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Escaping High School

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Re: Escaping High School

#131

Post by nonameiguess »

jabroni_salad wrote: post #85

Something that bugs me today is the way music education was handled at my school, and probably other schools. I got to a pretty good technical competence with my trumpet but at the end of the day I could only play what was on the sheets. Maybe some of that is my bad, but I switched to keys after highschool and when I show up to jam, most wind players seem like musical cripples without a lead sheet, and my fakesheets…

For what it's worth, contra to the other agreeing comments, this didn't happen to me. I'm sure this is all locally contingent upon an instructor with the ability and interest, but we had a jazz band I was a part of in middle school (in LA County early 90s) and we very much learned to compose and play music that was not written down on a sheet. I don't know that that kind of thing was feasible for the larger concert band, which had like 140 kids or something and one teacher.

I also played brass, for what it's worth, but never felt limited by breath endurance. I was a ~5:00 mile runner as a 12 year-old, though.

Re: Escaping High School

#132

Post by strivax »

jb1991 wrote: post #120

> And by the time you’re in your mid-teens, you’re probably as smart as you’re going to be – not as worldly or wise as you will be later, but the raw brainpower is mostly there. I strongly disagree with this. I don't know if it is genuinely true in a biological sense, but in my life experience it is not even close to true. There are lots of things I do that are so far beyond my abilities as a teenager. It could be du…

AFAIK the human brain matures around mid to late twenties, so you'd probably be right about this from a biological sense too

Re: Escaping High School

#133

Post by avani »

burkaman wrote: post #118
op00to wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m confused. Are you suggesting children should be working?

Not just that they should be working, but they should only be exposed to their parents' social circle. There should be no opportunity for children to meet people from different social backgrounds.

One of their parents' social circle. The other is too busy feeding them and making sure they don't run into traffic or disappear somewhere to play video games. So you've suddenly halved the number of people who can get real work done.

Re: Escaping High School

#134

Post by barry-cotter »

benji-york wrote: post #124
dfxm12 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would that not utterly stratify social classes? Yes. This is one of the outcomes the anti-school crowd is after.

Is there a name for this tactic of projecting motivations on others in order to explain their behaviors?

Normal

Re: Escaping High School

#135

Post by titanomachy »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #11
op00to wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m confused. Are you suggesting children should be working?

As I read the parent's point, I think he is advocating for kids seeing their parents work more often. As it is, kids in US don't experience the reality often. More than that, parents shield them from the reality as long as it is possible, because the reality mostly sucks. I would think of it as 'take your kids to work', but more often. I am not a big fan. I was coming to my dad's car shop after school and I can't hon…

Works pretty well if you're a landscaper or something.

What if you have some soul-crushing dead-end office job? How long do you think a 6-year-old would last in an airline customer support call center?

Re: Escaping High School

#136

Post by mtalantikite »

Foobar8568 wrote: post #104
mtalantikite wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I got to a pretty good technical competence with my trumpet but at the end of the day I could only play what was on the sheets. This is pretty much how music is taught to all students learning 'classical' and was my experience as well. Most never really learn anything about music at a fundamental level, and can even have an entire career in the classical world not really knowing anything about what's going on in th…

As far as I am concerned, classical music in conservatoire includes music theory and instrument trainings. To play in an orchestra, especially semi famous one, most likely you would need to follow an university/similar degree. Any exam is done without a music sheet, music theory always include composition. Chord progressions comes surely later in music theory but harmony is key from classic repertoire,and counterpoin…

Oh, absolutely. I'm not saying that a professional musician at a major symphony doesn't know about theory -- this guy I took out was clearly very accomplished in his field and went to conservatory for it. Even the classical education I had up through high school included harmony and chords. But there is a difference between knowing the theory from a technical perspective to be tested on, and completely embodying it and using it to make music. Here's a recent video of my friend's group playing [1] -- everyone involved has a world-class level of understanding of theory, but uses it to improvise, not just to read sheets.

And let's not forget that a lot of 'classical' musicians back in the day were expected to be able to improvise as well. There's just a different priority for a 'classical' performer these days and a 'jazz' performer.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_BE_gi4YkA

Re: Escaping High School

#137

Post by drxzcl »

poorbutdebtfree wrote: post #95
tallanvor wrote: post #42

"Maybe you go to a school in a poor area, or with a lot of violence ... I don’t know enough to say what the best tactics are for these cases, but I have a few theories." This pretty much says it all right here. The author comes from an incredibly privileged background and clearly believes they are smarter than people who have spent their lives studying education. How we educate children isn't a perfect system, but ed…

Life long educators are suddenly teaching boys can be girls in kindergarten. They are a joke.

Wow. You guys just can’t think of anything else, can you?

Re: Escaping High School

#138

Post by CSMastermind »

BirAdam wrote: post #9

Personally, I’ve always felt that schooling is a waste of time, money, and resources. The default model of civilization is that children are absent from life. This means that kids are missing out on seeing adults interact, so they mature more slowly, and it also means that their life experiences are limited to what happens in a building. Importantly, after 18 years, people in the USA leave school in debt and are no b…

> Importantly, after 18 years, people in the USA leave school in debt and are no better suited to professional life than when they entered school at 4 or 5.

I'm not aware of anyone in the US going into to debt for school before the age of 18.

Are you confusing the free public education that's offered throughout the US with the optional college education that some, though definitely not most, take out loans to attend?

Re: Escaping High School

#139

Post by agentdrtran »

istjohn wrote: post #92
ModernMech wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, don't we all hate it when people come into our job and tell us how to do it? Parents love to think that because they have had one child (or maybe a couple), they know how to educate children writ large. Compounding that, most people went through the education system as students, so they believe they have insider knowledge as to how the system works. Usually their advice on how to fix the system is geared toward…

The example of phonics vs. sight reading shows that professional educators are just the blind leading the blind. Parents have known for years that phonics work, but institutionalists dismissed their complaints as spouting off from the sidelines. Challenging established authority is the engine of progress in science and society. Appeal to authority is the last resort of those who have no other ground to stand on. If y…

The phonic issue is absurd, can you imagine if an entire industry followed a fad for years with minimal pushback? Now, if you'll excuse me I've been in a cave for a few years and need to check my crypto balances.

Re: Escaping High School

#140

Post by ac29 »

ameister14 wrote: post #22
hardware2win wrote: post #5

Pretty decent collection of reasonable advices Especially this: Make sure you aren’t just doing a glorified version of trying to earn good grades. So many people failed on this, mostly because of parents. Dont put effort just for the sake of grades, they are worthless. Just small nitpick to #1 Learning just in time =/= learning via practice Learning just in case, the opposite of JIT makes sense too, but is "unpredict…

>Dont put effort just for the sake of grades, they are worthless. They aren't worthless. Grades make it easier and cheaper for you to go to college. Good grades in college make it far, far easier to get jobs and can get you in the door to significantly better and higher paying jobs or grad school. So not worthless, just not the be all and end all.

> Grades make it easier and cheaper for you to go to college.

How do they make it cheaper to go to college?

Merit scholarships that are based mostly or entirely on grades are relatively rare and extremely competitive.

And the cheapest colleges are often the least selective ones (like community college or state schools).

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