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Re: Math is an Art
Posted:
Feb 21, 2012 4:14 PM
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On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 7:43 AM, Robert Hansen <bob@rsccore.com> wrote:
> Your analysis doesn't add up Paul. For starters, there are no music teachers teaching the general public.
>
Wrong. Those music education majors teaching at the elementary schools
involve all the kids somehow, whether it's singing songs, including
singing in choirs, or instruments of some type (remember those
tonettes?)
(Note: The music education degrees, unlike math education degrees
which certify only for secondary, certify for all 12 years.)
And in middle and high schools, you essentially have to teach anyone
to play who wants to be in the band or choir or orchestra. I know what
I'm talking about. See the below.
>How many music classes have you taken? Lou? Haim? Richard?
I entered college as a music education major long before I changed
majors and eventually finished as a math major. Before college, I was
All-State on French horn and was alternate on piano for the All-State
stage band (meaning I was to go if the All-State pianist could not
make it). Earned state superiors on both horn and piano during State
Contest. My piano teacher during high school, an artist-in-residence
at a local private college who obtained a degree in performance from
the Vienna Conservatory in Austria, taking only selected students,
wanted me to continue to study with him for 4 more years at his local
private college and then go to Vienna and get trained as fully as
possible in the Viennese school of pianism. But I wanted to be a
professional hornist in a great orchestra instead, and went to another
college. At college, although horn was my main instrument, I was the
pianist for the university Lab Band. After two years, I was accepted
as a transfer student to go to Northwestern University to study horn
with the principal hornist of the Chicago Symphony. For reasons I
won't go into here, I did not follow up on that. Biggest mistake of
life, lots of regrets, who knows how far I could have gone.
I told you the truth when I said that the competition in professional
(classical) music is as it is in professional athletics, utterly
ferocious.
As to why ultimately I did not stick with music education as a major:
I did not want to be a band director or end up like one of my pianist
friends at an elementary school as a career or teach kids or adults
piano lessons at some music shop. Although I did later do some private
piano teaching, it just confirmed that I would not have wanted to do
that for a living.
>
> That is the point.
>
No, it isn't. The small percentage of the entire population that is
talented enough in music to obtain a music education degree is
essentially the same small percentage of the entire population
talented enough in math to obtain a math education degree. Denigrating
either group of people as lacking in talent or whatever you want to
call it is not right in more than one way.
>
> Bob Hansen
>
>
>
> On Feb 21, 2012, at 1:16 AM, Paul Tanner <upprho@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> It does not have this split personality, so your question and what it
>> is based on does not hold up. The level at which a typical secondary
>> school math teacher with an undergraduate degree in math education
>> teaching the general public can "do math" is no less than the level at
>> which a typical secondary school music teacher with an undergraduate
>> degree in music education teaching the general public can "do music".
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