March 31, 2015

March 31, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

Yesterday, I wrote a text for a song based on the second melody of the Four Seasons by Vivaldi, which is my mother’s favorite music. It came out beautifully and it transcends the problems of the years that have gone by. I still need to practice singing it because it is a rather difficult song. Just now, I read B.F. Skinner, who said that “Many instructional arrangements seem “contrived,” but there is nothing wrong with that. It is the teacher’s function to contrive conditions under which students learn. It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student’s life.” (1973). I will let my students read and respond to the article from which I took this quote. Also, I downloaded “The Power of the Word May Reside in the Power of Affect” (2008), a paper by the brilliant neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp. His Affective-Neuro-Science and Skinner’s Operant Conditioning, but also Vivaldi’s magnificent music, are proof there is such a thing as Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). We have an innate tendency to be social. Also, I read about Irène Deliège, a music expert from Liege. The clock in my house was made in Liege and I have been in that town in Belgium. To me all these happy things somehow connect with SVB.