highly decorated kiddie equipment geeks

[Leto Cruise]

I don't get it.

[iiipopes]

I had this same discussion with a friend yesterday evening who teaches privately. Motivation. Motivation. Motivation. I don't know what motivates people. Especially young people. I don't remember what motivated me, except possibly I did not care for the alternatives if I did not do well in school. We talked about the same issues as to how to encourage young people to be their best.

I am very blessed that my son, who has Asperger's Syndrome, now called high-functioning autism, recently attained his Boy Scout Eagle. So there is still some motivation out there, we just don't see it often enough.

[nycbone]

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[Donn]

And don't forget: as an adult you'll likely as not be playing for your own amusement at home.

[nycbone]

**********

[tbn.al]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPGvKwggtl0" target="_blank

[sweaty]

I thought Bloke's post was very positive- it showed how much can be done with comparatively little. It was inspiring.

I am also inspired by my wife who, after growing up during her country's brutal civil war, came to the U.S. with nothing. She was a full-time student while working full-time and learning English along the way. She got her Bachelor's degree in less than four years with a GPA higher than mine. In this country, people who may think they're poor have no idea what real poverty is. Safety, security, and opportunity is a wealth in itself (and were very expensive to obtain).

I am a band director in a large suburban public school system known for many very fine band programs. Over the decades, I've taught about 3000 kids- rich, poor, middle class, kids from all over the world, kids from all kinds of family situations, and kids with every special ed label I can think of. I see student achievement as a three-part job; when the student, teacher, and parents all do their jobs well, quality is produced. If just one of those parts does not function, that three-legged stool falls over and nothing good happens. Money has very little to do with it. It's mostly about values.

When I teach a kid, I need him/her to be a functional kid with good character and a solid work ethic. Kids bring that to everything they do. There are enormous opportunies in our area for kids to explore and achieve in many things. They really have no idea how lucky they are. As a teacher, it is quite satisfying to see students work hard to develop their abilities but discouraging when they do nothing.

Back to the subject of instruments for kids, my own sons play low brass instruments. I start them on the same equipment my students do. I get them progressively better equipment as they deserve it.

[roughrider]

I have really enjoyed reading this post. I recently posted about a Boosey&Hawkes "Imperial" 3 valve BBb tuba that I found hidden in the equipment room at the back of the band hall. I had quite a bit of work done on it and now it is the main horn that I play at band. Three weeks ago I also located the smaller version of this horn in the equipment room. Also, a Boosey&Hawkes BBb with LP ( assuming that means low pitch) on the bell however not an "Imperial". It has had the tar beaten out of it with large dents along one side of the bottom bow which is most likely from hitting a belt buckle while someone marched with it. The lacquer is in ribbons all over the horn and the bell flare is somewhat off. The valves were covered in slime and required some major scrubbing to even see what they looked like. Bottom line, once cleaned and valves working properly, the horn plays like a dream. It is a great sounding tuba. This horn would send most young players running in the opposite direction however with practice, practice and more practice I am really enjoying it. It is the work that is put in that matters, not so much the equipment.

[ghmerrill]

I doubt that this thread will have any effect other than making some of us feel better by venting some frustration, but I will add one more observation (that's really a part of what Bloke said).

In the five years before I retired (from a fairly high-level scientific position in one of the pharma giants) I worked closely with a number of students in an internship program I started collaboratively with a local state university. The internship program was very successful and resulted in some genuine contributions by the interns (two of whom were later hired and continued on in my group), including direct contributions to some important projects and publications in peer-reviewed journals (by undergraduates). I loved doing this because I've always loved teaching although I left academia after spending a decade in it because I just didn't feel comfortable in the academic atmosphere.

Each year of the internship program I would interview a bunch of candidates selected by the academic department(s) I was working with and select ONE. While grades and recommendations were important in this process, what was more important was that the student exhibit evidence of a good work ethic and the possession of pretty clearly defined goals for his or her life. As a consequence, I typically chose students with B averages and who had demonstrated a history of focus, goal-directedness, and commitment to getting things done in their lives. I passed on "better" students, including one who was headed towards being a valedictorian, but who couldn't remember what he'd read or learned in several courses I asked him about.

After I retired, I taught a course to upper-level undergraduates and some graduate students. What struck me the most about these (other than the inability of senior humanities majors to write a correct sentence or coherent paragraph) was the virtually total lack of GOALS that these people had. These were young adults who had spent four (or typically more) years in a large university, most often being supported by their parents, and who had no idea what they would do (or wanted to do) when they graduated. This wasn't just the lack of a specific plan. They usually had NO IDEA what they would do. There was nothing they WANTED to do. In the few cases where I could get them to voice a desire to do something, they had no idea how to pursue that after graduation. They seemed to think it would just happen somehow.

Okay, ... so I'm an old phart and the current generation of old pharts always says things like this, but IT DIDN'T USED TO BE THIS WAY. When I was teaching in a university in the 70s through the early 80s (Loyola, in Chicago), it wasn't like this. Sure, there were some students who were basically lost and confused, but most of them had their eye on the prize (SOME prize anyway) and knew the basic steps they needed to take in order to get there. They had GOALS and they had reasonable ideas of what needed to be done to ACHIEVE those goals. This is not true of most of the students I have encountered over the past decade. And my colleagues at the local state university agree unanimously that at least 30% of their students shouldn't be there because they have no idea what they want or why they are there, though they like being there for (typically now) five or six years. College has become the new high school, resulting in a kind of delayed maturity -- or so it often seems. Also, it used to be that students came out of high school in the US having been introduced -- by their guidance counselors -- to a wide range of possible jobs and professions, the requirements for pursuing those, and some appraisal of how the particular student's own inclinations, abilities, and talents fit with various sorts of jobs. (Okay, sometimes they got things completely wrong for a given student, but overall the benefits were significant.) This isn't done any more since "counselors" are virtually solely devoted to "problem children" and "children with special needs". And (in my experience) colleges do a poor job of that (if they do it at all), and it's too late by that point anyway.

I'm not going to speculate here on what the cause of this phenomenon is. But it is a fact. Hard work is, as others have pointed out, absolutely essential. But -- even if you can manage that -- it's pointless without a GOAL. And so many of these people just don't have any goals -- or certainly haven't thought about the vague goals they have ("I want to be a musician," "I want to be a social worker," ...) and what their next steps should be. I used to love to teach, but I have no interest in trying to teach such students. But I guess old pharts are always saying things like that.

[Donn]

I don't get it.

Let me propose a vision of an ideal alternate world where

- teachers and students of pharmaceutical science manage to focus their interest on the study of pharmaceutical science, which surely must be a complex and fascinating discipline

- online bulletin boards devoted to the tuba manage to sustain some interest in tubas, tuba playing technique, music in general, mouthpieces, etc.

... and there isn't such a fascination with the `walked 10 miles to school in the snow, up hill both ways' narrative, and general hand wringing and chest beating about the feckless youth of today and the superiority of their predecessors as seen through the rosy haze of time. For those tuba players, or pharmaceutical scientists, who are really eager to get into this kind of thing, you can actually become a certified life coach. Go check that out! That might be a productive avenue for this kind of interest, and a way to just possibly help someone, in the somewhat unlikely case that has anything to do with the point.

[Donn]

from an educator perspective there is a theory called growth mindset that most successful people are theorized to be that says with hard work one can accomplish anything you put your own effort and practice into.

I could see how that's plausible - as long as you put your effort and practice into a goal that you could remotely likely achieve. It's great to see anecdotes like this where some kid found something that could work for him, or her, and took off with it.