My Dads Dad

My Dads Dad came to town, he lives a long way away. Over the years my Dad lost touch with him, as a result I have only met him once or twice. It was really nice to be old enough to be able to organise to meet him myself and have a great chat.

I was happy that we seemed to get along really well, he is such a nice guy. He told me about family that I don't know anything about, the connections between people are more numerous than you realise sometimes. I would like to work out a family tree, but I don't know how to go about it, and I don't remember names, which without a little history behind each person I would forget who was who.

Finding out about origins is all very interesting.

The other thing I was doing this weekend was attending as a scribe the National Music Workshop, where a lot of the important people in the music scene, government, schools, uni's, industry, AMEB, came to Melbourne to talk about the state of music ed in Australia, and propose things that need to happen next. It all came out of a National Review that the Government did into it, which is as thick as a phone book, and about as interesting. It is a lot of high level language which takes a bit of thinking to sort out the really important bits. I tell you I am all talked out. I listened to people all TALK, everyone had their say, lots of their say.

Yet for me, as a potential teacher the outlook for music teachers at the moment is very very good. If there is all this interest in having music teachers in schools, and having the status of music raised in public opinion, then there will be multitudes of oppourtunities for teachers like me. And because I am very specialised in both instrumental and now classroom teaching, there will be extra demand. Because I can do things in both the classroom and instrumental programs at a school. And if I decide that the classroom really isn't for me, then there will be heaps of teaching positions for instrumentalists. Having piano and horn is a bonus.

So the biggest things that they agreed on is that music is currently seen as a nice wishy washy kind of subject next to subjects like English and Maths and Science and whatever. When for personal development and well being music is the best thing. Everyone listens to it. It has been proved time and time again that music helps literacy and numeracy and cognitive skills and coordination and team work skills. So they want to raise the importance of music education for everyone.

They wanted to have everyone sing. Every child in the primary school should be involved in a choir and learn to sing. To most high school kids that would be weird and uncool, but they want to change the culture that it is not ok to sing in public. They want to be like Samoan and African cultures where singing as a community is taken for granted. It will be a hard change to initiate, but I think it is possible.

Lots of interesting discussion over two days. Better go to bed, I am so tired now I am stupid.