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trained-pianist
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« Reply #60 on: 08:45:53, 10-09-2008 » |
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As we here are concerned, it is the end of good education and the time of people who can neither write not read is upon us.
The courses are made easier and easier. There is no point to introduce difficult abstract concept when the class has to be brought up to what before was entrance level.
Also the University gets more money now for graduate students, than for undergraduate. The race for graduate students officially began a few years ago. The more you can attract the better it is for you and the university. And after all that efforts graduates are frustrated because there are little jobs for them. And one is not happy to be attendant at a parking lot with a MA degree.
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« Last Edit: 08:47:26, 10-09-2008 by trained-pianist »
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Baz
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« Reply #61 on: 08:51:48, 10-09-2008 » |
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As we here are concerned, it is the end of good education and the time of people who can neither write not read is upon us.
The courses are made easier and easier. There is no point to introduce difficult abstract concept when the class has to be brought up to what before was entrance level.
Also the University gets more money now for graduate students, than for undergraduate. The race for graduate students officially began a few years ago. The more you can attract the better it is for you and the university. And after all that efforts graduates are frustrated because there are little jobs for them. And one is not happy to be attendant at a parking lot with a MA degree.
In your own unique way I think you have provided your own self-fulfilling prophesy. Baz |
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #62 on: 08:56:36, 10-09-2008 » |
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The kneejerk antipathy that I've encountered from you towards all sorts of potential issues There we have in a nutshell the reason I have no wish to discuss pretty much anything with you. It's nothing to do with the subject matter and everything to do with your manner. might itself be a major reason why a serious debate on these issues is unlikely here. No it isn't, but it is a reason why it will not involve both me and you. |
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trained-pianist
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« Reply #63 on: 08:57:41, 10-09-2008 » |
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Why do you say that, Mr. Dr. Baz.
I am not an academic and don't decide what should be tought.
I think I am a victim myself. A lot of things were not allowed when I was studying.
Jazz was considered a bad influence, no figure bass was taught, no imporvization skills what so ever.
I am a victim of bad education. (They did try to develop our ears with lots of dictations and harmony identification while listening to a teacher playing harmonic progression).
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« Last Edit: 09:03:05, 10-09-2008 by trained-pianist »
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Turfan Fragment
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« Reply #64 on: 09:00:09, 10-09-2008 » |
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Why do you say that, Mr. Dr Baz.
Because he does not mind being considered rude. |
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #65 on: 09:33:05, 10-09-2008 » |
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That's very interesting, TF. Just one thought about the issue of whether businesses financing vocational courses, which of course does happen a-plenty - as, however, various companies need very particular focused skills, which differ in some particulars from company to company, and students may not have yet decided which precise field in wish they would like to work (and thus may go on to do something different from that for which they are specifically trained), might highly vocational education simply not be particularly economic from businesses' point of view, and they are served better by being able to employ students who have received a broader range of skills such as might have been obtained via more conventional university education (in some ways with a degree of independence of the subject they have studied)? With respect to Monteverdi/Madonna, I can see that many students learn certain information during their degree when they need to know it, then forget a good deal of it afterwards (there's plenty I've forgotten from my maths degree). But wider skills they might obtain, in terms of engaging with modes of reasoning, developing creative approaches to addressing problems, sometimes working within groups, even mediating between theory and practice, are things that can be fruitfully used in all sorts of fields of life. A question that then occurs to me is whether these sorts of skills might be obtained more readily and enthusiastically if working on a field in which they are more likely to be interested?
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #66 on: 09:58:12, 10-09-2008 » |
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As far as student expectation is concerned, Ian, it is now only what this social experiment over the years has made it. Students now generally expect to be taught rather than to learn. ("This Beethoven symphony no. 5 is a really great work - what do you think of it?"..."I don't know, because we haven't been taught it yet".) Their instinct to view the whole process of education in such simplistic and cold-blooded terms is all the more emphasized now that they are having to fund their own experiences for themselves with mortgage-sized student loans, so they have been well-educated at least in the art of requiring "value for money", even though they have no option other than accepting somebody else's system of measurement. Baz, I don't disagree with most of the above. The move towards grants and having to pay fees seems to have a produced a significant change in mentality for both students and parents. I would wholly be in favour of a return to the older system of financing, but also can't imagine that any government is going to undertake the required increase in taxation to be able to fund such a thing with an expanded student body. And in terms of this wish 'to be taught' what to think, that is a daily issue when teaching, though I'd need convincing that things were necessarily that different in the older days in such a respect - the really creative and individual thinkers have surely always been the minority amongst students? We live in a world which rewards conformity, imitation and other types of authoritarian modes of thinking and behaviour; again this has at least arguably been even more the case in previous times. In musical education, my experience (which may be atypical), and that I've heard from many others has been that the students have been major instigators of a process which entails a lesser automatic respect for a canonical tradition, often against the wishes of some of their lecturers. And comments like the generic remark you post above could be interpreted differently - some of them might imagine that the 'greatness' of Beethoven's 5th is precisely a 'taught' perspective, quite different from the types of engagement they have with other types of music. I wonder if it isn't a combination of both perception of this phenomenon, and its continued ideological existence amongst many musicians and academics, that precludes the possibility of more individual engagements with such works on the part of students? Some of us still have the nerve to consider Education as being not a "system" but rather a process, and one in which the main player (whether undergraduate student or researcher) is the learner rather than the teacher. But we are now a declining rump. Baz [/quote] |
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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Baz
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« Reply #67 on: 10:22:14, 10-09-2008 » |
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Why do you say that, Mr. Dr Baz.
Because he does not mind being considered rude. I was not being rude - I was (as tactfully as is possible for a responsible educator) merely commenting upon the ironic juxtaposition in t-p's posting of a) its ideas, and b) their manner of presentation. Baz As we here are concerned, it is the end of good education and the time of people who can neither write not read is upon us.
The courses are made easier and easier. There is no point to introduce difficult abstract concept when the class has to be brought up to what before was entrance level.
Also the University gets more money now for graduate students, than for undergraduate. The race for graduate students officially began a few years ago. The more you can attract the better it is for you and the university. And after all that efforts graduates are frustrated because there are little jobs for them. And one is not happy to be attendant at a parking lot with a MA degree.
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« Last Edit: 10:25:04, 10-09-2008 by Baz »
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A
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« Reply #68 on: 10:22:55, 10-09-2008 » |
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Call me naive but I can't understand how these hard worked academics have such a lot of time to be posting on these boards all day. When I was working I may have had a couple of minutes spare between rehearsals at lunchtime, and then not necessarily the opportunity to get on a computer. It just makes me wonder!
A
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Well, there you are.
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trained-pianist
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« Reply #69 on: 10:26:50, 10-09-2008 » |
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But academics need to rest his brains and to wait until good ideas will enter into his creative mind.
One can not get good ideas if one is doing one thing after another.
They need time when their ideas germinate and grow.
In our times this is a foreign concept. People are rushing from one thing to another without stopping and thinking.
The time when one is doing nothing (seemingly so) is very valuable.
This is when your creative mind is at work.
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harmonyharmony
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« Reply #70 on: 10:30:52, 10-09-2008 » |
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Call me naive but I can't understand how these hard worked academics have such a lot of time to be posting on these boards all day. When I was working I may have had a couple of minutes spare between rehearsals at lunchtime, and then not necessarily the opportunity to get on a computer. It just makes me wonder!
A
Speaking for myself here, my working day often stretches from when I first get up and sit in front of my computer munching muesli and checking my email (and r3ok) to when I shut it down in the evening, having spent the evening working on a score, a course outline, preparation or some technical issue (like my issue with the fonts yesterday evening). Being able to switch between r3ok and my work gives me an opportunity to reflect on what I'm doing. A few years ago I would have wandered to have a chat with housemates, or been messaging my girlfriend, or just wandered off to make a cup of tea. In my experience, academic work isn't all a matter of sitting and accomplishing a single task, it's made up of a patchwork of myriad different tasks requiring a remarkably diverse range of ability and concentration level. Some are complex but terribly rewarding, some are simple and quite frankly mind numbing. I find that r3ok is a useful pressure valve. |
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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martle
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« Reply #71 on: 10:32:55, 10-09-2008 » |
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Speaking for myself, ditto!  |
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Green. Always green.
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trained-pianist
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« Reply #72 on: 11:02:59, 10-09-2008 » |
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May be it looks to you that I am always watching my computer, but I had a good practice today, cleaned the upstairs of the house and cooked some lunch.
This is good diversion for me if I am getting tired.
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ernani
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« Reply #73 on: 11:29:46, 10-09-2008 » |
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I agree with a lot of what has been said here about the marketisation of higher education. Yes, many students have an extremely functional view of the educational process, but perhaps the difference between 'then and now' is that they are much more direct about stating this view? Many of my students are extremely politically sensitive and have a pretty good grasp of the pressures that academics are under. But I think that I owe my students my 'best face', as it were, when teaching them. I've been doing this job for eleven years now and find that passion and enthusiasm for the subject are the best way of combatting the twin evils of apathy and functionalism. Of course, you won't reach everyone: 'why do you care what some flowery t** (George Herbert, in case anyone was wondering  ) wrote a million years ago' was one especially memorable comment! But those students that you can reach invariably give of their best and it is a pleasure to work with them. On RAE and funding, what amuses me the most is the assumption by senior academics in management that these arbitrary ideological means of distributing public funds have a logic and consistency of their own that can be predicted and anticipated. But, until and unless they rewrite my contract, I can't be sacked for not applying for grants. I will only do so when I can fully justify the use of public money on both research and ethical grounds. I know for a fact that I produced more 'output' (awful term) in my four month study leave than others who have six figure grants to fund projects that, superficially, look good but in fact produce little of intellectual merit. |
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harmonyharmony
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« Reply #74 on: 12:07:58, 10-09-2008 » |
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Call me naive but I can't understand how these hard worked academics have such a lot of time to be posting on these boards all day. When I was working I may have had a couple of minutes spare between rehearsals at lunchtime, and then not necessarily the opportunity to get on a computer. It just makes me wonder!
A
... and you're probably going to see a lot less of us once term starts and our work becomes (to a greater extent than now anyway) more connected with teaching than at present when it is more connected (for me at least) with admin. |
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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