True or False: Music can make people work harder.

Before I forget, I should report that I found yesterday's posting (solving the paper jam problem by providing no paper) on my CCSF mail listing of things I've posted for my students at
https://sites.google.com/a/mail.ccsf.edu/tina-n-martin/
 But it was definitely not intended for them!  (I don't want them to feel that they're at a college that's sinking.)
More on the everyday problems of making copies for students who are adding my class because their class was closed because there weren't enough students enrolled in them.  I gave my clean copies to the Library Reserve Desk, so now I have to scrounge up a clean copy and then find a machine that has paper and power.

And that brings us to the power of music, the topic of ESL 132's first chapter.  I gave the students a very easy 8-point quiz today, and the only question that anyone wondered about was "Music can make people work harder."  I'd told them on Tuesday that I can't clean unless I have show tunes that push get me up and about.  But after the test, I thought of Blazing Saddles, where the people are working hard on the railroad, inspired by song, "I Get a Kick Out of You."  It used to be that I'd have to rent the video, then the DVD, just to show a snippet.  But now we can just go to YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0mE745qmNE

I wanted the students to look at this, but they may not understand that far from being a racist movie, it's making fun of racists--the racists taunting the blacks and Chinese working on the railroad. 

Lyle: Now, come on, boys! Where's your spirit? I don't hear no singin'. When you was slaves, you sang like birds. Go on, how 'bout a good ol' nigger work song?

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Lyle: [railroad workers are singing "I Get A Kick Out of You"] Hold it! Hold it! Hold it! What the hell is that shit? I meant a song. A real song. something like
[singing]
Lyle: Swing Low/ Sweet Chaaaariooooot
[workers look confused]
Lyle: Don't know that one, huh?

If I showed them the dialogue, I'd put in dashes:

Lyle: Now, come on, boys! Where's your spirit? I don't hear no singin'. When you was slaves, you sang like birds. Go on, how 'bout a good ol' n------ work song?

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Lyle: [railroad workers are singing "I Get A Kick Out of You"] Hold it! Hold it! Hold it! What the h--- is that s---? I meant a song. A real song. something like
[singing]
Lyle: Swing Low/ Sweet Chaaaariooooot
[workers look confused]
Lyle: Don't know that one, huh?

From there the racists go on to sing "The Camptown Races"   and get totally carried away, to the amusement of the railroad workers.

Now I'd better "organize"  (I am my own Union) and get to the Students in Distress article.