All tagged Getting an education
When I was a 14 year old learning to play the guitar, there was no internet. Which meant that, if you wanted to learn a song, there were only a few ways to do it.
You could try and learn it ‘by ear’; you could have a friend show you how (assuming you had a friend who played guitar and knew the song in question); you could buy a guitar magazine and check out the included sheet music (assuming they transcribed that specific song in that specific issue)…
A common lament these days is that kids don’t read, or at least, they don’t read enough. Give them a spare moment and their first inclination is to pick up their phones and surf. Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, etc. - the mode varies but the rabbit hole is the same.
And the way things are progressing - we’re only moving deeper into our virtual worlds, with more and more social media platforms emerging - we’re only going to be spending more time in front of our screens, not less.
I really don’t like the idea of standardized tests.
Ostensibly, they’re designed to be a pure measure of talent and intellect - a way to measure our depth of understanding of the specific subject matter in question.
But the fact is, they’re not - well, not in the way we’d like to think anyway.
We have this obsession, usually rightly so, with organized, accredited education. In an era when economic disparity and the income gap is at its widest, getting a “proper education” isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have.
Which is something most of us agree on, plus the fact that a proper education is defined as not simply completing high school, but obtaining a college degree, at minimum. I think I’m on pretty safe ground when I say that.
