File: dauschmidtkathryn-oh-peerpressure_M.mp3
Speakers:
KD – Kathryn Dau Schmidt
KP – Curator Ken Perlman
KD - My one problem is about Grade 6 with the boys and Grade 8 wityh the girls you lose them -- often yuou lose them unless they're really secure.
KP Why?
KD Because they have a lot of peer pressure. It starts earlier with the boys, the peer pressure.
KP What kind of pressure exactly?
KD That it's not very cool to play fiddling. They say that there's nothing said to them but it's just something that they feel. It's just not very cool to be playing this old fashioned music. And at Vernon River School they do, the girls hit grade 8 and that 's it they're pretty much gone. Vernon River School is from Kindergarten to Grade 9. In grade 7 you can see they're starting to waver a bit, they'll start to miss a class now and then, and start to fool around in class more. And then grade 8, they usually come and say "Well I don't think I'm gonna take it this year." And sometimes they'll come to town [Charlottetown] and take it where their friends -- I had one girl come for a whole year to town to take it because then her friends wouldn't know she was taking it. And I have another girl in Vernon River she was going to come out this summer. She ended up not coming, but she was going to come out for lessons this summer because then her friends wouldn't know. So there is that pressure there.
