# Agree or Disagree: "What the Great Composers teach Us"



## Amateur (Mar 21, 2013)

Amateur said:


> Collectively they teach us to build upon the past and across borders. This is what makes us human.
> The loss of our musical heritage makes much other mischief possible. Think how Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four shows how important it is to destroy history and culture so authoritarianism can take hold.
> My freedom-loving grandparents came to this country with very little formal education, but they found movies that featured he likes of Stokowski, Jose Iturbi and Mario Lanza, they found Leonard Bernstein teaching people about serious music on Omnibus and the Young People's Concerts, and they found Ed Sullivan including Nureyev and Fonteyn alongside Elvis and the Beatles. My grandparents watched because they wanted to "improve" themselves.
> But my own college-educated generation considers itself new and improved, and very few people I know know much about any of the humanities.
> ...


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