Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: How can i make my parents realize.......


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Posted by js on November 12, 2003 at 20:28:27:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: How can i make my parents realize....... posted by It could be on November 12, 2003 at 12:30:38:

"It could be that there's a limited amount of time available to teach an ever-increasing amount of material."
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I just went back to my high school "Alma Mater" today to play an "educational" brass quintet concert to "preview" a group of students' field trip to a symphony concert.

When I attended this high school years ago, it was dark, hot (no air conditioning), and there just wasn't much "equipment" other than my pencil and notebook (and a "we-should-junk-it"-ably-leaky King 3V tuba)...maybe a half-handful of microscopes in the science lab, a few sets of headphones in the language lab, and a few nice flat wooden boards in the drafting (WHAT'S "DRAFTING"?) classroom. However, many of those people went on to do extraordinary things. Just in the arts/music/band/brass/tuba hemi-demi-semi-subset of the schools' offered curriculum, two tuba players (two years apart in age) went into U.S. Army bands straight out of high school - one of them into the D.C. band...(I was NOT one of those two. They ended the draft about a month after I graduated.)...and this is when just about all young males who could play a band instrument were trying desperately to get into military bands:
* avoiding the Vietnam infantry "scene"
* though the pay is generally low now, the vast majority of orchestral musicians back then weren't paid a living wage

Back to my "Alma Mater"....Today, the entire facility has been redone...bright, air conditioned, fancy restrooms, more janitors, more teachers, more administration, good food (free for many students), tons o' computers, (tons o' new band instruments), fancy "everything"...but

it is obvious that very little learning is occuring...and an alarmingly high percentage of the students are hopelessly incorrigible (throwing chairs in the back of the auditorium, cat-calling at members of our brass quintet when making presentations, obviously [from their appearance] out-of-control drug use, etc.) Perhaps your town/city is not full of the same sort of human debris, but I hear that many many are.
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...and I can't pinpoint "just too much stuff to learn these days" as the reason.


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