Discipline and Organization

Tuesday we went to the middle school's string ensemble performance. In the middle of JS Bach's Sleepers Awake, I was struck by the micro and macro displays of discipline on display. Each of the players had to: Learn how to play a violin, cello etc; learn their part of the song. As a group, they had to learn how to play it with 70 other kids. Finally, they had to all show up, on the same night, in the same place, prepared.

Here is the song, not by them, but just so you don't have to Google it if you want to know how it sounds.



Contrasting with the virtues ably demonstrated by the performers, the audience: Texting, coming and going in the middle of numbers, rattling their candy wrappers (in an auditorium clearly marked with no eating or drinking signs). The boy in front of us was nestled between both of his parents and was a non-stop motion machine. Did they make any effort to bestill his distracting antics? Yes, if feeding him a Hershey's bar counts.