Hey "Teacher" Leave those kids alone

salty3dog · Post by **salty3dog** » Wed Dec 10, 2003 7:33 am

I would be interested in hearing if others had any experiences either teaching using Pink Floyd material or being on the receiving end as a student ?

About a year after "The Wall" came out, I found myself teaching a large and unruly group of students who had failed grade nine more than once and had been 'socially promoted' to high school where they could enjoy their status as 'the dummies' among young people their own age.

My task was to teach them Literature 10 and the curriculum demanded a major literary work. The staples were of course, Romeo and Julliet or for the dummies, West Side Story. After flogging both of those to death with no results I said to the group "Right - here is the plan. We are going to do "The Wall." " Most who even knew of Pink Floyd dismissed the idea because it came from me, but they agreed to go along with it just for the change. It took us two months but that group listened to every word, and struggled to copy down the lyrics by ear ( I would not let them see the printed ones). They learned that album deeply. We did some 'analysis' and I taught them poetic imagry and lots of things on the curriculum. But the wonderful part was when they simply talked, discussed and wrote about what the lyrics said to them. By the time we finished, they had done more than the equivalent of Romeo.

We had a hoot and got into trouble with the admin for playing 'that goddammed jack hammer music' to loud on a very old drop the needle phonobox, but when I showed the principle the writings and responses that these kids had made he let me go at it. Of course some just sat there and refused to do anything, but most got into it. (And no, there was no final test!)

A couple of years ago I was asked the perennial "Do you remember me?" by a young lady teller at the bank. As usual I remembered only the face, and said "give me a hint - what year?" She said, "The year we did THE WALL!" We chatted a bit. No, she did not listen to Floyd as a fan, but she remembered that time and how that music had spoken to her.

Kind of makes it all worth while.

Any other such recollections from the forum?

Salty?

Fox-Mike · Post by **Fox-Mike** » Wed Dec 10, 2003 8:20 am

If only I had the encouragement of the teachers calling me a dummy.

ganaffe · Post by **ganaffe** » Wed Dec 10, 2003 12:23 pm

The teacher I had for my english classes in secondary school used to be a big PF fan. For our modern literature classes he now and then used some PF lyrics for poetry analysis.

And one of my music teachers, way back when I started to play the piano, used The Wall to show me how versatile rockmusic could be. He gave me the piano score for the album and took me step by step through the whole piece, explaining the musical significance of every note, harmony and rhythmpatern... it was quite an experience.

Tinkerbell · Post by **Tinkerbell** » Wed Dec 10, 2003 4:16 pm

Dude, wish you had been my literature teacher! Mine sucked, he made me read crap, less than half of it was worthy of my time.
Only my music teacher liked PF; but music was an elective course, during my senior years, so I changed from music to art, and I missed a screening of the Wall, coz of that.
Bah.

mnagoda · Post by **mnagoda** » Thu Dec 11, 2003 12:39 am

Well I'm in university right now. For our first paper (this is my first eyar) in my humanities course we had to take two course texts and compare em and come up with a theisis. curse texts could be films, books, or course kit selections. i looked over all the course material and lo and behold what did i find: the film version fo the wall. yes and its actually required viewing in my humanities course! so i watched it twice analyzed and chose my second text: an excerpt from mein kampff by hitler. i did my paper on floyd, hitler, and propaganda. i am a little bit dissapointed since my prof made us confine our paper to 5 pages. so i really had to cram. ill proabaly get a B+.

Roland · Post by **Roland** » Thu Dec 11, 2003 6:32 pm

In my english class we were told to translate english texts (to swedish), we should work in groups by four.
Most groups chose different booktexts, but in my group we somehow decided to translate the whole WYWH album. Doing this we found how very deep and poetic the lyrics of PF are.
I've been hooked since then.

nosaj · Post by **nosaj** » Thu Dec 11, 2003 8:04 pm

High school drama...I was Syd Barrett for my major monolgue test - there was a script and research into an historical figure - I add libbed it though (the person following my script couldn't help me when I totaly screwed up, but then I said screw it and ignored everyone and stared out the window...I got a good mark!)

By the way, that Wall, Hitler, propaganda essay sounds good!...my mother never understood parts of the Wall, worms and all.

Post by **mosespa** » Thu Dec 11, 2003 8:37 pm

My senior year in high school (1988-1989,) I had Rhetoric class with Mr. Kossow...quite possibly the coolest high school teacher ever. His classroom had posters of U2, The Who and The Grateful Dead on the walls and was one of the few teachers (who taught a "regular curriculum" class) who encouraged students to get creative with their assignments.

We had to come up with a list of topics for a report and Mr. Kossow would choose two seperate topics for us to write the (one) report on.

I forget what my first topic was, but my second topic was an analysis of the story of The Wall. Mr. Kossow even said, "I'd like to see what you do with that one."

I got an A, of course.

It was fun.

quicksilver · Post by **quicksilver** » Thu Dec 11, 2003 8:48 pm

mosespa wrote:My senior year in high school (1988-1989,) I had Rhetoric class with Mr. Kossow...quite possibly the coolest high school teacher ever. His classroom had posters of U2, The Who and The Grateful Dead on the walls and was one of the few teachers (who taught a "regular curriculum" class) who encouraged students to get creative with their assignments.

We had to come up with a list of topics for a report and Mr. Kossow would choose two seperate topics for us to write the (one) report on.

I forget what my first topic was, but my second topic was an analysis of the story of The Wall. Mr. Kossow even said, "I'd like to see what you do with that one."

I got an A, of course.

It was fun.

I graduated HS in '83 ( Waukesha HS, waukesha, Wi) but swear I had a Mr Keith Kossow for for an Americam lit class for 1 semester. That was along time ago but I recall that he was in the Air Force. He sort of looked like Rick Wright as I recall

Post by **mosespa** » Thu Dec 11, 2003 8:58 pm

Wow...it must be the same guy.

My Mr. Kossow was also named Keith, was proud of his Polish heritage (not overbearingly so, though) and ate a lot of garlic (which may have been the result of his second wife.) I believe he was also in the Air Force.

Interesting...I know he graduated from SIU Carbondale.

I'm pretty sure you and I have had a common teacher.

What are the odds?

quicksilver · Post by **quicksilver** » Thu Dec 11, 2003 9:21 pm

mosespa wrote:Wow...it must be the same guy.

My Mr. Kossow was also named Keith, was proud of his Polish heritage (not overbearingly so, though) and ate a lot of garlic (which may have been the result of his second wife.) I believe he was also in the Air Force.

Interesting...I know he graduated from SIU Carbondale.

I'm pretty sure you and I have had a common teacher.

What are the odds?

This is really weird.......it must be the same guy. I don't remember much other than what I said before but I know that he wasn't at my school long at all; maybe only that 1 semester. I'll have to call my parents to see if they have old yearbooks in the attic somewhere. Small world

Heikki · Post by **Heikki** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 10:11 am

I'm a teacher of mathematics. A couple of years ago I realized a dream I'd had for some time. I made (you could almost say forced) one class listen to ELP's Tarkus (just that one 20 minute song), and asked them to write down their impressions. I just wanted to know if they would like prog rock from the early 1970's. Not all liked it, but few got interested.

Diin Jaffa · Post by **Diin Jaffa** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 10:45 am

Heikki wrote:I'm a teacher of mathematics.

well, if you happen to be my math teacher then.... YOU SUCK!!!!!

Jumer · Post by **Jumer** » Mon Dec 15, 2003 10:30 pm

Whenever I asked my students if they liked Pink Floyd, they would answer "whoooo?".
No way, man.
And of course I wouldn't play EL&P... they would burn my car down -and I would have to agree with them, I'd do the same.

Flame-Sky Diver · Post by **Flame-Sky Diver** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 6:06 pm

Our philosophy teacher showed the class The Wall movie. He also showed us The Life Of Brian, The Last Temptation of Jesus Christ and some other movies... I've seen The Wall before (heck, I have the DVD)... it was interesting to watch all those unaffected-by-Floyd people trying to discuss what it was about when they got absolutely no clue.

Hey "Teacher" Leave those kids alone

Hey "Teacher" Leave those kids alone

oooh i got lucky