Here comes summer

For people in the Northern Hemisphere

Some of them, anyway

The rhythm of the CE year is a strange one, a baroque mix of planned, ad hoc and heritage arrangements. This mix perpetuates practices that have come from other places and other times and at the same time adapts to the exigencies of contemporary expectation, financial shortages and perhaps too changes in ‘the market’ (the conductor-employment market, that is).

This is not necessary a peaceful equilibrium of co-existant forces. It is in no small part a 'human resources’ matter, (industrial relations, if you prefer), often with real conflicts of interest brewing away close beneath the surface. The situation is dynamic, it writhes and changes over the years as these underlying forces force each other into different patterns (hence to speak of the mechanisms of ‘a market’ here, as in other aspects of the provision and availability of conductive services around the world).

There is therefore no consistent pattern in the holiday arrangements (summer or otherwise) of CE centres, their various kinds of staff, not forgetting of course the people who use and often pay for these services. It may depend who you are, where you are, and also upon your role within this system (particularly upon whether you are a service-provider or a service-user). There is certainly no ‘ideal’ to be argued, either a priori or de facto, for what constitutes ’holidays’ within Conductive Education.

Correspondingly, ‘summer’ can also be rather a moveable feast too (a non-existent one, some might protest).

And that is just the situation in the Northern Hemisphere…

Some Hungarian antecedents

The most influential factor in the historical development of the present situation in Conductive Education comes from linking Conductive Education to the rhythm of the school year during that part of its ‘Hungarian period’ during which it existed under the direct control of the Ministry of Education.

It was not ever thus.

When the State Institute was a health institution things were surely rather different. Certainly, András Peto’s personal practice held little space for consideration of people’s szabadság (free time). He did not take holidys, why should anyone else? He did relent over Christmases, but even weekend contact between children and their parents appears to have been granted only with reluctance as being disruptive of his implacable regime.

And as for Mária Hári who followed him (in both senses of the word), never mind what her staff, or the Ministry or anybody else might be doing, she was not until the closing years of her life a szabadság kind of person. Even so, during her watch the State Institute, whatever additional functions it fulfilled, was very much bound to rhythm of the academic year.

For some children at the State Institute there was nowhere else to go. For them, the Institute was ‘home’ (‘a home‘, if you wish). They were de facto orphans and were looked after, brought up at the Institute, by means that I do not know. I have always assumed that there would be conductors involved with them during the school holidays, but I do not know.

As for the rest of the children, under the Ministry of Education the State Institute’s school and kindergarten groups took the normal Hungarian school holidays (and the student conductors followed the semesters appropriate to their college-level training). The non-school provisions (parent and child, ‘consultations’, adults even) appear to have fallen in with this annual rhythm.

Visit the old State Institute during the hot summer months and you would find a small number of live-in children, administrative and maintenance staff, maybe some of the more senior conductors (preparing for the forthcoming academic year), and Mária Hári. I think that I recall that the whole building closed down for a week or two sometime during this time.

I have never seen these holiday arrangements documented in English. No doubt that there are those who can correct, confirm or amend my recollections.

I suspect that the present Pető Institute’s summer employment, for conductors anyway, runs very much along the samelines, with those higher up the tree spending the less time way. Again, please correct me if I am wrong.

Many, perhaps most conductors there, like teachers in many places, enjoyed the benefits of school holidays, especially the long summer holidays. The word ‘enjoy’ here does need qualifying by remembering where this was happening, in Hungary, where for the whole of living memory, under home-grown Stalinism, then ‘Goulash Socialism and on through present- day Capitalism, most people at every level of society have rarely earned enough for a comfortable living from a single income.

The answer is simple, Do a second job alongside. Maybe a third job too. And snatch every opportunity that your working hours allow outside daily work requirements, at weekends, during holiday entitlement, over the course of Hungary’s generous maternity leave, to convert this ‘free time’ into earning time.

A long time ago, a long way away? Perhaps not. All sorts of contradictory social influences have gone towards shaping the spirit, the psyche, the culture of Conductive Education’s front-line workforce, the conductors. No discussion of conductors‘ ‘holidays’ is complete unless this background is at least mentioned, and it may needs a powerful, cohesive host culture, to override it

Nowadays

So, here comes summer. For about a month now, across the Northern Hemisphere, where the great bulk of conductive practice is situated, those CE centres that for all sorts of reasons predicate their yearly rhythm upon local patterns of school terms (semesters) and school holidays (vacations) have been shutting down their conductive practice, while their conductors turn their minds to szabadság.

And good holidays many of them can take, and good luck to them in enjoying the fruits of their labours according to the terms and conditions of service under which they are contracted.

Others, however, within a day or so of closing down their regular year jobs, are jetting of to work for part or all of their vacations, in variously described ‘summer camps’ ‘summer schools’ etc. There are many reasons for doing this but, whatever the reason, it can result is a very long working year.

And some conductors jet nowhere, they just continue providing the range of year-long services that their places or work or personal circumstances dictate.

What about service-users?

Around the world, from the service-users viewpoint, the picture is of course vastly different.

Relatively few places are available in full-time CE centres or programs, so a correspondingly small proportion of children and their families experience Conductive Education on a school-term basis (the precise proportion is unquantifiable, as the data have just not been gathered).

A substantial proportion of ‘Conductive Education’ for children in the Western world has therefore been experienced outside school hours, in the afternoons, at weekends and especially through summer programs. (camps or schools).

Whether such schools or camps are considered a 'holiday', by children, parents or staff presumably depends upon particular personal experiencess and upon personal preference.

Summertime

Those who work within the system but are neither conductors nor parents, may experience a rather empty building, or even a busier service-provision than at any time of the year.

As for Conductive World, that is linked to no service system, emails slacken off from the middle of July, and the dots on the map at the head of this page become fewer. Whatever people are doing out there, enjoying themselves or working to the point of exhaustion, the world of Conductive Education has ‘gone quiet’ and, barring a catastrophe, can be reasonable expected to remain so till the end of August.

A chance therefore, one hopes, for a little catch-up on Conductive World itself:

• round off or follow up some items from earlier this year
• do some much-needed restructuring of the site's format of this site
• prepare for an extension of web-presence
• publish some items that are for various reasons simply ‘late’
• particularly, prepare for publication something of a ’scoop’, a report of some regretful comments by Maria Hari, confided at the very close of her life, about having adopted a too-rigid approach, and what she regarded a better, more flexible way, and
• keep an eye out for anything worth reporting in the world of Conductive Education, as surly some things will be, summer or not!

There are other things to do. I have been asked to write a couple of articles for ‘real’ magazines, Elliott Clifton is just putting the final production touches to another CE book compiled by Gill Maguire and myself (watch this space for news), Gill, Elliott and I will be putting to bed the final issue of Recent Advances in Conductive Education, and there are other projects in the pipeline.

Get a life!

The month of August may promise great catch-up time but experience shows just what a short month August can be, creating its own bow-wave of un-done tasks to push into September.

Indian summer

I recently told a correspondent that Rule no 1 when publishing a small-scale newsletter or magazine is ‘Never promise anything‘. Rule no 2 is ‘Especially the date when it will appear.’.

This summer, however, I have a very different way of relating to this rule. There will be no 'new term' to serve as deadline and the ’holiday’ stretches into an indeterminate future. There are no longer any work-imposed deadlines. Ever.

Pipped by two rivals!

Three weeks ago I began considering mentions of the general matter of summer holidays in CE and summer plans for Conductive World.

In the event, other things took priority, so these two topics have been combined, missing the end of even the latest school term in the Northern Hemisphere and just managing to scuttle home in time for the end of July.

Meanwhile, both Susie Mallett and Gill Maguire have nipped in first with their own summertime postings

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2009/07/cyberspace-meets-reality.html

http://www.conductiveeducationinformation.org/2009/07/all-summer-long.html

Our friends in the south

In the, to me, topsy-turvy world of the Summer Hemisphere it is now midwinter. Just out on line is the ten-page August edition of the Newsletter of the New Zealand Foundation for Conductive Education, the fullest such publication anywhere in the word of CE:

http://www.conductive-education.org.nz/Newsletter.pdf

This reminds me that New Zealand schools have just returned from their two-week winter holiday, that they have earthquakes down there and that, not unlike this summer in the Heart of England, it is raining a lot.

More pressingly, the Newsletter devotes considerable and detailed attention to the funding cuts affecting three New Zealand primary-school CE units, and to what is being done to combat these. Some ugly uncaring politics at the national level, by the sound of it. Some tough in-fighting ahead. Good luck to you, Kiwis.

At the level of the ‘real world’ of Conductive Education, however, the Newsletter reports active work towards further extension of the network, with a facility at an Auckland primary school and extension services for young adults in Christchurch both on the cards. The regular centre-by-centre news update features clients, conductors and other staff. A lot is happening at the grass roots, including now at secondary-school level: food for thought at both levels, for conductivists elsewhere in the world, most of whom do not enjoy the benefits of effective national coordination.

If the New Zealand model looks to offer you a useful precedent, then it might prove useful to obtain a copy of the inexpensive (NZ$ 9.00) promotional DVD advertised on the final page.

Some summer music too

Click on Susie and Gill’s links above and see that they have both rounded off their summer postings with further links to some seasonal music.

I was going to do that, so pipped there too, but not by their choice of records.

Cliff Richard and Mungo Jerry? No thanks. Pleasant enough ditties, I am sure, Susie, evocative enough of their eras but not very robust.

Brian Adams, Beach Boys, Lovin’ Spoonful? Not a world that I ever knew , Gill. You should share some of your memories on your blog, if you can remember them.

Try Eddie Cochrane, Jerry Keller and Billie Holiday

Here come summer (1959)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ijjDlbcI9w

Summertime blues (1959)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeWC59FJqGc

Summertime (1936)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4PSju9HYwU

Any other offers?