Misbehaving students punished with Mozart

A school in England is using classical music to cut down on students’ bad behaviour. The head teacher Brian Walker at the West Park School in Derby runs two-hour detention sessions after school on Fridays. He forces his students to listen to Mozart and other classical music. He also makes them copy his favourite poems and they have to watch educational videos. Mr. Walker says his main aim is to stop noisy pupils spoiling lessons for well-behaved students who want to study. He said the students staying behind are “not the smokers, the truants or the people who are late… It's those who have slowed the learning process in class for everyone”. Mr. Walker explained this was unacceptable “because it is robbing the rest of opportunities”.

Brian Walker believes the detention reminds students that education is something to value. "It helps them see they are part of something bigger that will enhance their life chances,” he said. The head teacher thinks students actually learn from being kept behind after school: "Hopefully, I open their ears to an experience they don't normally have and…don't want to have again, so it's both educational and acts as a deterrent." Music has had success elsewhere in reducing bad behaviour. In 2004, it reduced crime on London’s subway by 25 per cent. Researchers from a Belfast university found it helped stop elephants misbehaving. However, one West Park student called Kieran said: “An hour of Mr. Walker's music is a real killer.”

BBC, July 2016

UNIT  IX

Gary D. Schmidt (born 1957) is an American children's writer of nonfiction books and young adult novels. Both a Newbery Honor and a Printz Honor was awarded to the book Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy and a Newbery Honor was awarded to”The Wednesday Wars”(2008). He is a Professor of English at Calvin College, which is in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The most important works are: “The Sin Eater” (1996), “Anson's Way” (1999), “In God's Hands” (2005), “First Boy” (2005), “Trouble” (2008), “Okay for Now” (2011).

The Wednesday Wars.

The events of the novel take place in the year 1967, in some small town in Long Island, USA, in a fictional school.

The protagonist Holling Hoodhood, byname ,is a seventh grader. In his school all the students are divided between Catholics and Jews. Every Wednesday both groups go to their separate churches for religious classes. Holling, the only Presbyterian in the class, is forced to remain in the  class with his teacher, Mrs. Baker. The story's main focus is Holling's struggle to get out from his overbearing father's shadow. Mr. Hoodhood is an arrogant, cutthroat architect who is determined that Holling takes over the business when he retires. Holling ultimately finds an ally in his older sister, Heather, and eventually comes to understand that Mrs. Baker is also trying to help him learn to be a man. Other subplots in the story include his first date with his classmate Meryl Lee Kowalski, whose father is the owner of the other architecture firm in town. It is his sister Heather who has ran  away to California, and the ever-present shadow of the Vietnam War, as well as other historical events, as the assassination  of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. The plot  follows Holling as he struggles through school, makes up  friends out of supposed enemies, and tries to grow up.

Chapter 1

September

Of all the kids in the seventh grade at Camillo Junior High, there was one kid that Mrs. Baker hated with heat whiter than the sun. Me. And let me tell you, it wasn't for anything I'd done. If it had been Doug Swieteck that Mrs. Baker hated, it would have made sense.

Doug Swieteck once made up a list of 410 ways to get a teacher to hate you. It began with "Spray deodorant in all her desk drawers" and got worse as it went along. A whole lot worse. I think that things became illegal around Number 167. You don't want to know what Number 400 was, and you really don't want to know what Number 410 was. But I'll tell you this much: They were the kinds of things

that sent kids to juvenile detention homes in upstate New York, so far away that you never saw them again.

Doug Swieteck tried Number 6 on Mrs. Sidman last year. It was something about Wrigley gum and the teachers' water fountain (which was just outside the teachers' lounge) and the Polynesian Fruit Blend hair coloring that Mrs. Sidman used. It worked, and streams of juice the color of mangoes stained her face for the rest of the day, and the next day, and the next day until, I suppose, those skin cells wore off.

Doug Swieteck was suspended for two whole weeks. Just before he left, he said that next year he was going to try Number 166 to see how much time that would get him.

The day before Doug Swieteck came back, our principal reported during Morning Announcements that Mrs. Sidman had accepted "voluntary reassignment to the Main Administrative Office." We were all supposed to congratulate her on the new post. But it was hard to congratulate her because she almost never peeked out of the Main Administrative Office. Even when she had to be the playground monitor during recess, she mostly kept away from us. If you did get close, she'd whip out a plastic rain hat and pull it on.

It's hard to congratulate someone who's holding a plastic rain hat over her Polynesian Fruit Blend colored hair.

See? That's the kind of stuff that gets teachers to hate you.

  But the thing was, I never did any of that stuff. Never. I even stayed as far away from Doug Swieteck as I could, so if he did decide to try Number 166 on anyone, I wouldn't get blamed for standing nearby.

But it didn't matter. Mrs. Baker hated me. She hated me a whole lot worse than Mrs. Sidman hated Doug Swieteck.

I knew it on Monday, the first day of seventh grade, when she called the class roll which told you not only who was in the class but also where everyone lived. If your last name ended in "berg" or "zog" or "stein," you lived on the north side. If your last name ended in "elli" or "ini" or "o," you lived on the south side. Lee Avenue cut right between them, and if you walked out of Camillo Junior High and followed Lee Avenue across Main Street, past MacClean's Drug Store, Goldman's Best Bakery, and the Five & Ten-Cent Store, through another block and past the Free Public Library, and down one more block, you'd come to my house which my father had figured out was right smack in the middle of town. Not on the north side. Not on the south side. Just somewhere in between.

"It's the Perfect House," he said.

But perfect or not, it was hard living in between. On Saturday morning, everyone north of us was at Temple Beth-El. Late on Saturday afternoon, everyone south of us was at mass at Saint Adelbert's which had gone modern and figured that it didn't need to wake parishioners up early. But on Sunday morning early my

family was at Saint Andrew Presbyterian Church listening to Pastor McClellan, who was old enough to have known Moses. This meant that out of the whole weekend there was only Sunday afternoon left over for full baseball teams.

This hadn't been too much of a disaster up until now. But last summer, Ben Cummings moved to Connecticut so his father could work in Groton, and Ian MacAlister moved to Biloxi so his father could be a chaplain at the base.

So being a Presbyterian was now a disaster. Especially on Wednesday afternoons when, at 1:45 sharp, half of my class went to Hebrew School at Temple Beth-El, and, at 1:55, the other half went to Catechism at Saint Adelbert's. This left behind just the Presbyterians of which there had been three, and now there was one.

Me.

I think Mrs. Baker suspected this when she came to my name on the class roll. Her voice got kind of crackly, like there was a secret code in the static underneath it.

"Holling Hoodhood," she said. "Here." I raised my hand. "Hoodhood."

"Yes."

Mrs. Baker sat on the edge of her desk. This should have sent me some kind of message, since teachers aren't supposed to sit on the edge of their desks on the first day of classes. There's a rule about that.

"Hoodhood," she said quietly. She thought for a moment. "Does your family attend Temple Beth-El?" she said.

I shook my head. "Saint Adelbert's, then?" She asked this kind of hopefully. I shook my head again.

"So on Wednesday afternoon you attend neither Hebrew School nor Catechism." I nodded.

"You are here with me."

"I guess," I said.

Mrs. Baker looked hard at me. I think she rolled her eyes. "Since the mutilation of 'guess' into an intransitive verb is a crime against the language, perhaps you might wish a full sentence to avoid prosecution something such as, 'I guess that Wednesday afternoons will be busy after all.'"

That's when I knew that she hated me. This look came over her face like the sun had winked out and was not going to shine again until next June.

And probably that's the same look that came over my face, since I felt the way you feel just before you throw up cold and sweaty at the same time, and your stomach's doing things that stomachs aren't supposed to do, and you're wishing you're really wishing that the ham and cheese and broccoli omelet that your mother made for you for the first day of school had been Cheerios, like you really wanted, because they come up a whole lot easier, and not yellow.

If Mrs. Baker was feeling like she was going to throw up, too, she didn't show it. She looked down at the class roll. "Mai Thi Huong," she called. She looked up to find Mai Thi's raised hand, and nodded. But before she looked down, Mrs.

Baker looked at me again, and this time her eyes really did roll. Then she looked down again at her list. "Daniel Hupfer," she called, and she looked up to find Danny's raised hand, and then she turned to look at me again. "Meryl Lee Kowalski," she called. She found Meryl Lee's hand, and looked at me again. She did this every time she looked up to find somebody's hand. She was watching me because she hated my guts.

***

I walked back to the Perfect House slowly that afternoon. I could always tell when I got there without looking up, because the sidewalk changed. Suddenly, all the cement squares were perfectly white, and none of them had a single crack. Not one. This was also true of the cement squares of the walkway leading up to the Perfect House, which were bordered by perfectly matching azalea bushes, all the same height, alternating between pink and white blossoms. The cement squares and azaleas stopped at the perfect stoop three steps, like every other stoop on the block and then you're up to the two-story colonial, with two windows on each side, and two dormers on the second floor. It was like every other house on the block, except neater, because my father had it painted perfectly white every other year, except for the fake aluminum shutters, which were black, and the aluminum screen door, which gleamed dully and never, ever squeaked when you opened it.

Inside, I dropped my books on the stairs. "Mom," I called.

I thought about getting something to eat. A Twinkie, maybe. Then chocolate milk that had more chocolate than milk. And then another Twinkie. After all that sugar, I figured I'd be able to come up with something on how to live with Mrs. Baker for nine months. Either that or I wouldn't care anymore.

"Mom," I called again.

I walked past the Perfect Living Room, where no one ever sat because all the seat cushions were covered in stiff, clear plastic. You could walk in there and think that everything was for sale, it was so perfect. The carpet looked like it had never been walked on which it almost hadn't and the baby grand by the window looked like it had never been played which it hadn't, since none of us could. But if anyone had ever walked in and plinked a key or sniffed the artificial tropical flowers or straightened a tie in the gleaming mirror, they sure would have been impressed at the perfect life of an architect from ‘Hoodhood and Associates’.

My mother was in the kitchen, fanning air out the open window and putting out a cigarette, because I wasn't supposed to know that she smoked, and if I did know,

I wasn't supposed to say anything, and I really wasn't supposed to tell my father.

And that's when it came to me, even before the Twinkie. I needed to have an ally in the war against Mrs. Baker. "How was your first day?" my mother said. "Mom," I said, "Mrs. Baker hates my guts."

"Mrs. Baker doesn't hate your guts." She stopped fanning and closed the window.

"Yes, she does."

"Mrs. Baker hardly knows you."

"Mom, it's not like you have to know someone well to hate their guts. You don't sit around and have a long conversation and then decide whether or not to hatetheir guts. You just do. And she does."

"I'm sure that Mrs. Baker is a fine person, and she certainly does not hate your guts."

How do parents get to where they can say things like this? There must be some gene that switches on at the birth of the first-born child, and suddenly stuff like that starts to come out of their mouths. It's like they haven't figured out that the language you're using is English and they should be able to understand what you're saying. Instead, you pull a string on them, and a bad record plays.

I guess they can't help it.

***

Right after supper, I went to the den to look for a new ally.

"Dad, Mrs. Baker hates my guts."

"Can you see that the television is on and that I'm watching Walter Cronkite?" he said.

We listened to Walter Cronkite report on the new casualty figures from Vietnam, and how the air war was being widened, and how two new brigades of the 101st Airborne Division were being sent over, until CBS finally threw in a commercial.

 "Dad, Mrs. Baker hates my guts."

"What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything. She just hates my guts."

"People don't just hate your guts unless you do something to them. So what did you do?"

"Nothing."

"This is Betty Baker, right?"

"I guess."

"The Betty Baker who belongs to the Baker family."

See what I mean about that gene thing? They miss the entire point of what you're saying.

"I guess she belongs to the Baker family," I said. "The Baker family that owns the Baker Sporting Emporium."

 "Dad, she hates my guts."

"The Baker Sporting Emporium, which is about to choose an architect for its new building and which is considering ‘Hoodhood and Associates’ among its top three choices."

"Dad..."

"So, Holling, what did you do that might make Mrs. Baker hate your guts, which will make other Baker family members hate the name of Hoodhood, which will lead the Baker Sporting Emporium to choose another architect, which will kill the deal for ‘Hoodhood and Associates’, which will drive us into bankruptcy, which will encourage several lending institutions around the state to send representatives to our front stoop holding papers that have lots of legal words on them none of them good and which will mean that there will be no ‘Hoodhood and ‘Associates for you to take over when I'm ready to retire?"

Even though there wasn't much left of the ham and cheese and broccoli omelet, it started to want to come up again.

"I guess things aren't so bad," I said.

"Keep them that way," he said. This wasn't exactly what I had hoped for in an ally.

There was only my sister left. To ask your big sister to be your ally is like asking Nova Scotia to go into battle with you.

But I knocked on her door anyway. Loudly, since the Monkeys were playing.

She pulled it open and stood there, her hands on her hips. Her lipstick was the color of a new fire engine.

"Mrs. Baker hates my guts," I told her.

"So do I," she said.

"I could use some help with this."

"Ask Mom."

"She says that Mrs. Baker doesn't hate my guts."

 "Ask Dad."

Silence if you call it silence when the Monkeys are playing.

"Oh," she said. "It might hurt a business deal, right? So he won't help the Son Who Is Going to Inherit ‘Hoodhood and Associates’."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"If I were you, I'd head to California," she said. "Try again."

She leaned against her door. "Mrs. Baker hates your guts, right?" I nodded. "Then, Holling, you might try getting some. "And she closed her door.

***

Mrs. Baker eyed me all day on Tuesday, looking like she wanted something awful to happen.

It started first thing in the morning, when I caught her watching me come out of the Coat Room and walk toward my desk.

So I caught Mrs. Baker watching me come out of the Coat Room and walk toward my desk. She leaned forward, as if she was looking for something in her desk. It was creepy.

But just before I sat down, I figured it out: She'd booby-trapped my desk. It all came to me in a sort of vision, the kind of thing that Pastor McClellan sometimes talked about, how God sends a message to you just before some disaster, and if you listen, you stay alive. But if you don't, you don't.

I looked at my desk. I didn't see any trip wires, so probably there weren't any explosives. I checked the screws. They were all still in, so it wouldn't fall flat when I sat down.

Maybe there was something inside. Something terrible inside. Something really

awful inside. Something left over from the eighth-grade biology labs last spring.

I looked at Mrs. Baker again. She had looked away, a half-smile on her lips.

So I asked Meryl Lee Kowalski, who has been in love with me since she first laid eyes on me in the third grade I'm just saying what she told me I asked her to open my desk first.

"How come?" she said. Sometimes even true love can be suspicious.

 "Just because."

"’Just because’ isn't much of a reason."

"Just because there might be a surprise."

"For who?"

"For you."

"For me?"

"For you."

She lifted the desk top. She looked under English for You and Me, Mathematics for You and Me, and Geography for You and Me.

 "I don't see anything," she said.

I looked inside. "Maybe I was wrong."

 "Maybe I was wrong," said Meryl Lee, and dropped the desk top. Loudly. "Oh," she said. "Sorry. I was supposed to wait until you put your fingers there."

Love and hate in seventh grade are not far apart, let me tell you.

Schmidt, Gary, The Wednesday Wars, Novel Units, Inc. 2012.

To be continued

Notes.

1.Camillo Junior High School–a fictional school in the town of Camillo in Long Island.

2.Long Island – an island located just off the northeast coast of the USA, the region within the US state of New York.

3.Groton – a city located on the Thames River in New London, Connecticut, USA.

4.Biloxi – a city within the US state of Mississippi.

5.Isaiah – the 8th century Jewish prophet who gave a name to the Book of Isiah.

6.Walter Cronkite – American broadcast journalist, anchorman for the CBS.

7.CBS – Columbia Broadcasting System.

8.Nova Scotia – province in Canada, has few people or resources; it wouldn’t help 

you much in a war. 

9.101st Airborne Division – a modular specialized light infantry division of the US

Army trained for air assault operations.

10.Twinkie – American snack cake, golden sponge cake with creamy fitting.

11.Moses - a prophet in Abrahamic religion, lived c. XVI – XIIBC (Before the

Common Era).

Ø TRANSLATION TIPS

A). Translate constructions with NOT UNTIL (TILL).

B).Translate sentences with double negation.

C).Translate into Russian paying attention to the polysemy of the  word FIGURE.

1.I was never much good at figures. 2.I figured that you wanted me to stay. 3. She has a good figure. 4. You can't figure on the results of the election. 5. It figures: when I have the time to travel, I don't have the money. 6. Michelangelo was one of the greatest figures of the Renaissance. 7.A collection of bronze figures. 8. I can’t figure him out. 9. Figure out how much we owe you. 10.This didn’t figured in my plans. 11. Figured on seeing my first love. .