do as much as possible so that they don't fail, and if we feel that we've done as much as we could and they still fail, then fail them...i said fail too much..
I think that it's quite healthy for everyone, not just children, to fail sometimes; it's the whole theory of learning from your mistakes. As much as you may want to help kids out, they won't learn as much by learning from your mistakes as they will by learning from their own. This is not to say that I would let kids do a performance for which they were completely unprepared - there's a difference between failure and public humiliation. But I think it is just as much of a failure to cancel a concert than to let kids embarass themselves infront of a school board/their parents/etc. It's like the classic relationship mistake. Your friend is about to get themselves into a really shitty relationship, and everybody else but them can see that it's going to be awful. You try to warn them ahead of time, but of course they're not going to listen to you because they want to go out with so and so, and that's just how it's going to be. After it all crashes and burns they say 'ok, so you were right...' but they had to figure that out for themselves.
I don't think this can necessarily be applied to every music situation, but I think that you'll never fully understand something you haven't experienced yourself. Everyone has to make their own mistakes, which may mean failure sometimes.
As far as the hearings go, I think it's a good idea that they're giving us another chance, solely because of the octet situation. For a lot of people, I think this will be another opportunity to fail, but in this case it will be far more pronounced because in the new set-ups, it will be much easier for the people who know what they're doing to assert themselves and make it known that they know what they're doing. Does that make any sense?
In general, I agree with you - early and often. Not to be mean, but as a learning experience - you're there to teach, not to rescue. Necessarily.
Nice points everyone.
But think about the new quintets, we're doing a 6-8 part piece with 5 voices? That might work for some normal pieces with doubling, but we're doing Whittacre which is about tonal color and not just "color tones" but chord clusters. So, will the chords make sense when you have a baritone instead of a bass?
The discussion on failing is much more interesting though.
Personally, I think we deserve a second shot. Honestly - how did they think that could possibly work out? There's never enough guys to balance out the sopranos, there's never enough time in a rehearsal to hear everyone, and somebody always gets confused and messes up the system. I sit in the backmost row of the sopranos, so my "hearing" ended up being with 5 other first sopranos. Ouch. No one really did a good job - half of us were trying to be assertive, and sang really loud, totally convinced that we were doing it right. The other half just kind of stood there and followed along. So no one was right, we all looked stupid, and there were spontaneous tone clusters that were weird even for Whitacre!! It was terrible.
... I'm actually kind of surprised they even told us specifically in advance what measures they would be checking. I kind of assumed they would just throw out a piece and a measure number once we got there, so we'd have to be ready with ALL of our music no matter what. Not because they want us to fail, but because we have to be prepared all the time instead of just cramming to the test. That would have been sooooo stressful, of course, but it's our job to learn this music, so the 'element of surprise' method is justifiable, in my mind. ... Thoughts? What would you have done, either as R.O./S.M.L., or as your future-self-director, or just as yourself, a member of Chaperrr?
this is all very interesting, and I like alot of things meghan said, btw.
I think what ketti was saying kind of ties into what I went on about in our last class with the calling that one annoying kid out and making them sing by themselves thing, in a way:
I think in part what S.M.L and R.O. were trying to do with the hearings was not see which of us would fail, but to show us as individuals what's really going on in choir.
Often people think: they're like 120 of us here, do I personally really have to practice? But then when the entire choir thinks that way, we run into problems.
I think the hearings are kind of a way for some people in the choir to get a more realistic idea of how bad they sound and how much more they need to practice by way of a little embarrassment.
It's kind of the same thing with that annoying kid in the back of the room: When you tell him to stand up and sing the entire piece by himself, you're not trying to say, "Look how terrible you are, everyone hates you, now shut up and let us rehearse in peace!"
You're trying to say, "Look, you're not only distracting everyone else, you have absolutely no idea what you're doing either, and you've just made that clear. So why don't you start paying attention, so we can make some progress."
There's a difference - right? And that's why SML and RO only required volunteers to sing for the entire choir.
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