| Show p""" bunoay opinion Standara-Examine- r Letters & Columns To our Readers might not stop killings research shows music but can make a difference It Would the world be a different place today if Eric Harris and Dy lan Klebold had listened to Mozart Mahler or the Mormon n Tabernacle Choir instead of Manson? Julie Hanson likes to think so The executive director of the Ogden Symphony Ma-nly- Ballet As- sociation doesn't think music is a panacea for all our ills but she doesn't pute its power for good - as dis- well as evil -- just the same Hanson told the Ogden Exchange Club last week that the deaths of 15 people at Columbine High School in Littleton Colo might have been prevented by something as simple as a song What might have happened she asked if Harris and Klebold had learned to play vibrant violins instead of violent video games? Or if they'd spent time learning about the gentle composer Brahms instead of making bombs? “Cm a firm believer that what can be used for good can be used for evil” whether that’s the Internet a gun or music Hanson told me later The Littleton killers "happened to get involved in the things that had the evil side” Before you dismiss Hanson's theories as artsy-farts- y claptrap consider this: A growing body of research is pointing to music as important in the development of young brains According to an article in Education Week the theory' is that listening to music - as w ell as seeing a mother's smile or hearing a father’s voice - helps forge the links between the 100 billion unconnected neurons or nerve cells that a baby is bom with And music continues to affect us as we grow older Researchers have shown that listening to Mozart improved a special kind of reasoning ability for college students and statistics from the College Board indicate that music students score 30 to 40 percent higher on Scholastic Aptitude Tests in math and English In our high schools Utah would appear to be doing a fairly good job of music education All Davis County high schools for example have three music teachers who teach a variety of choir band and orchestra classes according to Richard Marsden the district’s music supervisor High school graduation requirements in this area aren't stiff however The state only requires l’2 units in the arts to of graduate and about tw all students fulfill those requirements by taking art appreciation drama or dance classes instead of music Marsden said The real problem is in the grade schools Marsden who is president of the Utah Music Educators Association said his counterparts in other states are shocked when they find out Utah does not fund music specialists in elementary schools Instead our schools expect regular classroom teachers to teachers or part-tim- e teach a music curriculum You don’t have to wait for the Legislature to increase funding for school music programs however For S69 you could sponsor an entire family at next season's Utah Symphony family concerts The series which will be held in Val Browning Centhe 1800-seter at Weber State University will feature the Children’s Dance Theater for one performance Keith Lockhart will conduct a shadow-puppperformance of Stravinsky’s ‘'Firebird” in another The final presentation entitled the “Glory' and Story of Brass” will show kids how to make brass instruments out of common household items Call 4 for details But if y ou're still not convinced of the power of music Hanson has a story to tell When her organization has available seats it offers them for free to community organizations In December 1997 the symphony association invited residents of Serenity House an alcohol treatment center to attend the symphony's annual Yuletide Joy concert It was probably the first symphony any of the Serenity House residents had ever attended she said Hanson got a w onderful thank-yo- u note from the residents "but she didn’t know just how powerful the concert had been until a few weeks ago when her association called Serenity House to invite residents to attend a ballet performance The Serenity House director said that one of the people who came to the Christmas concert felt so good after she witnessed the performance that she dedicated herself to cleaning up her life “She's completely clean now and has been for a year and a half” Hanson said “She's home with her family She's working again in the community and she’s now buying tickets and taking her kids to the symphony” Perhaps if we heard more stories like that one we wouldn't have to print as many stones about school shootings et 399-921- Ron Thornburg is managing edi- ion tor of the Standard-Examine- r 0 or can call him at him at nhomburg astaruiardnet 625-421- nation's role as aggressor in the Kosovo war Why are we meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign country? The United Nations has become the world warden United Nations nations united yes but not all nations of the world So too were the Axis powers of the 1940s The refugee expulsion began alter we started bombing Television shows the faces of weeping refugee mothers and children How about the civilians we maimed and killed when our missiles missed miliaccitary targets? Unavoidable atroci-t? dents? Is this not also an m earnest only Clinton claims we're making war to make peace That is no as paradox it is a contradiction was his vow not to use ground tnx’ps I consider it an outright lie by the pollsters that 53 percent of Americans want ground troop there If as wc were told early on we had used all but 100 of the Air force's stockpile of 250 nonnuclear cruise missiles why then do we continue? Is this an excuse to brandish our doer new elec lii!lllftililfl nftmrA f"fti nifl flft fflf chemical weapons? I fear we have become a nation of warmongers safe in our armchairs placated and inured by television Except for combat veterans few Americans know the raw brutality of war - yet What can one individual do? Two choices: 1 Remain among the anonymous and ominous compliant and silent majority while the Constitution perishes Or: 2 Contact your representatives in Congress and ask why they abdicated the legislative check on executive branch war powers by allowing Clinton to abrogate US sovereignty to the United Nations and further funded this war We may lose more than money or our lives Demand corrective action immediately The federal government section in the phone Nok lists the local numbers of your senators and representatives Most listen Few people ever bother tef call You can make a difference IXv you care? If not you who? ua Lena IUn Spring L ii FAX 951 UT (801)625-450- lUb Iluh 1 yyy 5A 1 84402-095- Opinion pages 1 8 Lettersstandardnet MONDAY: Maggie Gallagher on teachers unions’ uproar over school vouchers Tragedies now only props for grief industry Do omnipresent serve the hangers-o- n victims or themselves? - WASHINGTON - It is a ritual as tightly choreographed as a 1 930s Hollywood musical First comes the sad calamitous event: the bombing of an office building the suicide of a flock of true believers the trail of corpses left by a serial killer Next come the cries and lamentations Then come the ghouls: the oleaginous journalists the grief therapists the ambulance chasers the gurus the zealots the Mister Fix-It- s Thus it was last week: the dreadful v killings in t Colorado the instantaneous ' outpouring of sor- row and dismay the invasion of the Our capacity to transform the heartbreaking into the banal is extraordinary So too is our conviction that fate is a creature susceptible to manipulation if only we can put our masterly hands on the key to its secrets The grief therapists for instance were there long before the gun smoke wafted away They are the priests and priestesses of this uncNew Age of tuous parasites bearing portable confessionals who swoop down wherever catastrophe strikes chanting mantras of pop psychology in tones suspiciously reminiscent of television's spiritual pitchmen Surely there are few sights in the contemporary landscape more repellent than that of these leeches attaching themselves to the stunned bew ildered survivors of affliction demanding that they give vent to their “feelings” To w hom one cannot but wonder are these Uriah Heeps in fact ministering: the survivors or themselves? The haste and zeal with which they pounce suggest that their business is as as compasmuch sion that they are not angels of mercy but emissaries of what a Sa-tpsy chiatrist named Sally L in The last week writing New York Times called “the Grief Industry" with its “bereavement books grief chat rooms expensive workshops in body-snatche- rs el The tragic murders in Littleton Colo and the growing trend in school violence has sickened many hearts and raised many questions Why are so many kids lesort-in- g to violence in school? &Tiat can families and society do to help children find the peace and happiness they seek? Although much could be said about providing a loving home about choosing healthy entertainment about conflict tolerance and resolution I'd like to submit the follow ing for additional consideration I believe children have a right to choices in thetr lives - perhaps even more choices than the adults who raise them Choices that parents in their "wisdom" or ignorance seem all too often to deny them non-viole- nt When parents have incessant arguments they deprive their child of the choice to live in peace When unreconciled parents divorce they strip their child of the choice to live m harmony with both oi them When a parent allows a spouse to beat them child both deny him the chihe to live without fear to love and value himself These types of L i grief education and exams for certification” Their piety and godliness -also in the manner of the television spiritual pitchmen - are on public display and we are meant to applaud The lawyers? It may seem impossible but they are worse As The Washington Post’s David Segal reported “Colorado law prohibits attorneys from soliciting clients until 30 days after an injury” but there's no law against figuring all the legal dodges in advance “I'd like to find out where (the killers) got these weapons” a Washington “plaintiffs’ lawyer” named John Coale told Segal “where this fascination with Hitler came from There's a possible Internet angle and every time Hollywood makes a movie in which 1 50 get killed I think w e get closer to a level of responsibility that is compensi-ble- ” A dozen children are murdered on the campus of their high school and w hile the tears are still flowing we're talking about an “angle" that could lead to something “compensible” In earlier cases of a similar character Segal wrote “victims' families have filed suit against the killers’ parents the schools gun manufacturers and even makers of computer games and movies alleged to have helped spur murderous rampages” It will be fascinating albeit morbidly and repugnantly so to see what allegedly responsible parties the lawyers in their infi “It will befascinating albeit morbidly ami repugnantly so to see what alleged fy resixmsible parties the lawyers in their infinite resourcefulness come up with this time around The one certainty is that there’s money' to be made ami that in the making of it time's ” no such thing as shame nite resourcefulness come up with this time around The one certainty is that there's money to be made and that in the making of it there's no such thing as shame There are causes to be promoted as well most obviously and noisily the cause of gun control It is as it happens one for which I have the deepest sympathy in support of which I have written more times than 1 care to remember principally in unsigned editorials that had the iminpact of marshmallows heaved to a concrete bunker Now after the Littleton massacre the National Rifle Association and its hand maiden the gun industry are said to be on the run and the moment is at hand it is said for opponents of promiscuous firearms distribution to achieve the goals they have so long sought and so long been denied More power to them But along the way to the Promised Land please spare us the usual rhetoric about how calamities such as Littleton will be prevented if only w e control guns or provide teenage misfits with counseling or install self-estee- m metal detectors at the high school door or floss each night before retiring Fate doesn't work that way Whatever caused those poor demented kids to assemble their arsenal and then to tum it on their schoolmates we'll never know now and w e certainly could never have known in advance Fate may program itself but it can't be programmed by us Even in the safest of worlds -and Columbine High School looked like just that - unspeakable things can happen Yes we can reduce the possibility of catastrophe as anyone can attest w ho had the misfortune to be in Washington during NATO's celebratory clamp-dow- n on the rights of the local citizenry and its visitors If only we'd known how to prevent the Littleton massacre certainly we would have done so But we didn't know and we couldn't have known and we aren't going to know the next time it - whatever “it” turns out to be - happens Jonathan YardUy's column runs occasionally Yiu can contai t him at yardUy a tup corn i ia America has lost its sense of morality Lack of choices triggers violence biological and iTltmii Ogden May 2 Coming up in the: r Standard-Examine- POBox at Demand stop to aggression in Kosovo saddened by our MAIL Please keep letters to 300 words or less and include your name address and daytime phone for verification Letters must be signed and may be edited and condensed Our kids need Mozart not Marilyn Manson I’m deeply tym nft‘l)ir‘ llflfWIWI1 “choice deprivation" cannot help but engender hopelessness that can lead to severe emotional problems A less obvious form of imprisonment is when parents don't give children choices in schooling in where and with whom they spend the many hours of their days Children need to have g choices that could include private school home schooL public school or a combination Recently I was telling my eldest about a high school girl who attempted suicide supposedly because of pressure placed on her by a math teacher Possibly she didn't feel she had choices w here her education was concerned My son corrected me saying “No Mom she knows she doesn’t have a choice - that's the problem" He was probably right Perhaps if the boys in Littleton had been given more choices they never would have joined the Trench Coat Mafia wasted them intelligence crafting weapons of destruction and never would have lulled and died on April 20 hope-inspinn- Helen WiLot Si Lnhr Fori Coy As much as my heart goes out to families of victims suffering from violent crimes such as the massacre in Colorado it amazes me how uneducated people are about guns violence history and the general characteristics of humans am responding to the sarcasof April 25 (“NRA lawmakers blamed for massacres”) m which an opinion was given without any documentation I challenge the author to produce evidence supporting his theory that guns are the reason for the current massacres I tic letter As far as I know there has never been a report of a disaffected gun - it s always a disaffected gunman As far as 1 know a gun has never been a defendant or convicted of murder - it s always a human Vehicles kill well over 50 ox) people a year Do we get nd of the vchiJe? No but we need to get nd of the drunken and irresponsible drivers The two gunmen tn Colorado were stsk and we need to keep from suk people guns However even that will not stop aa the violence If the two had not had access to guns they would have access to other weapons of destruction such as the pipe bomb which is made with simple household products I support trying to restrict’ guns so that kids irresponsible adults the mentally ill and criminals do not have access Too many people are wasting their time blaming guns It's not the National Rifle Association the lawmakers or the guns It's parents who aren't doing their jobs allowing their kids to watch violence in video games movies television etc It’s hate and a loss of right and wrong that causes a child to murder Most of all it is America which as a whole has turned its back on God the principles of right and wrong and the good morals that would have been m- vt lied in the hearts of our kids if ibe Supreme Court had not taken God out of the vhoo system on June 16 963 1 r Chns I irt Croub-- r Gv LaMim r |
