Friday, October 12, 2007

Pearls before swine

Music has charms to soothe the savage breast
(William Congreve)

Studies have shown that playing classical music, especially Mozart for some reason, can have a calming effect in the classroom. I have tried this on a number of occasions when the pupils are doing practical work and it seems to work.

During one class I had the radio tuned to Classic FM and there was a particularly soothing instrumental piece playing. One girl obviously had not read the research and said, “Sir, I can’t stand that opera music.”


Her friend was a bit more knowledgeable and told her, “That’s not opera music. Opera is when some woman sings at the top of her voice and you can’t make out the words.”

And here’s me thinking that was a description of heavy metal.

4 comments:

Ali said...

Funny, I have tried this in a past life too and found it to be very successful, though I preferred Boston Pops CDs to Classic FM.

Initially the pupils would complain and shout 'turn that Christian (??) music off', by Halloween they were asking for requests, and by Christmas the CDs had mysteriously disappeared

Dana said...

Hi Pluto,
Thanks for the visit and the encouragement! I would love any helpful information I can get. He does have Asperger's and he is doing much better.
Thanks for commenting and hope you visit again.

P.S. Enjoyed your blog as well.

Ali said...

and by the way ...

I've told you before about putting pictures like that on your blog

:-p

Anonymous said...

pluot - who are you??