[Skip Dewahl]

Originally Posted by Michael Cantor

You tell 'em, Skip - all them there pinko-liberal-faggot-commie-Berkeley-Swedish SOB's are the same. Picking on absurd allegations is just one of their typical sleazy left-wing tactics.

Bless you, Skip. Whenever I feel guilty about caricaturing certain Conservatives as caricatures, I know that sooner or later I can depend on you to make me feel better.

I said nothing derogatory about Janice, whom I actually like, whether that feeling is reciprocated or not, because she, unlike some here, is never mean-minded. Although she did refer to me once as "that Skipper Dude". I prefer to think that she considers me some sort of lovable Big Lebowski type. Not that's gotta be positive, right? Right? RIGHT?

[Ed Shacklee]

Skip, I wonder if you'd care to answer Roger's question, or my own: what does the genius of Irving Berlin, who had no more than two years of formal education, have to do with whether education was better in his day than now?

Ed

[Skip Dewahl]

1. The educational system was indeed superior.
2. Geniuses such as Berlin benefited from the culture at that time, which cannot be separated from the educational system.
3. Songwriters with only a knack for composing everyday lyrics were encouraged not to settle for being second best, even if they lacked the genius of a Berlin.

The deterioration probably started after WW2, but was not completed, in my opinion, until the late sixties.

It was in the air. Got it?

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

I doubt the disappointing nature of "award" winning music is indicative of the education system. The techniques used for filtering and capitalizing on music, the way a song gets into heavy rotation, the purpose of a "hit" and thus the type of song that is hit-able have been adjusted for comfort and speed not for art. Great music is being composed at the same rates as before I suspect. I doubt any schooling shortcomings could shut down that vent. Its just not playing on the company turntables. I believe in this generation. I have spent a lot of time with them in some tight spots. They will re-invent whatever it is that makes whatever you value in great writing worth pining for. You just might not be there when the curtain goes up.

[Ed Shacklee]

Those are intriguing theories, Skip, but I don't see the basis for treating them as matters of fact. Stating that "the educational system was indeed superior" does not make it so; with respect, the same could be said for your other two points. I'm not inclined to go out on those speculative limbs with you, if no other reason than that the world has changed in so many other ways.

One could hypothesize, for example, that the wave of immigrants in those days -- of whom Irving Berlin was one -- was a big reason that the era was so inventive; in which case the problem might have more to do with the (relatively speaking) closed doors of today than the educational system of yesterday.

One could also suggest, with good reason, I think, that the factors that gave rise to the Harlem Renaissance had a lot to do with it. Or one could posit that changes in the music industry after WWII would have made it harder for someone like Irving Berlin to break through -- certainly, many of the most interesting songwriters of today seem to have found that to be the case; you'd never know about most of them if you listened to Top 40 stations. And so on.

Best,

Ed


P.S. I see I've cross-posted with Andrew.

[David Rosenthal]

Skip,

I honestly don't understand your last few posts. Were they aimed at me? If so, they reveal you as extremely rude. I explained that the "WTF" comment was not aimed at you but at the thread's strange set of turns. If anything in any of my posts in this thread was PC, I am sure have no idea what. I have no idea whatsoever the "let him hang himself" business is about.

If by bio, you meant my mentioning some things about my job, I don't understand your comment about the "deserving privileged" or the implication that I suggested you or anyone else doesn't have the right to breathe. I said nothing about those things. I also didn't delete anything, but in fact edited in extra stuff.

If none of your comments were about me or my posts, then Janice's suggestion that you confused me with Nemo might make sense. But then I don't get the line about "birds of a feather." While I met Nemo once, and have interacted with him on these boards quite a few times, I don't really know him well enough to know if we are "birds of a feather," and you don't know me from Adam's off ox, let alone well enough to know whether or not Nemo and I share plumage. In any case, it seems pretty irrational to just apply your attack on someone else to me because you think we are somehow similar.

You say you like Janice because she is not "mean-minded." The suggestion that anything in this thread indicates that I am mystifies me. But you seem to have comported yourself in a pretty mean-spirited way toward me. I don't get it. But I don't have to.

Goodbye and good luck,

David R.

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Ed Shacklee

I don't see the basis for treating them as matters of fact.

Exactly. This is why I get so frustrated. It would be nice to have some actual data. So, the songwriter in question wrote that song in 1929. In 1929, the US population was 121 million. Total number of college graduates that year? 122,000. I'm no math major, but that looks like around one tenth of one percent to me. In other words, over a ten year period, one percent of the population would get a university education. Doesn't sound like a good system to me...

High school graduation rates that year were around 29%. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Until you remember that back then, there were entrance exams for high schools, which made sure that only about 20% of candidates were actually admitted.

All this was old news 30 years ago. The arguments were the same then. Remember "A nation at risk?" That was 1983. We've been seen the same tired old arguments ever since The Truman Report came out. "Things used to be wonderful." Well, no, they weren't. The sky is falling in every single one of those reports, including in the ones being written during those times people look back on as golden.

In the tens and 20's, there was something called "The High School Movement." All over the country, people were clamouring for better schools, building new ones right and left. Does anyone really think they were doing that because they thought their existing education system was so wonderful?

I really wish the people making these "it used to be wonderful" arguments had learned to do even ten minutes worth of research. Like, you know, when they were in school...

Best,

Bill

[Skip Dewahl]

...there were entrance exams for high schools, which made sure that only about 20% of candidates were actually admitted.

There were higher standards, on average, at every level of the teaching community. I'm not sure if the percentage was always quite that drastic, but at least it kept the slackers from disrupting those willing to work hard for an education. Probably benefited the slackers, as well, what with families needing farmhands, they might've been partly responsible for America becoming the breadbasket of the world, or continuing in that role, at any rate. With discipline, any product, even literary productions, must have been enhanced.

[Quincy Lehr]

Erm... simply not true, Skipper. Teachers in the New York public schools have to get a Master's degree within a few years of getting hired. When my grandmother became a schoolteacher, it was two years of normal school. At the college where I teach (which graduates a large number of aspiring teachers), the vast majority of instructional faculty have doctorates, especially among the junior faculty. That would not have been true when the school was founded in 1916. And speaking of which, I've seen too many kids with dead-average SAT scores succeed at college to give any credence to that snooty "the world needs unskilled agricultural laborers, too" attitude. The bulk of my students would not have gone to college 100 years ago. They can now, and while perhaps some of them shouldn't be, most of them get something out of the experience, which is kind of the point of an education.

[John Whitworth]

I do agree with Bill. It may be thought I am horning in on an American argument but I think it's much the same everywhere. When I went to university about 12% went. Bump that up with the people who went to various sorts of colleges, fo teachers, nurses, accountants and so forth, and the percentage in higher education might have been 20%. Now it is 40%. It follows that the examinations for entrance must have become easier or the kids more intelligent.The second was the line people tried to sell us for years but it is obvious balls, so let's stick with the first. The kids are much the same.

I think they read less and write less because they have other things to do. Reading stuff is not a good in itself. I think the teachers are much as they were, neither better nor worse. I think old people like me are inclined to have a rose-tinted version of the past. I think hospitals (say) are better than they were, but schools much the same.

Perhaps the curriculum is where we should look. In the UK a good deal of it is given over to government propaganda, classes in citizenship, sex-education etc etc, all the 'relevant' stuff. I think children with various disabilities get a better deal, perhaps the very clever a worse one, but that doesn't really matter, does it? The very clever (like me, me, me) will get by.

In the UK education is made more difficult by the very large number of immigrant children whose English is poor or non-existent. I don't know that you have that problem in the States. Lucky you. But that's just something that has happened and won't unhappen. Teachers have to deal with what is in front of them.

Teachers are undoubtedly better paid than they used to be. Children are undoubtedly less disciplined, so in that way the task is more difficult.