But if you’d like to read more about this observation, ie SAT reading scores are at a decades long low, go here.
Neil Kurtzman
Comments and reviews of opera, music, and medicine
Res Ipsa Loquitur
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 28th September 2012
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This development has been planned by the same forces in society that have planned the widening gap between the rich and the poor. Uneducated and uncritical consumers are easier to manipulate. They drink sugar-filled colas, eat worthless fast food and don´t protest against genetically modified plants.
When in 1982 a conservative government in Germany introduced American style commercial radio and TV, violence, pornography and silly entertainment programs were broadcast into children´s minds. School standards dropped measurably, and juvenile deliquency rose by 250 per cent. I gave up my job as a teacher and fled into adult education.
When you go to an opera house in Germany today, most audiences are clearly over fifty with only few young ones. German theaters mourn that their visitors are dying away.
In Poland, on the other hand, young people abound in opera houses. I was so stunned that I asked in Warsaw´s Teatr Wielki if that evening was a special performance for schools, since about one third of the audience seemed to be under twenty. No, this is normal, they explained.
Poland does not have an American style commercial TV system.
John Locke (1632 – 1704), one of the spiritual fathers of the Declaration of Independence, believed that much of our mind is made up of what we feed into it.
So, let us consider what we feed into the minds of our children: horse operas or classical operas. When did your local commercial TV station last broadcast an opera at prime viewing time?