You're out of your element. Show me a developing country that doesn't have instrumental music. I dare you to try and take that away from them. Whatever your personal perogatives may be, don't be tempted to make blanket, value judgments of other cultures on what they do and don't need.

 

I'm not saying that, however I think that food and shelter rate a bit more than instrumental music. Also you seem to make your judgement, I Refer to your earlier post. In a developed country they took away YOUR funding. You however seem to make a blanket, value judgement that the developing countries would rather have instruments than technology

 

That's not my value judgment, that's the reality of what each developing country has chosen. They chose instruments over computers, because instruments are more important.

What bugs me is how people in developed countries are so easily duped, on two levels. First, that a new medium is more important than good content, e.g., the ubiquitous and plentiful videos shared via the Internet, filmed on cellphones, which have little to no cultural merit especially compared with the amount of resources required to share that information. Second, that the use and availiability of that technology, whatever the medium might be, is somehow a necessity of life, when in fact it will become obsolete in ten years time, it requires labour and physical resources outside of all sense of proportion to the technology's merits, and it consequently displaces the cultural activities (such as instrumental music) that are the very fabric of a society.

I never said they took away my funding, but since you're interested, the education system I work in is what we call a public education system. I know the terminology between over here compared to G.B. is topsy-turvy, so I'll clarify: public education here means tax-funded schooling, available unconditionally to any citizen. So again, they never took away my funding, rather they used the funds in a poorly informed manner, i.e. buying computers at the expense of cuts to more important things.

Unfortunately, this kind of thing happens all the time in education, because of the aforementioned duping of the public, and the pressure on politicians and head government authorities to demonstrate results. Because the results are something that are reasoned to the masses, rather than to experts, the most superficial criteria for measuring success generally win out over criteria requiring greater commitment and understanding. This means things like literacy and mathematics tend to get greater priority than other subjects, not because they're more important, but for no other reason than the success of educational methods can be more easily demonstrated in superficial terms. For instance, math scores from school to school can be compared, and graphs of those results can be published in a newspaper. On the other hand, comparing the worth of, for example, various music programs is much more difficult, since the means to measuring success tend to be anecdotal, subjective, and generally more complicated than what most of the population can understand. That's where the limits of democracy are reached: the capacity for understanding by the masses in any given field will always be inferior to the capacity for understanding by the experts in each of the experts' respective fields and the ability of those experts to decide what's best for the masses.

What you're probably thinking about now is, "Wait a second, what's the difference between having a small group of experts decide what's important for the masses, and a small group of people making value judgments for other cultures?" The short answer to that is in the optimistic presumption that public education works. Given the option to study any chosen field, there will be a natural, democratic filtering of sorts of the masses, and it's having those choices, those opportunities, through which the democratic process works much more effectively than in just terms of voting every four or five years for the least worst candidate.

That's what really ticks me off about the interference of that democratic process by special interest groups, such as computer manufacturers, who exploit the inevitable reality that the masses can be easily duped by superficial criteria. The main incentive for computer manufacturers interfering is to increase their profits, not a philanthropic desire to assist in the education of young people. That's exactly the same deal with making computers for developing countries: the priority is profit, not food, not shelter, not maintaining the cultural integrity of entire nations, but rather to draw unexpecting people into the fold of consumerism regardless of what the real cost may be to those people individually and collectively.

 

I read your reply with interest and I can assure you I'm not trying to be awkward but I work for a large computer based company, and if at interview a prospective employee said I can Play "an instrument" but I don't know much about computers another candidate states I'm quite good at computers but I know nothing about music. Who do you think would get the job

How many Jobs are there out there for musicians and how many for the computer literate I know that there is a need for music of all types and I enjoy music but the world is now run by computer, not instrument

 

I would like to add a personal opinion that isn't directly related to the topic by just kind of.

I've seen over the decades many unsuccessful attempts to get computers into public schools both as donations and as budgeted items and at younger and younger ages. Many of these efforts have gone to waste because the teachers were not trained well in there use and applications and the computer software applications were not always well integrated with the normal learning subjects.

Couple that with the fast obsolescence that effects PCs and software and you have a whole lot of waste and frustration, and a not small budget drain on a school. Don't get me wrong, PCs should be utilized by children as soon as they are capable, the world has changed and the PC/web usage is a hugh advantage over those that don't have access or knowledge.

Lefty

__________________
Measurement changes behavior

 

Computers have been in UK schools for decades now, but the UK did have the worlds highest percentage of computers per population decades ago (as we did VCR's as well).

My wife works as a teaching assistant in a reception class (4-5 year olds), they have a number of computers in their classroom, and also move to a specific computer suite for more intensive computer work. It's amazing how fast many little kids pick up using computers - they don't have any fear!.

__________________
PIC programmer software, and PIC Tutorials at:
http://www.winpicprog.co.uk

 

Children: are they the future's fat, desk-bound button pushers, or people capable of actually living in and understanding the real world? I'm sorry, but I just don't see it happening right now in more than a small minority of computer users. By "it happening" I mean most people are not experiencing a net advantage in their quality of life though their own use of computers. They obsessively check e-mail, do business without the benefits of social interaction, spend more time staring at a screen than speaking with their family, eat bad food and drink too much caffeine in lieu of a proper diet and regular excercise.

I appreciate the irony of my posting this rhetoric on this forum. I just think we've been jamming this computer business down our own throats for too long. I'll agree there are advantages, and I do my best to get the most out of them, but in my opinion there's been an unhealthy obsession with electronic media that we ought to try to make sure we keep in check. Remember when you'd look at someone using a cellphone and you'd say, "Look at the ego on that jerk! No one's that important that they need to use a cellphone here in the (library, restaurant, bus, washroom, etc)." Well, I have news for you: you were right, and that guy still doesn't have anything so important to do that it can't wait until he gets home or back to the office.

Turn it off, go outside, talk (in person) to someone, eat an apple, have a nice day.