President Obama Is Looking To Extend The School Year

Lord Gonchar said:
Interesting, because I've always felt that being good at math goes hand in hand with being good at music. Music at it's core is nothing more than math.

Singing out of tune at the end of a sad song is the musical equivalent of saying 1+1=11 ;) :)

I hate it when people bring math into music, absolutely hate it. I'm a musician and I hate higher math. And Gonch, what about unresolved endings? Would that be like saying 2+2=5? ;)

Sorry, music came up and I had to interject.

Don't be sorry, Mike. There's probably a lot of people here who are interested.

I subscribe to the idea that too much music theory can lead to musician's writers block. When coming up with time signatures or trying to figure out the time signature of an existing song, math is necessary, however I am lucky in that I don't over think it, because I am not a math fanatic. :p

Some music theory knowledge is important when it comes to writing a good song, overall. I tend to write the song first, just by what sounds good to me, then I go back to make sure that I did everything correctly, as it pertains to theory.

As it pertains to music, I love jazz, and most of my musical focus is there, but I honestly do not know much at all about music theory beyond the basics. When I improv, I fly blind, or rather, theoretically deaf. My problem is that I simply can't keep up with the changes fast enough and be able to think of the whole scales and think to myself "Oh, I switched keys, what notes fit here?" In the span of one or two measures (especially true in Charlie Parker tunes where measures barely last two seconds). I was lucky enough to play with a fellow sax player at IWU whose mind was razor-sharp and quick enough to do that, even while playing Confirmation). His solos always blew my mind, but I seem to have a mental roadblock to understanding the more advanced music theory.

Of course, I've never been able to play a piano, and I still couldn't tell you where middle C is. I can find a Bb to tune to if you give me a few seconds and a few wrong notes, though.

Jeff said:
I'm not invalidating anything. Why are some of you getting so defensive about this? I didn't say the people I encountered couldn't function in the real world, I said they were less qualified to handle the details of their jobs compared to those who did go to college. That has been my experience. I believe it's plausible that would be the case, in my field, elsewhere.

Please stop projecting. You sound rather defensive yourself. Nobody said that in your field a college degree wasn't important. I've been arguing against the point that was brought up pages ago that a college education was necessary for everyone, whether it be to prepare for a career, to gain knowledge for knowledge sake, or to become socialized and better prepared for the real world.

And yes, music is totally mathematical. Notes are fractional representations of a measure. Tempos are expressed in beats per minute, pitch in vibrations per second, even intervals between notes are mathematical relationships. Sorry to spoil it for you, LK. Actually, most people don't even think about it, it works so well.

How can I not be defensive when you continue to imply that my own experience isn't what I've experienced?

Yes, I agree, RGB. Music is totally mathematical. So is a lot of other things that people don't think about.

You didn't spoil anything for me, RGB. Most great songwriters, musicians, and/or vocalists don't absolutely NEED to know that music is mathematical in order to do what they do well. I believe that having the knowledge helps, to a degree, but when people start to over think all of the science and math within the music, it could start to make some artist less productive. In my experience, I try not to think about it, unless I need to in order to get to a certain point. I do go back after I write a song to make sure that some of the rules are followed, and tweek it as necessary, just so the people who know the rules think that maybe I might know what I am doing. ;)

Roller coasters are fun, by the way.

I think it was David Byrne who's talked about how music is often understood by the body before the mind. Apparently he did most of his work in Talking Heads without understand the most basic tenants of theory, like that songs could be written in one key and then transposed into another. There's lots of other examples.

Point being sure, math very much underlies the mechanics of music but making that bridge between musical ability and explicit math ability has always been very much overblown, at least to me.

If you'd like an analogy, you don't have to be knowledgeable about physics, chemistry, and biology to cook a good steak.

It doesn't hurt though. See: Alton Brown's excellent book "I'm Just Here for the Food", where he explains the process required to get a really good sear on a steak, etc.

Jeff said:
How can I not be defensive when you continue to imply that my own experience isn't what I've experienced?

Not implying anything. I'm been stating flat out that you've been arguing for 16 pages that your experience is the only one that anyone should be considering; anyone else's experience is lesser than yours. When I mentioned people I knew who were successful without a college degree, you told me I was wrong. I guess my experience isn't what I've experienced.

You're also defensive because you can't possibly admit that anyone who has an opinion different from yours could have an iota of truth about it.

Whatever dude. You read what you want to read. At no time have I insisted my experience was absolute truth. Seriously, dial back the ad hominem nonsense about what I can and can't do. It adds nothing to the discussion because it's not about me.

So disagreeing with your opinion is an ad hominem attack. That's pretty funny. I never said someone's opinion was invalid because they didn't use the quote function correctly.

RatherGoodBear said:
You're also defensive because you can't possibly admit that anyone who has an opinion different from yours could have an iota of truth about it.

Which part of that is about the issues at hand?

School is for chumps.

Even though you may not gain employment in your chosen field of study, I have to believe that having a "well-rounded education" leaves you a little more prepared for the unforeseeable circumstances. Thus, when the 10% "other duties as required" becomes something infinitely more complex and involved than what was anticipated, you stand a fair-to-middling chance of having SOME knowledge that might help you (as well as the obvious benefit of having proven yourself capable of fighting off massive numbers of bureaucrats/regulations).

Anyhow....that's one of the ways that I see "general education" as being more useful than just wasting two years' of college tuition.

Another Op-Ed piece from the Times on the role our primary/secondary educational system is playing in global (non-)competitiveness:

While the subprime mortgage mess involved a huge ethical breakdown on Wall Street, it coincided with an education breakdown on Main Street --- precisely when technology and open borders were enabling so many more people to compete with Americans for middle-class jobs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/opinion/21friedman.html

(Edited to add: it also has some interesting things to say about college graduates who can't roll with the punches, as 'gator alludes to above.)

And, on the notion of maintenance/service work being our salvation---not for aircraft:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113864153

I'm not sure I get the take away from the NYT piece. I mean, being an "average" worker in any field most obviously puts you at risk, which has probably been true for decades. It's just more apparent in a recession.

One thing this sparked in my head, and I apologize as it has little to do with education, is that in the market I live in now, the "programmers working on more routine tasks" is a cyclical problem perpetuated by companies that have technological requirements. They hire people for a few months to do one thing that they thought of and let them go, creating this awful crappy contract work environment that leads to substandard crap that constantly needs fixing. They have no desire to hire and retain good people to take them to the next level, because, in their minds, investing in people like that doesn't connect to a better company in the long run. That's why I'm getting the hell out.

Not sure I understand the point of the NYT piece either. Looking at the quoted statement above, one could conclude that the US had an exceptional education system that was churning out well educated graduates in droves and that had changed recently leading to the education breakdown. But that isn't what happened. When people could leave high school (with or without a degree) and get a job in a factory or mill, the education system didn't matter as much. Now that you can't, it does.

Folks need to have some type of marketable skill (or otherwise be able to bring something to the commercial/economic table) to be succeesful in the economy. That skill can be professional, trade or vocational. It can be creative, organizational, managerial or technical. Whatever it is. But you need to find someone who is willing to pay you to do it. And the more in demand the skill is and the fewer people who have it, the better off you will be. And those dynamics can flip very quickly (especially with technology) such that you may find large numbers of folks with that skill set in your market or very little demand for it.

No one ever said that maintenance/service work is our salvation. Just that it should be part of the mix. And yes, airplanes are mobile such that much of their maintenance can be mobile as well. And many consumer goods at this point are disposable such that there isn't much of a market for maintenance/service. But that isn't true for all equipment/machinery owned by consumers. And it isn't true for a lot of commercial/industrial equipment/machinery which is neither disposable nor mobile. There are jobs out there maintaining and servicing those items. And as technology develops more and more complex machines/equipment, there will be other jobs as well though I suspect the trend will continue on the consumer side.

And using the language of that piece, I think that more of our growth in terms of college degrees over the last 20 years or so has come in the bottom of the top half rather than the top. And as that bottom half of the top continues to grow, I think it becomes less and less distinguishable from the top end of the bottom half.

To be fair, the piece has at least three different points. This is one of the reasons I'm not a big Friedman fan---his writing isn't terribly focused.

Lord Gonchar said:
Under those rules (success without college is much harder), haven't we just done what this thread started talking about - keeping people in the education system longer. Maybe if the first 12 weren't broken, the other 4 wouldn't be necessary. The idea of the college 4 being necessary seems just as broken to me.

Arrrrgh! :)

This reminds me way too much of a q-bot thread.

LOL Andy. Did you know that at the University of Phoenix you can pay someome to sign up for and attend classes for you? I heard they were getting a sponsorship deal and changing the name to "Q-bot U". ;)