Systems of Music and Education

In music there are different kinds of musicians. There are those that teach themselves how to play, but cannot read sheets, then there are those that have been taught to play and presumably apart of this process is being taught how to read sheets, there are those that can also write music (which I mean by this is to create songs), and then finally there are those that are recognized to create new eras of music (i.e., blues vs. jazz vs. rock and roll vs. classical vs. contemporary vs. country vs. whatever): that new types of music develop from previous existing forms, but eventually are seen nonetheless as a different form in their own right. The same should also be the case with our post-secondary institutions.

Currently they operate on a one version fits all, one institution is just as good as the other, that no institution wants to set-up and try to attract the best of the best of either students or faculty. If you are student whom is entering post-secondary the general rule is that if you can get accepted by one of them you can at the very least get accepted by most of them if not all of them. No institutions are willing to step-up and take the-floor-front of attracting the next generation of minds that will create the new era of whatever, be it technology, science, arts, fine arts, humanities, math, physics, chemistry, biology, organic chemistry, other sciences, etc. They are all content with teaching the same thing to classrooms that on a statistical base would look eerily the same as each other. The reason for this is the obsession with educational institutions with grades as being indicators of success in the past and indicator-predictor of success in the future.

That the factor that is missing is creativity, hard work, and passion as with the combinations of these things new arising begins. For institutions these things come second to grade admission standards: they are considered only after you have achieved the grades you need. During the admission process the consideration that education at the secondary and post-secondary levels are two different kinds and that where a student may be unsuccessful at the former may exceed at the later because of these three factors is over-looked. The admission process does not consider equivalent factors (despite the claims of the opposite) or should they do in the sense that those that are the judges of these set the standards so high that to use the word equivalent would not be suitable to their judgments and expectations of achievements for the age (considering social restrictions) of the applicant. A reform of the admission process to post-secondary educational institutions is needed.

Instead, we need to reform the post-secondary institutional system to recognize that there are more ways to define success than the subjective nature of grades (which depend more on the impression that you make on the grader than it does on the quality of the work). We need to set-up different types of institutions. Those that are entering from other than mainstream admissions based on grades, those that are entering from the mainstream admissions based on grades but are unlikely to add on to our understanding of the world, those that entering from the mainstream admissions based on grades and are likely to add on to that understanding, and those entering from the mainstream admissions based on grades and are likely to create new understands (or new ways of looking at things). These individuals should be taught by those parallel in skills to these listed.

The first two admission categories being taught by those that have not done anything except repeat studies done by others, the third category being taught by those that have add on to their field of expertise such as modifying the application of a technology, and the fourth category being taught by those that have been accredited with creating something new for their field of expertise such as a new technology. However, there needs to be a built in method of determining who from the non-mainstream admission process (the first of these categories) should be in either of the later two of these categories. Those that teach should understand that their job is not only teach the course material but enhance their students skills so between the students and teachers efforts the student can surpass the teacher in that teacher's expertise: the student with their renewal of energy of creativity for the future and the teachers with their knowledge of the past.