Weaponizing Mozart

The author of the piece seems to mix up three extremely different things, which resemble each other only in that they involve teenagers and classical music. [EDIT: spurious word left over from an earlier version of the paragraph removed.]<p>Playing classical music in places where you don't want teenagers hanging about: obviously harmless, no? It harms no one; any teenagers who actually like classical music will just go there if they want to and not be traumatized; it's no different from choosing the music and decor in a shop to attract a particular demographic.<p>Using classical music as a form of punishment in school detentions: unlikely to do any very grave harm, but certainly bad for the cause of classical music since it encourages the pupils to think of classical music as bad.<p>Using classical music to accompany Pavlovian conditioning to break the will of a teenage criminal ("A Clockwork Orange"): obviously vile, though the main badness is in the conditioning itself; also, curiously enough, <i>not something anyone is actually doing</i>.<p>There's plenty to dislike about "ASBO Britain", but this is just bullshit.

Well written, but still stupid. I'd like to see less of this kind of stuff on HN.<p>Choice extracts:<p><i>Anthony Burgess’s nightmare vision of an elite using high culture as a “punitive slap on the chops” for low youth has come true.</i><p><i>The weaponization of classical music speaks volumes about the British elite’s authoritarianism and cultural backwardness.</i><p><i>Britain might not make steel anymore, or cars, or pop music worth listening to, but, boy, are we world-beaters when it comes to tyranny.</i>

Its not "indiscriminate" as the author claims - its whole point is to descriminate between people and sort them out. And its not just the UK - half the shops in the local mall play loud music which I can't stand, because they don't want me (50yrold) in their shop, they want teens.

From an outside observer, Britain seems pretty clearly to be creeping toward an authoritarian state. Why is there no pushback to things like ASBOs being used to criminalize everything and omnipresent CCTV cameras?<p>EDIT: Not that this topic in particular is anywhere near the most serious example.

Unless detention is to be reclassified as weaponizing time, agreed, this is pretty stupid. It does look like a fine way of giving children who might otherwise be indifferent to it a lifelong disgust for classical music.

Of course, in A Clockwork Orange, the an/protagonist actually <i>liked</i> classical music. England will now be ravaged by classical loving hellions.

I wonder whether the headteacher who invented this got the idea from "A Clockwork Orange". He must have seen it before.

This will only cause me to loiter even more - free music!

The tone of this was all wrong, but I still laughed right through it.<p>I look back to situations where I was put into detention when I was a kid - devastated, of course. And now I see parts of it as funny - either in the trump "you're fired" sense, or in the manner of the humiliation.<p>Imagine the wry smile in ten years' time when one of those kids hears a tune, recognises it, realises why they recognise it and comes to like it.<p>Shining bright lights at tipsy kids from helicopters so they'll stagger home? Only the British could think of this stuff. It's funny - laugh!

Disregarding the means, who are these teenagers and why are they — as opposed to other people of different ages possibly behaving badly, or "badly" — considered so unsuitable for many places?<p>In thirty years or so it's these same teenagers who will be making and governing the new rules. I wonder if, upon their time, they will appreciate a more free acceptance of people themselves.

I am disturbed by the creepy similarities to "A Clockwork Orange" (which the article refers to, as well).<p>The concluding paragraph is plain scary. I hope UK's situation is not entire like that.

I wonder how long it will take for someone to comment on.... there, that was fast. A Clockwork Orange. brilliant movie/book.