Iwicki: Let's start talking before it's besides late

You don't talk about taste. Really?

Actually, it wasn't until I started writing this column that I realized how ridiculous and harmful this common circulation maxim has become. My attention was drawn to this by a composer who writes valuable music for children – Mrs. Anna Weber.

I urge to all parents to get acquainted with the work of this young and different composer who created the YouTube channel, profile and application of POMELODY. I am not going to compose about this for now, due to the fact that shortly the voice in Polish thought will be given to the artist herself, in an interview that I am working on. We will talk about music and children, and now I will tell you what Mrs. Weber inspired me with?

Some time ago, in a short movie form, called a "roll" on Facebook, she said that 1 should fight superstition, that listening to stupid music, or (about horror) playing it to children is simply a substance of taste and should not be criticized. We explain – It's not a question of the city.Oh, my God! We can talk about the taste (and here I will usage the virtually example of Mrs. Weber) erstwhile individual knows many kinds of cuisine and compares them with each other, not erstwhile he eats the same and compares dinner with dessert. In another words – erstwhile it has this taste shaped!

Here comes the general misunderstanding of even the simplest "people's wisdom." Unfortunately, today's saying, "You don't talk about tastes" or "it's a substance of taste" have become a collective excuse for deficiency of taste and simple ignorance. What results from these sad flaws? Well, just out of uneducated taste, that is, the backlog in a sphere that is seemingly trivial, but truly speaks a lot about us and shows good or bad – culture.

I think that the sooner we start talking about tastes, but to do that, we gotta form them! Mrs Anna Weber deals with my closest field of music, but we can clearly translate this into all aspects of culture and art. The arrears I compose about have paradoxically begun to expand, despite specified extended access to various media. So what can we do to reverse this fatal pattern?

We get to know culture

Culture is precisely like the kitchen and food. The first and most crucial thing is that culture and art are starting to get to know each another from childhood. We may have experienced our children from birth, and any studies show that even in prenatal times. By the way, it is simply a pity that we are not so eager to quote and apply another “people's wisdom” which my grandpa frequently repeated: “The birth of a kid begins 20 years before its birth."

As he wrote Bogdan Suchodolski – Polish philosopher, historian of discipline and culture, distinguished educator, since 1938 prof. of the University of Jan Kazimierz in Lviv and since 1946 prof. of the University of Warsaw: “Not only education is to service art, but art is to service education.”

Numerous technological studies have been produced on this subject, and the impact of art and culture on children and adults is constantly the subject of research. Children increasing up with a valuable culture make much better. My friend – Tomasz Gust, who is simply a teacher in the piano class of the State School of Music and an accompaniment of the Academy of Music many times told me how fantastic the impact on the results in teaching simple subjects, specified as mathematics has the simultaneous learning of music. Children attending music schools show, for example, the ability to realize discipline quickly. We are talking about very young children, due to the fact that 6-7 years old, and the improvement of taste begins even earlier, by just interacting with culture / art.

You wrote an interesting article on this subject Anna Teodorczyk led by Prof. M. Adamczyk. In “Between Art and Education. Illustration in children and youth books” reads:

"In addition to checking the child's tastes for image features, thought processes accompanying their viewing of illustrations were besides analysed. investigation on the issue of perception in the youngest has led to the uncovering that certain intellectual operations and observations are characterized by syncretism in children – a phenomenon resulting from insufficient analysis and synthesis erstwhile the task presents difficulties for the child."

There is simply quite a few akin work on different forms of culture and their impact on children. So if we know that, why are we neglecting this area of life? Sticking to a good comparison with kitchen and food, I ask the question: Why can we explain to our children that we request to eat healthy and nutritiously, utilizing reasonable, knowledge-based medical arguments, and that we cannot be able to interact with a valuable (food to the mind) culture? After all, discipline and medicine come to us here in Sukurs. If we don't get to know the kid with different forms of culture, how can he have taste?

Not much – it besides applies to the ability to realize even simple forms of art and there are besides studies! Let's get back to the music for a while. individual could say that I am malicious and I am exaggerating due to the fact that tiny children play alternatively simple music based on the "dur-mol" system, most frequently in alleged cheerful, or dud tones, and that should suffice. Nothing more wrong. As a substance of fact, studies were conducted on this subject, which lasted as long as 3 years. The children studied were divided into 3 groups – the first ones were sung and played only major themes and melodies (the cheerful, durous ones), i.e. the most common and ubiquitous ones on YouTube; the second major and insignificant ones (molar ones, the sad ones), and the 3rd may, insignificant ones and in another scales (the "strange ones").

After 3 years, it turned out that major motifs (i.e. the simplest ones) were best sang and remembered by this 3rd group of children, who "listened" in various scales, not necessarily dud-mol. We can sing simple tunes to children, but in different scales (e.g. Dorician) – the more they hear, the richer they will have the musical imagination! The experimentation is described more broadly in Mrs. “Music Improvisation Science” Barbara Claw. Of course, we can transfer this to the ground of any form of art and culture.

I will only tell readers that 1 of the topics I will address with Mrs. Weber will be the story of “music for children.”

No excuses!

We live in a time of “immediate access”. The net gives us immense cognitive and purchasing capabilities. No problem we can buy inexpensive books, albums, albums, atlases, textbooks, but besides a immense part simply see or hear for free. Let's usage it. Of course – preferably in person, live. Nothing can replace a visit to theatre, philharmonics, performance hall, art gallery or museum, but let's make an arrangement – it's better for our kid to see this play or performance on YouTube than to see at all, or (which is even worse) to watch/hear only mush.

Children should be read nice, valuable fairy tales and then books, play good music, show various illustrations, albums with painting or architecture, and take them to cultural events – valuable ones if possible.

Again, an evil individual might ask: how do we know which are valuable? Who's to decide that? “It’s a substance of taste!” No, but that's where the problems start. For how can we form the taste of our children if we have neglected him? Making up for it is difficult, yes, but not impossible, and with a small effort it will be pleasant.

I do not request to add that I am alternatively calm about the tastes of our Readers, but that does not mean that there is no place and task for us. If we ourselves know more about culture and have already developed taste, possibly it is worth looking in the immediate surroundings? To talk to your loved ones, your neighbour or to see what the situation in our children's schools is like? I feel (like most of you probably) part of the widely understood National Camp. Therefore, colleagues – that is what we are talking about! Unfortunately, I myself was terrified to discover that in my son's wonderful, different primary school, disco-polo children are very frequently played. Of course, I do not encourage a "aggressive crusade", but in specified cases you can always talk and propose something from yourself – set an example! This can be done not only at home, children – school, office, workplace, favourite restaurant, bar, group of friends and friends. That sounds corny, but that's truly how it works!

Let's think about ourselves – what are we listening to? What are we watching? What do we read? A friend late wrote about reading Mateusz Piskorski, coming to the fatal conclusion that reading goes down – both in terms of quantity and quality! After all, reading another book Remigius Mroz is Catherine Grocholi (with all due respect to lovers of these authors) they contribute nothing to shaping taste... I, for example, love comic movie – about superheroes and “lasers from behind” (as my wife says), but pity! I'm not saying I'm culturally enriching myself by watching them. Now attention! On the another hand, I can catch excellent music in these "images for large boys", for example, but only due to the fact that most illustrated movie music full of handfuls draws from classics specified as Dvorzak, Rachmaninov or Tchaikovsky! But if I hadn't listened to these classics before, I wouldn't have known that, for example, the phenomenal John Williams movie music is virtually “copy – paste” from Antoni Dworzak (listen to “Symphony No. 9” and then the beginning subject from Star Wars). That is the applicable translation of 1:1 of what Mrs Barbara Cazur writes about!

In 1 of the last columns, I wrote about the importance of following pop culture. But if we want to do this consciously, attentively, with pleasance and understanding, we must have a basis. We request to take care of our own cognitive resource, due to the fact that at the end – in the end – it will come to us to receive the work / (and more often) the product, draw conclusions from it and announcement – share them! I think it is our work to avoid high-profile slogans – to the immediate environment at least. The task is highly difficult, due to the fact that we will gotta face everyday life, that is to say, the bombing of “the culture”.

The taste of taste!

Let's do a fast review. Our children on a regular basis are constantly bombarded with cultural mush, absolutely worthless creations that destruct taste. Let's get this straight. From an early age:

• Stupid fairy tales (very dramatically stupid)
• in homes, schools and public spaces ubiquitous disco-polo (it hurts me especially, as a man associated with music)
• complete tandem in the visual sphere
• on the Internet, a literal flood of mush – the worse, the better. If anyone would like to see the magnitude of destruction, delight check for specified a phenomenon as Young Leosia, and this is only 1 of the blooms of the present state of affairs.
• ubiquitous Anglo-polo. I am sending you back to my erstwhile column – music that is worthless and simply horrible in terms of its creativity.
• ugly fairy tales (terrible creatures as ip mascots)
• Pathostream popularity

If we add our ignorance to that, we have an answer to the question: why don't we talk about tastes? What is there to talk about?! An example is the show of our challengers to represent at the Eurovision Festival – bottom and 5 meters of mud...

But that's not gonna happen. It's not like forming someone's tastes erstwhile we're lacking ourselves. If we are only reaching for “popular Netflyx series”, listening to mediocre music, not participating in the cultural life of the nearest community, to Hasama theatre in short short shorts, do we have the right to require our children to be cultural? No! No! Then we gotta quit thoughtlessly: we do not talk about tastes! "Oh, there, there. Turns the ass around, enjoys what you choice on?” This is by all means a manifestation of the "debilisation" of public life.

So I encourage and even delight National Camp – let us not neglect this area! Unfortunately, I am sorry to compose this, but by doing so we contribute to the universal demolition and stupidity of public life, and thus our fates! I am truly terrified of the imagination of life in a planet where “tasks don’t talk” and “it’s all a substance of taste”. So I explain – we talk about issues of taste erstwhile we compare e.g. E. A. Poe with Kazimierz Wierzinski, romantics with positivists, etc. It is not a substance of taste and really, there is nothing to talk about erstwhile comparing disco-polo with pato-rap. How do I know? His taste has been shaping for years and there are nonsubjective criteria that I have learned from experience (including phase ones).

Let us begin to form our own tastes and children and then talk about them! It's like air, or woe to us... We'll be quiet, due to the fact that what's there to talk about erstwhile there's no taste...

Bartosz Iwicki

photo public domain

Think Poland, No. 13-14 (26.03-2.04.2023)