My daughter showed me a YouTube video of some tap dancers this afternoon and while I was watching, I realized that people gravitate to dancing and singing generally when they are happy. There are sad songs and I suppose there must be sad dances, but most of the time the music and dance are joyful. This is almost opposite with paintings and sculpture and other fine art which is dominated by depressed and mentally unstable artists. Why is there such a profound difference between performance and fine arts? Why do most of us not feel the need to go paint or draw when we are happy and content? Those happy times are the times I want to go dance.
Art Reflects The Difference in Culture:
Why does performance art dominate the English-speaking culture of the medieval through the 19th century while simultaneously cultures on the European continent were dominated by fine art? I am not making the argument that there were no great composers in continental Europe, or conversely that there were no stupendous painters in the English court. The trend, however, is there for you to see if you watch for it while you study history along with your children. Just read Churchill and Jacques Barzun – an Englishman and a Frenchman whose writings cover about the same time periods in history from two diametrically opposed viewpoints and cultures, and who come to the same conclusion. English-speaking peoples have been more consistently good and decent as compared to the cultures of mainland Europe.
Fairy Tales Reflect The Difference in Culture:
Even the fairy tales and fables of continental Europe as compared to those of the Scotch-Irish peoples demonstrate the difference in cultures of English speaking peoples versus the rest of Europe. The fairy tales we somehow all learn growing up are those of Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson. These stories reflect a frankly perverted culture. Innocent children are maimed and killed in these stories by evil that only sometimes is vanquished. Evil often wins out.
In the fairy tales of Scotland, however, evil does not win. Children are protected by their parents and others in their clan who kill and maim and vanquish evil nearly every time. Even when evil escapes, the children are protected and safe at the end.
I found myself wondering what kind of a message are we send to our children by exposing them at an early age to the culture of continental Europe? Why do we not focus on the culture of the English speaking peoples?
What Can We Do?
I think that teaching children your culture and the culture of the country in which you reside are fundamental to successfully raising the next generation. Culture is important. It is what makes us a society. And that means the culture of English-speaking people is what I teach my children.
