Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Teaching and reality


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Posted by Mary Ann on December 19, 2003 at 11:07:09:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Teaching and reality posted by Rick Denney on December 18, 2003 at 18:24:10:

I'm going to take you on here, Mary Ann.
OK, here we go!!

>You say you had no expectations that your music degree would provide you with employability, but then you say that you worked as a professional musician for 15 years.

Just because after my divorce at age 26, I used the only skill I had, to live at the poverty level, does not mean that I expected that degree to provide me with employability. With my upbringing, employability for a woman was a non-concept; the point was that I thought I wanted to play professionally, and the idea of needing to make money was completely missing. I realize this is hard for you to understand, but that is the way it was. I also, during those 15 years, worked as a dishwasher; waitress; RV mechanic; motorcycle mechanic; eyeglass lens maker; factory worker; machine shop tecnician. Only during the five years just prior to returning to school, did I put together a music lesson business that, combined with a minimum of free lancing, sort of paid the bills. Perhaps I have misrepresented myself as having made a living ONLY as a musician. It was one of many different things I did to put food on the table, precisely because I had not made any plans to put myself in a position to make a living, based on how I was brought up. (this feels like one of those discussions where you are not going to "get it" no matter how I state it)

>Clearly, you had the idea that you were choosing a degree path that would lead you to a job, even though you also loved it, and even though you hadn't explicitly considered it.

No, I chose a degree path that I thought would lead me to being able to play in an orchestra; trust me, "job" was not part of the concept. Money was something the husband was supposed to provide. I grew up in the 50's. My mother never has had a job, and is still living.

>But for those expectations, you might have spent those 15 years doing something else, like working in a library, or managing a grocery store, or taking wedding photographs. None of those really require four years of classroom study (just as being a professional musician doesn't), but all are usually done better by people with college degrees, because of what they gain from a higher education.

And I found out while in music school and afterwards, that a college degree is totally unncessary to get a playing job. To get a playing job, you have to win an audition, not have a degree. A music perfromance degree is a "technical" degree every bit as much as an engineering degree is; it is not a liberal arts degree. I did not take one history course (except music history) not one literature course, not one philosophy course. And I found, in the places I searched, that my music degree did not afford me any better chance at a job than people who had only graduated high school. I'm sure I was too inexperienced to look in the right places, like IBM, but there is that 1950's sheltered background at work again.

>I don't know anybody with a college degree and the willingness to work who doesn't make a decent life for themselves.

I don't know anyone with a brain and the willingness to work who doesn't make a decent life for themselves; the college degree has little to do with it unless you want to go into a field like medicine or engineering, that requires a specific one.

>Ken and I aren't opposed to job training, we are opposed to expecting an undergraduate college education for 18-year-olds to be job training. Adults who go back to school after having been fully educated by whatever means (such as I did for my graduate degree) have a different expectation, and we know how to realize that expectation. That's when it is and should be job training. But it comes after the education.

We don't really disagree on these points. There are a lot of kids now who are getting business degrees only because they think that will get them a job. I like the British system of a free education if you pass your A levels and a job-oriented training if you pass your B levels. We are also a class society but do not admit it, which makes things more complicated.

MA

Mary Ann, who thinks hindsight needs a lot weaker lenses, which she used to coulda made for ya.


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