This is why our society has not produced anyone of real excellence in a very long time. This century really has no mega composers like Bach or Beethoven or Chopin. No scientific greats like Einstein. And where are the great poets like Goethe and the sculptors and painters and everything good that our history has to offer!
I blame society and its effect on parents. Kids these days have their lives filled to a disgusting extent. They have soccer on this day, hockey the next, scouts and girlguides, swimming lessons, extracirricular school stuff and then piano lessons and voice lessons, and ballet class and whatever the hell else kids do. It leaves them no time to show what they are really interested in and good at by their simple displays of creativity and interest that they will find on their own. Not only are we stifling their creativity, but we are forcing them to devellop a mediocrity complex where they try to put equal effort towards everything in which they are involved. It doesn't matter if they would rather be painting flowers over and over again so that they make the flower more and more realistic and it comes more naturally... they are made to feel guilty about not spending their time having practiced their clarinet fingering or done their homework for social studies.
Our society tries to convince us that this builds better well rounded people that function better in our society... yes if our society wants a bunch of non specialists that can go from on unskilled labour job to the next, then YAY! we have quite the successful system....
BUT when we go to the opera, do you care if the soprano can kick a 30 yard field goal or if she can calculate the mass of 17.2 moles of graphite?!? NO,the only mass we care about is she is the fat lady and that she can sing like nobody's business!
Child prodigys were probably useful at some point in history... they could get a head start on learning rep and what not so they could develop a sense of musicality from their basic learning of the music. Now we don't even have specialised schools. There used to be music schools where you could send your kid and he would learn music and some basics so that they could get by, but not any more.
Mumbly Mumbly this world sucks.
And the worst part about it is that when the stupid parents realise their child is doing too much crap... what gets cut, is it the soccer that they paid in full for resigtration at the beginning of the year? is is the sports at school, or the homework? NO its the piano lessons that they end up dropping because it's the easiest.
WHORES, now I can't even come close to paying tuition without going into debt! BASTARDS
5 comments:
as much as i can see this angry angry rant is about bitterness to a certain something, i must emphasize my point about the children in lotsa stuff bit.
i begged my mother to put me in ballet lessons since i was a little kid.
she didn't until it was too late.
i could have been a prima ballerina by now.
too much stuff is always better than too little.
But Imagine if she saw your love for ballet and then put you in a ballet school during high school, which actually do still exist, but not all the other stuff that took up your time?!? Then I would know you as said prima ballerina!
wholey fucking rant, very well said. Those little bastards, how dare they take away your tuition funding!
I realise it hits home when its your paycheque that is disappearing, Michael, but you yourself are a student who has left lessons part way through a course of study. Sometimes other things are more important, finances change, or any other number of really worthwhile reasons. Perhaps your students are on their way to excellence in a different field. The next Einstein, perhaps? Not necessarily any of the above, but I think that they are possibilities that are worth considering.
I do see your point, although no. The mother actually made a point of emphasising in the beginning that she wanted to make music a priority over other things... but when it came down to it, it was just easier to take him out of piano. Also, my decision to leave lessons was made on my own and with painful consideration; this decision was made for the boy by his mother, who was pretty much ignorant as to the natural ability and enjoyment he was having at lessons. But yes, Andrew, thank you for keeping me real.
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