Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What music degrees lack?


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Posted by Rick Denney on October 21, 2002 at 16:44:15:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What music degrees lack? posted by Matt G on October 21, 2002 at 12:29:39:

Matt, you are actually making my point. I'm in favor of good education in the classical sense. Much of what I see these days, however, is designed around job training, and is effective neither as training nor as education.

My point in bringing up the comparison between private study and working as an alternative to college is that there is a reason so few choose the former path. If their goal was what they say it is--job training--then they would take the lessons with the big-name pro and work gigs. It seems to me the shortest path to making a living as a musician, and many great musicians have followed that path. That students choose college instead indicates that college offers something they don't think they'll get one-on-one with a big-name pro. Kids really go to college because they want what college offers that goes beyond job training--a broad education (and not just in the classroom).

Does business theory help a tuba player get and keep a job (without limiting that to a job as a musician)? What I know of economics (which is enough for the considerable policy work that I do) I learned from books, and strong reading comprehension is perhaps my best job skill. But I didn't learn reading comprehension by reading business textbooks, or by reading books about reading, I learned it by reading literature.

I absolutely agree with you that college is the place to learn theory. In fact, that's what I've been saying. Colleges actually stink at the job-training. I've never met a traffic engineer fresh from college who could be allowed to poke his fingers in a traffic signal cabinet without risk of frying himself. But I still need traffic engineers who will build on their theory in ways a qualified technician can't. That doesn't mean I don't need the technician, of course.

I'm finally reaching my point: If general education is valuable, but not as job training, and if colleges are good places to go but suck at job training, then why do we complain when we have trouble doing a job based only what we learned in college? Why should we have expected different results? In fact, we should not. We should understand the value that general education provides, and then supplement it with job training where needed. In the past, the difference between a well-trained job-holder and an educated person was that the educated person could apply his or her thinking skills to create new jobs and new knowledge, even if they didn't possess the skills needed by the job-holder. The world needs both kinds of people, and trying to press one kind into the mold of the other corrupts both, it seems to me. I think it's unconscionable that some people attach unequal social value to these separate pursuits.

My original argument with you was that theory isn't knowledge, and knowledge doesn't necessarily teach theory. Theory is process--understanding why Condition A leads to Result B, or why we think it does. Mere knowledge, on the other hand, requires no understanding, only the fact that A leads to B.

So, what would I suggest in a music degree program? Literature, history, mathematics, physics, logic, philosophy, and all those things that will give them real tools--tools that can be pointed in any direction they choose. I'd rather than those than that group playing that does a bad job of simulating a job as a musician.

Rick "a frequently unhappy slave to mere knowledge" Denney


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