Memories of My Sorry Education

Ryan posted a Tumblr link about how we expect everyone to take science and math, but not humanities in school.



I don't know if things have changes since I was a kid, but I do remember having to take those things. I had one year each of drama, art, music in Junior high, art being my favourite. Also had lots of years of a second language, none of which stuck. I blame this on it being Alberta in the 70's. You're just not going to get a redneck teacher's best effort beyond "bon-jew-or means hello" when Ottawa tells you to do it. Thankfully things seem to have changed there. But man, I wish I'd really learned French.

Us science nerds did have to do that stuff, well into University (unless you were an Engineering student). I was somewhat rare at the time that I thought it was all useful, when they didn't half-ass it, and still think that. Most of my fellow nerds have probably come around to that line of thinking too.

Of course, the bigger point of not being admonished for being bad at artistic endeavors in the way the arty kids got admonished for not being good at science, is well taken. I think everyone needs to be at least base-line competent at all of this stuff, but we really do need to identify strengths better. They say you need fifth-grade reading to handle any newspaper published, and I think that leads to a rule of thumb that you should also have that level of math and that level of science for functioning in our society. And heck, enough of a second language to ask for directions, and maybe make an attempt at reading music are good things too. I don't expect people to be a Vulcan skeptic like I am, but they should at least know what "theory" and "hypothesis" mean, and the difference between "atom" and "molecule". Enough to not get taken in by Dihydrogen-Monoxide - the silent killer, stories.

Thinking about this entry, made something click in my brain.

I never learned how to read music. I've often pointed to that as something that shows I have no aptitude for it aside from a passable singing voice. But now that I think back on my one year of music, I can't recall any attempts to actually teach us music. Like, there was no attempt to teach us what a note was, or how the symbols on the paper should translate to actual sounds. In the end, I got a basic pass, I think because I played trombone. I never looked at the sheet music, I just aped the movements of the other three trombone players beside me. Since no one else was any good (aside from a handful of kids who'd had actual prior training), the teacher never noticed me above the cacophony. Maybe it wasn't my lack of talent after all.