7 Aug
2012
7 Aug
'12
6:54 a.m.
On 08/06/2012 11:24 AM, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
Seemingly not all mails came through.
On Mon, 2012-08-06 at 09:29 -1000, david wrote:
No offense to any one here who has real experience with the German
school system, but I have a friend who's a priest, a partial product of
the German school system. He thinks like an accountant, not a priest.
"Don't pursue music or creative anything; statistically, such people
always fail. Better to spend your life in a nice, steady job."
His German father went into business and also thinks like an accountant,
but doesn't have the same paralyzing fear of risk. Perhaps being an
executive officer on a German u-boat taught him things his son never
took the chance to learn.
On 08/06/2012 03:44 AM, Charles Henry wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 4:34 AM, Ralf Mardorf<ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net>
wrote:
>> On Mon, 06 Aug 2012 08:32:41 +0200, david<gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com> wrote:
> I nearly take offense to this. You don't know what you're talking
> about vis a vis psychology. There's plenty of good research in
> education going on right now (I can't say what goes on in Germany
> though). Left vs Right brain dichotomies are a wrong understanding of
> creative and analytical thinking. There's a bigger picture that this
> all fits into, and you're missing a lot of it.
You're mistaken, but it's not important, if I'm right or wrong,
regarding to this. We have good research in Germany too, "good research"
has nothing to do with German state schools. More than 30 years back
school was a torture for me, today I experienced that children in
elementary schools, who are not "averaged" are tortured in the same way,
as they tortured people around 30 years ago. School is for "averaged"
humans, somebody once has written: "Most people don't fit to the most
people category."
Btw. the knowledge we've got today about the way the brain works, in the
"mass media age" becomes more and more important. When I was young I was
a freak, because I'm thinking non-verbal, today "most kids ;D" do think
non-verbal, since mass media are based on pictures.
> I think that most kids aren't interested
in music. It's exceptional
> for one of them to want to play music at a young age anyway.
Most of the self-discovery of children is based on music. They don't
dare to make music, because they got the impression, that they are to
stupid, since everybody rant about 4 to the flour. We were more reckless
than the kids are today, but this has to do with the different social
situations we're living in today. "The kids are alright."
Children love to be noisy.
If you've seen a classroom full of elementary
school kids doing music,
they're having a blast and really enjoy it.
+1
The basic neural processing
that underlies music (pitch recognition and rhythm) is the same
processing that underlies the ability to learn languages.
Their enjoyment of it is what leads education systems to squash it. They
enjoy it too much, they won't move on to other things the system wants
to teach them ... they also become loud and excited, which the system
sees as unruly and disobedient ...
+½
Teachers with the gift to teach often tend to quid the job very soon,
because of disputes with the staff and school administration, those who
don't quit often become seriously ill. At least on German state schools
are not many teachers who love to teach and know how o teach.
At the last elementary school where I cared for children, I ask who was
the teacher who made that good drawings with the children, there were
some outstanding pictures in a landing. The answer was, that it wasn't a
teacher from the school.
No, young children love music until they're
taught NOT to love it.
+1
Until
they're taught that they can't really make music unless they have "the
gift" (that destructive myth of the Romantic movement that only those
"touched by the gods" can do art). Making music is a skill, not some
mysterious "gift" that only a few have.
And those children who are "touched by the gods", are not allowed to be
"touched by the gods". Even this is a crime.
They start to teach kindergarten children Chinese, to enable them a
better live as a businessmen ;). Preliminary planning is everything,
somebody has to work for the next pensioners. Children have got no time to be children, this is
something we should
expect for the so called Third World or the dark age, but not for
western societies.
The American education system does - very well - exactly what it's
designed to do:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm
And, interestingly enough, the Japanese and American education systems
were taken from Germany.
--
David
gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community
http://clanjones.org/david/
http://dancing-treefrog.deviantart.com/