A painter hangs his or her finished pictures on a wall, and everyone can see
it. A composer writes a work, but no one can hear it until it is performed.
Professional singers and players have great responsibilities, for the
composer is utterly dependent on them. A student of music needs as long and
as arduous a training to become a performer as a medical student needs to
become a doctor. Most training is concerned with technique, for musicians
have to have the muscular proficiency of an athlete or a ballet dancer.
Singers practice breathing every day, as their vocal chords would be
inadequate without controlled muscular support. String players practice
moving the fingers of the left hand up and down, while drawing the bow to
and fro with the right arm-two entirely different movements.
Singers and instruments have to be able to get every note perfectly in tune.
Pianists are spared this particular anxiety, for the notes are already
there, waiting for them, and it is the piano tuner’s responsibility to tune
the instrument for them. But they have their own difficulties; the hammers
that hit the string have to be coaxed not to sound like percussion, and each
overlapping tone has to sound clear.
This problem of getting clear texture is one that confronts student
conductors: they have to learn to know every note of the music and how it
should sound, and they have to aim at controlling these sounds with
fanatical but selfless authority.
Technique is of no use unless it is combined with musical knowledge and
understanding. Great artists are those who are so thoroughly at home in the
language of music that they can enjoy performing works written in any
century.
02 Schooling and Education
It is commonly believed in United States that school is where people go to
get an education. Nevertheless, it has been said that today children
interrupt their education to go to school. The distinction between schooling
and education implied by this remark is important.
Education is much more open-ended and all-inclusive than schooling.
Education knows no bounds. It can take place anywhere, whether in the shower
or in the job, whether in a kitchen or on a tractor. It includes both the
formal learning that takes place in schools and the whole universe of
informal learning. The agents of education can range from a revered
grandparent to the people debating politics on the radio, from a child to a
distinguished scientist. Whereas schooling has a certain predictability,
education quite often produces surprises. A chance conversation with a
stranger may lead a person to discover how little is known of other
religions. People are engaged in education from infancy on. Education, then,
is a very broad, inclusive term. It is a lifelong process, a process that
starts long before the start of school, and one that should be an integral
part of one’s entire life.
Schooling, on the other hand, is a specific, formalized process, whose
general pattern varies little from one setting to the next. Throughout a
country, children arrive at school at approximately the same time, take
assigned seats, are taught by an adult, use similar textbooks, do homework,
take exams, and so on. The slices of reality that are to be learned, whether
they are the alphabet or an understanding of the working of government, have
usually been limited by the boundaries of the subject being taught. For
example, high school students know that there not likely to find out in
their classes the truth about political problems in their communities or
what the newest filmmakers are experimenting with. There are definite
conditions surrounding the formalized process of schooling.
03 The Definition of “Price”
Prices determine how resources are to be used. They are also the means by
which products and services that are in limited supply are rationed among
buyers. The price system of the United States is a complex network composed
of the prices of all the products bought and sold in the economy as well as
those of a myriad of services, including labor, professional,
transportation, and public-utility services. The interrelationships of all
these prices make up the “system” of prices. The price of any particular
product or service is linked to a broad, complicated system of prices in
which everything seems to depend more or less upon everything else.
If one were to ask a group of randomly selected individuals to define
“price”, many would reply that price is an amount of money paid by the
buyer to the seller of a product or service or, in other words that price is
the money values of a product or service as agreed upon in a market
transaction. This definition is, of course, valid as far as it goes. For a
complete understanding of a price in any particular transaction, much more
than the amount of money involved must be known. Both the buyer and the
seller should be familiar with not only the money amount, but with the
amount and quality of the product or service to be exchanged, the time and
place at which the exchange will take place and payment will be made, the
form of money to be used, the credit terms and discounts that apply to the
transaction, guarantees on the product or service, delivery terms, return
privileges, and other factors. In other words, both buyer and seller should
be fully aware of all the factors that comprise the total “package” being
exchanged for the asked-for amount of money in order that they may evaluate
a given price.
04 Electricity
The modern age is an age of electricity. People are so used to electric
lights, radio, televisions, and telephones that it is hard to imagine what
life would be like without them. When there is a power failure, people grope
about in flickering candlelight, cars hesitate in the streets because there
are no traffic lights to guide them, and food spoils in silent
refrigerators.
Yet, people began to understand how electricity works only a little more
than two centuries ago. Nature has apparently been experimenting in this
field for million of years. Scientists are discovering more and more that
the living world may hold many interesting secrets of electricity that could
benefit humanity.
All living cell send out tiny pulses of electricity. As the heart beats, it
sends out pulses of record; they form an electrocardiogram, which a doctor
can study to determine how well the heart is working. The brain, too, sends
out brain waves of electricity, which can be recorded in an
electroencephalogram. The electric currents generated by most living cells
are extremely small - often so small that sensitive instruments are needed
to record them. But in some animals, certain muscle cells have become so
specialized as electrical generators that they do not work as muscle cells
at all. When large numbers of these cell are linked together, the effects
can be astonishing.
The electric eel is an amazing storage battery. It can seed a jolt of as
much as eight hundred volts of electricity through the water in which it
live. (An electric house current is only one hundred twenty volts.) As many
as four-fifths of all the cells in the electric eel’s body are specialized
for generating electricity, and the strength of the shock it can deliver
corresponds roughly to length of its body.
05 The Beginning of Drama
There are many theories about the beginning of drama in ancient Greece. The
on most widely accepted today is based on the assumption that drama evolved
from ritual. The argument for this view goes as follows. In the beginning,
human beings viewed the natural forces of the world-even the seasonal
changes-as unpredictable, and they sought through various means to control
these unknown and feared powers. Those measures which appeared to bring the
desired results were then retained and repeated until they hardened into
fixed rituals. Eventually stories arose which explained or veiled the
mysteries of the rites. As time passed some rituals were abandoned, but the
stories, later called myths, persisted and provided material for art and
drama.
Those who believe that drama evolved out of ritual also argue that those
rites contained the seed of theater because music, dance, masks, and
costumes were almost always used, furthermore, a suitable site had to be
provided for performances and when the entire community did not participate,
a clear division was usually made between the "acting area" and the
"auditorium." In addition, there were performers, and, since considerable
importance was attached to avoiding mistakes in the enactment of rites,
religious leaders usually assumed that task. Wearing masks and costumes,
they often impersonated other people, animals, or supernatural beings, and
mimed the desired effect-success in hunt or battle, the coming rain, the
revival of the Sun-as an actor might. Eventually such dramatic
representations were separated from religious activities.
Another theory traces the theater’s origin from the human interest in
storytelling. According to this vies tales (about the hunt, war, or other
feats) are gradually elaborated, at first through the use of impersonation,
action, and dialogue by a narrator and then through the assumption of each
of the roles by a different person. A closely related theory traces theater
to those dances that are primarily rhythmical and gymnastic or that are
imitations of animal movements and sounds.
