ALL public schools should buy ALL low-grade Chinese instr's

[Juggernaut04]

When I took over the band program here… (in rural Mississippi) there were a lot of broken instruments and 1 Tuba. (No sousaphones) I made it very clear to THE STUDENT that if I were to acquire better instruments that they must take care of the instruments in order to not find themselves back to square 1. I must say that the horns that I purchased (2 Jupiter Sousas and 1 King fiberglass Sousa) are very well cared for and are in great condition after 2 years of service.

The point I’m making it that today’s student (for the most part) are not swayed by their parents to do the right thing. It is pride and the fear of not having proper equipment prevents kids from destroying instruments.

[Michael Bush]

Rentals and accountability are a good point, but what music stores would ever stock tubas for rental? They know that they'd be beaten to a pulp quickly.

Well, even in my corner of the most education-hating (to say nothing of music education-hating) state in the union, 3/4 size Jupiter three valve tubas are available for rent. Fortunately my kids' school bought a 186 back before the education-hating regime took over South Carolina. (But now they've got a kid-hating band director who wouldn't dream of letting anyone play it. )

[GC]

Good for them! I wonder how the rental compares to other instruments, particularly Saxophones.

[Peach]

So if this rather ignorant Englishman has read correctly...

In the US, Band classes are elective?
In some cases kids participating in ELECTIVE Band class are willfully(?) damaging instruments without repercussion?

Hmm...

[ghmerrill]

Makes you wonder why the kids aren't thrown out immediately, doesn't it?

You get to the point where you don't wonder this since they already didn't get thrown out because they violently attacked another student, brought a weapon to school, or were caught using drugs. Really, even in middle schools, putting some dents in an instrument isn't something you can get an administrator to pay much attention to. Too many teachers are spending most of their time using their prison guard and babysitting skills (I do not intend this as hyperbole) rather than their subject expertise and instructional skills.

I'm not sure that I can even imagine what it would take today to get a kid thrown out "immediately". But getting caught with weapons and/or drugs isn't enough. And certainly putting a dent in a tuba doesn't come close.

[tofu]

My public HS in the late '60's had a bunch of 20J's and 25J's from the 40's and 50's which were still in good shape. They then bought a Rudy Meinl in 1968. When I got there in the early 70's they bought a second one and gave it to me. They bought a third one a couple years after that. These horns were still in good shape after 40 years when I last saw them a few years ago. I'd say the band has more than gotten it's monies worth from buying quality. This band travels and the horns every other year saw the cargo area of airliners. I don't ever remember anybody telling us to take care of them - we just did. It probably helped that the orchestra director was a fine tuba player and the jazz band director was a pretty well known traditional jazz tubist. The band director/music director was a percussionist who demanded excellence and as a WWII vet who had two ships shot out from under him at Pearl Harbor. He didn't suffer nonsense well - so that probably helped too as you wanted to avoid getting on his bad side. Joe S., you play with Greg L. (a trombone player from the band), ask him about his former HS band director.

So Joe I can understand where you are coming from for badly run programs or programs with bad kids, but there are many exceptions. My old HS as been much better served from buying quality from both a money stand point, as they have not had to replace the horns every couple years with new crap, and from a musical standpoint. Granted this is a HS with an exceptional music history and graduates (including the current principal trumpet of the CSO), but I think there are probably many others around the country who have been well served by buying quality and then providing the right atmosphere to insure it is cared for properly. I also think that if you want to insure kids play tuba and other expensive instruments you have to provide them. Most folks just aren't going to pay for it themselves IMHO. Rudy's are probably over the top, but Miraphones etc. seem very reasonable to me for good programs.

[Tubaman2365]

Music is NOT extra curricular.

Music may not be, but band surely is.

Rick "at least with the marching and contest orientation brought to it by many band directors" Denney

As I said above, it is in my district. And the competitive marching band is voluntary, not required.

[PMeuph]

[ghmerrill]

If any of us had done something like that (or F-A-R less) the adage "accidents do happen" wouldn't have applied. The relationship between students and their teachers even forty years ago (not long ago) was much more like that between a trainee and a drill sergeant.

Well, this sounds more like my wife's description of the Catholic schools she went through until college. I don't remember it exactly like that, but there was a very different atmosphere and particularly a different relationship between the teachers and the school administrations (and this is where a huge cause of the problems is).

Here are two things that are different (and started being different, from my perspective, in the 70s and escalated in difference through the 80s and 90s): authority and responsibility. In most public schools now (and for several reasons), teachers have come to have responsibility but little or no authority. So they are held responsible for things over which they have little or no control. Administrators (of which there are now a bewildering number and different kinds), have authority, but often choose -- for various political reasons -- not to exercise it. Parents groups -- even in "bad" schools -- may try to change this and to provide more support to the teachers in the classrooms, but this is resisted by the administrations and the weight of the bureaucracy is too much to overcome (keeping in mind that often any particular parents are active in a given school only for 1-3 years). Too many in the upper bureaucracy and organizations associated with it have too much to gain by maintaining things as they are.

One tragedy coming out of this is the result we see in the educational level of the students who went through such an "educational" system. (Just check the grammar, syntax, spelling, and style of a number of postings to this forum and you can pretty well predict the ages of the writers. This isn't a slam at anyone; just a fact. Just listen to the people who deliver the nightly news, and try to interpret their English.) But a broader tragedy is that the US educational system has lost its previously very high position in the world. It used to be the place that others wanted to come for the best advanced education. No more. Not by a long shot.

But we have made it possible for just about everyone to go to college -- whatever that now means.

[oldbandnerd]

bloke said :

I'm only 55. The worl...no...PEOPLE have changed a tremendous amount in very few decades.

I'm 49 and couldn't agree with you more.

Here's my $.02 for what it's worth......
I never would have been able to be in band had it not been for the school owned horns. I started begining band playing on a borrowed trumpet but the owner wanted it back in the last two months of school to give to a nephew. If the school hadn't had a inventory of baritones I would have been S.O.L. My parents couldn't have afforded to rent a horn for me. At the end of the school year I signed up to keep the horn over the summer. My band director taught me how to clean it before she signed me off and warned me that if it came back damaged or dirty my parents would be charged for any repairs or cleaning. I took care of every school I ever used after that because I wanted to.

[TUBAD83]

The public Jr and Sr high schools I attended had (and currently have) good quality instruments and were maintained. Were some of them banged up? Yes, of course (who among us don't have at least a couple of dents, scratches, etc.on our own horns???). Yes there are some destructive kids out there, so we should brand "ALL" kids in public schools as potential destructive criminals??? In my opinion, only compact style piston valve tubas are appropriate for school--they tend to last longer and can take bumps and drops better.

Whatever you may think of kids in public school, the fact remains we have two choices--pay money to educate them or pay money to lock them away....and guess which one costs more??

JJ

[ghmerrill]

Whatever you may think of kids in public school, the fact remains we have two choices--pay money to educate them or pay money to lock them away....and guess which one costs more??

I really understand this sentiment, but the problem now is that we actually aren't paying money to educate them in any significant sense. That's not where the money is going. We (parents, most citizens, I'm sure) think that that's what we're paying the money for. That's the INTENTION. But as a matter of FACT, at least in many schools, there isn't much educating getting done. (I can actually justify this statement from a couple of perspectives: one is my daughter's as a middle school math teacher, and the other is my own as a recent course instructor in a major state university. In fact, there is now little disagreement among teachers at all levels concerning how poorly children are being educated AT ALL LEVELS -- including college and graduate school. This isn't true of ALL schools, but the overall situation our educational system in is obvious and undeniable.) So in fact if you talk to a lot of teachers, they would describe the day-to-day situation in their school as being closer to "locking them away" than "educating them". Sadly, we're at the point of doing much the same thing in two different systems.

Do you know how much teacher's make? In NC, my "highly qualified" daughter (in both math and language arts) with four years of experience can expect a 9-month salary of about $32,000 (which is virtually impossible to live on and you have to scramble to suplement it somehow, lucky if you can find a summer job). It gets worse. I have a young friend who has a B.S. in math, an M.S. in statistics, close to 15 years experience, and his National Board Certification (if you don't know what this is, look it up: it's a huge effort and expense for the teacher). He just got a job as HEAD of the upper school math department for a top private preparatory school in the state. Salary? A bit over $45,000. That's one reason education "costs less". When I was in industry I was hiring B.S. students right out of college for at least 30% more than that -- and knowing I had to train them for several years.

We do have a large number of administrators in public schools (Gee, just how many non-teaching assistant principals do you think a public middle school needs? How many "curriculum specialists"?) How do you think their salaries compare to those of teachers? But parents are now having to contribute classroom supplies in order for them to be available to their children in class. I'VE contributed classroom supplies so that my daughter can provide better education to her students. Yeah, the system's working well for some people.

But we're pretty far off any tuba topic at this point.

[Rick Denney]

So if this rather ignorant Englishman has read correctly...

In the US, Band classes are elective?
In some cases kids participating in ELECTIVE Band class are willfully(?) damaging instruments without repercussion?

There is indeed a difference between an elective course within the curriculum and extra-curricular activities. But I don't know many schools that would allow a student to play in band and not participate in the extra-curricular aspects of doing so, including marching band (which for me had after-school practices), football games, and various contests that were held on Saturdays.

And while I generally agree that music education provides academic benefits worthy of the time spent, I think band directors often argue that point in favor of keeping their funding, but then measure their performance in extra-curricular terms, much like the sports coaches. That is--how did we do in contest. I don't see much evaluation in the educational sense. I never had a test in band. Even required scale memorization was done for seating assignments, not for grades. When band directors treat band like a sport, they undermine their own argument that it is a pure academic pursuit.

Perhaps very large schools can have a volunteer marching band and a curricular elective symphonic band. Even then, do they read great literature and then get asked to demonstrate their knowledge of it? Is the reading widely ranging enough to provide a good understanding of music history? Are they required to perform great solo music (meaning: great composers, not solo-contest-mill composers) for grades? Are they given specific homework assignments that demand practice, with a grade riding on their following through? Or are they drilled for four months on the five pieces of music that will be performed at contest, and then spend five Saturdays during the spring (of course) playing the same music at a series of concerts as a means of chasing plastic trophies for the shelf in the band room?

Rick "who knows the difference between music-as-sport and music-as-academic-pursuit" Denney

[Walter Webb]

I'm only 55. The worl...no...PEOPLE have changed a tremendous amount in very few decades. Suddenly, you'll find that you, sir, are 55 and some snarky slightly-farther-from-the-grave person will be mocking your observations and labeling you a "crusty old fart". I'm glad I won't be around to see the worl...no...again: PEOPLE then. The reason why trillions (did I ever imply in any way that I am in favor of past, present, or future "land invasions"?) are wasted on ratholes (including fine new band instruments which are completely trashed in a few months by foolish offspring of foolish parents) is because PEOPLE have allowed it to occur. The "poor" of today have far more resources than the *"poor white trash" who went to my school. Somehow, kids managed to get (cheap/playable) instruments, and treated them as if they were treasure (because they WERE treasure). Those of us who played (yes, worn-out, NOT torn-up) school instruments knew that it would be disgraceful to destroy those instruments. One kid in our school tripped over a guy-wire and did some very minor damage to a ten-year-old Holton (not good-playing in the first place) fiberglass sousaphone. That kid was shunned for a couple of weeks for damaging that sousaphone. My advice would be (rather than politicking for your micro-world) to peek up out of your prairie dog hole and notice what is happening to the minds and souls of PEOPLE (which is - much more than "middle school bands" - the general theme of this thread).

Hey Bloke, you can't just go tossing your verbal hot potatoes and act all huffy when one gets chucked back at you! That is remarkably thin-skinned of you. Not that it matters one whit, but I am turning 61 in June, and am still teaching in my little prairie dog hole of a middle school. From my point of view, kids who abuse instruments are suspended for vandalism, kicked out of band, and the bill gets presented to the family, after a conference. If they fail to pay, just like a library fine, a field trip check that bounced, or whatever, the kid loses privileges to check out books, go on field trips, or even walk in the graduation ceremony with an unpaid balance. After that, whatta ya gonna do, try and squeeze blood out of a turnip? Should we reinstitute the stocks and dunking, or just shut down the program? Our middle school opened in 1968 and we still have many of the original instruments from that time, dented but still functional. I am sorry to hear that kids and families in your neck of the woods are so callous and dysfunctional. Around here, they remain pretty decent. Lest you think I am disrespecting you, Bloke, I must say that I read your posts first, every day, and consider them tops! Thank you.

[ckalaher1]

My HS band director would be fired before his first coffee break were he to start in today's climate. Some of his major accomplishments include, kicking his daughter out of band for a semester, screaming at the people who revved their engines as they drove past marching band practice, and many other moments which are not suitable for mixed company.

HSBD-"I want you to stand there like a %@^!!#@ statue..."
Student-"which statue?"
HSBD-"I don't care, as long as I get to be the pigeon"

Hell of a teacher though, and a good guy all around. Saved me from being middle America's worst tenor sax player in 1990. I don't know why, but I totally agree with a lot of what you are saying here Joe. If I handled a tuba carelessly, even the school owned Yamaha 3V Bb, I probably would have had to join a witness protection program.

We've become a disposable society I think. Not enough pride of ownership maybe. I don't have any answers, and am just as frustrated with it as the next guy I suppose.

[Biggs]

People did BETTER than that in the past. WHY cannot people do BETTER than that NOW ?

Because we all went to such shitty schools and are too stupid to do better!

[Rick Denney]

We do have a large number of administrators in public schools (Gee, just how many non-teaching assistant principals do you think a public middle school needs? How many "curriculum specialists"?)

This isn't really that far off-topic. The topic is what is reasonable to buy for kids and their parents who do not appreciate and protect what is being given to them.

One of the things we are buying (and, make no mistake, the price of primary and secondary education is quite high in the U.S.) is a lot of Education Establishment social engineering. My generation is considered the first whose children are less well educated. The additional money we are spending on schools is going somewhere. I suspect that a quick look at the administration building of a large school district will identify the destination of a huge chunk of those dollars. And what do those people do? Many of them are there strictly to count heads to compile statistics required by the Justice Department or the Education Department. Many of them are there to arbitrate disputes (read: second-guess the decisions made in the classroom by teachers). Many of them are there strictly because they were hired to do one thing, and they built a program of doing other things so that they would be fire-proof (this is fairly innocent, but still an insidious tendency in government agencies). Thus, administration grows. I would really like to see the long-term trend in the ratio of non-teaching paid staff to teachers. It happens at the schools--that's where all those new assistant principles, counselors, psychologists, etc., come from, but I'll bet the much bigger cost is in the administration building.

Also, the cost of the capital infrastructure has gotten nutty. I look at what has to be built in the schools being built now versus what students were able to learn effectively in decades ago. Some of it was needed--better HVAC and so on--but a lot of it has the only purpose of feeding the beast. Sometimes, the beast's name is "safety." Sometimes, it's "union work rules." Other times, it's "fire department regulations." Then, there's "diversity," whatever that means. Often, it's "we no longer have the skills to evaluate designs for ourselves, so we will hire consultants who are so scared of being sued for accidental negligence that they over-design everything by a factor of 10." Even more often, the beast's name is "federal regulation." Not all of these are bad, of course, but they are rarely balanced against the primary objectives of education to look for a way to fulfill all the requirements most cheaply. Usually, accommodation for all these influences is tacked on in the most expensive possible way.

The bigger problem is that everyone has their favorite part of the beast, and cry most piteously when it is threatened. It becomes difficult to tell who has a valid need to be served and who is just feathering their nest. The usual reaction is to just throw it all out, which is politically unpalatable, so in the end nothing gets done. Or, games are played, such as: "You cut our budget? Okay, we'll get rid of school crossing guards." Never would they consider reducing the janitorial staff and hiring students (at much lower price and with much better outcomes) to perform that work, or cutting back on sports activities, or trimming down administrative activities whose purpose people have forgotten. Never would they eliminate the new program they added just last year, having survived the previous couple of centuries without it. They go straight for the most visible and most safety-related program, as a punishment to taxpayers for having the temerity to challenge their funding. I've seen this very example in response to a downturn in both the cities where I worked.

Rick "thinking some but not all teachers are part of the problem, just as some but not all parents are part of the problem" Denney

[sceuphonium]

bloke wrote:
People did BETTER than that in the past. WHY cannot people do BETTER than that NOW ?

When I started teaching (1979) I was talking with my principal about a problem student... "He won't be around long. He doesn't want to be here, and we don't want him here either. Everyone will be happier when he quits coming." The student was maybe 12. Today's accountability laws force schools and administrators to bend over backwards to keep such kids in school until graduation. This is exactly what 'No Child Left Behind' is all about. States are forced to comply, and this is passed down to the school level. When the worst students CANNOT be meaningfully punished... well, what do you expect?

[J.c. Sherman]

Trying to keep a cool head...

On the OP - Bloke, I'll disagree; when a local school decides to "invest" in the cheaply made instruments, they waste more money, particularly on the woodwinds. Sometimes minor damage isn't repairable, a key can't be re-silver soldered, a post cannot be fixed, a spring has to drilled out instead of pushed... the repairs can be far more expensive than on a good instrument, or simply impossible for proper function. Trash can. THAT is a crappy use of funds.

I believe in the 4Rs - Readin', wRitin', 'Rithmetic, and aRt. Whether Band is the choice of a student instead of painting... well, the student will probably favor a more facile avenue of expression for themselves while picking up similar lessons in all disciplines.

I have kids in school; I teach music outreach classes to schools which no longer offer the arts, and at all levels of wealth (Ohio has long ago ruled that the funding in our state is unconstitutional - the state gov't responded by catering lunch). At all levels, the money is spent answering squeaky-wheel politics and parents. There's very little basic education going on, giving the kids the tools they need to learn anything they want or need to pursue. They're given a limited view of the world, academics, and how to take a goddamn test. And so many companies have huge piles of money to make off this, from text book writers who rewrite the same crap every two years to publish a new edition to bill for, to test companies profiting from NCLB. The light bulbs can't be changed at some of these schools, but they HAVE to buy computers. It's ridiculous.

But bloke (et al), do you know why these miscreant kids treat their stuff like dirt? Parents (which I'm sure you'll agree). Why? The kids get an unending supply of toys from McDs, Wal-Mart, and our consumerist economy, they learn that everything is disposable and replaceable. They have no respect even for their own stuff, as even the poorest parents can buy another $2 Lego Ninjago. Readily available cheep crap (including cheep disposable tubas) teaches our kids there's no interest in quality, everything's instantly replaceable at Target or over the Internet, and that destroying things - including each other - is funny.

But we'll suspend your a$$ for bringing a Tylenol or a Jedi blaster to school. You're gone, you drug-dealing terrorist! We have no interest in teaching you why it’s wrong - you're just worthless. You're disposable too.

Sick culture. I absolutely think buying the high-end items for a school band is a necessity, because it makes your band sound like a band. A good director will look at the care the kid gives his backpack and pencils and see who'll take care of their tuba. I don't see much value at all in marching band, as the kids are all drafted into something with 0 musical intent, and it's a prerequisite to be a member of the band, where - by and large - they are not expected to learn, perform well and improve. I wish that could be fixed too. But first, we have to teach you about the delightful history of Ohio from the latest $230 textbook and give you a computer to surf dorn in math class for $500. Priorities people!

I have an ed degree, and I'm not a band director. Why? It doesn't pay NEARLY enough to deal with the kids, public and especially the administrations of today’s schools. Some think they’re overpaid. Yeah... it's a real lark for the money.

On point - a good instrument can be repaired more affordably and more often than a cheap POS. I don't really favor buying these until the parts infrastructure is in place, and it really isn't yet.

[ghmerrill]

Just a couple of more comments here because at this point I'm just venting about my own frustration and depression about the education system, partly because in the past I devoted so much time to it myself and enjoy teaching so much ...

I'm glad things are working like they are supposed to in some places.

I just find the contrast (locally to me) between the kids/parents in the best public schools today to the worst public schools (which I attended) 40 years ago to be stark...and I'm saddened.

There are several factors at work here, and there are big differences that have to do with geographical location, how a state and local school system is organized, how it is funded, the role of federal regulations and guidelines, and (more important) how these are implemented by a school system. However, a huge problem in urban school systems (much less, but to some degree, in others) is the disintegration of the family coupled with the willingness of parents to turn the raising of their children over to others. From a kid's perspective, if your mom doesn't have a job, is smoking crack most of the day, you have no idea who your father is, one brother is in the penitentiary, and another is on probation, it's kind of hard to go to school every day, learn anything (from anyone), and then return to that environment every night and weekend. It's self-perpetuating. We now have at least two generations of this. (If you think any of this is an exaggeration, you need to get out more.)

Take away the problems induced by welfare and criminality, and you still have a huge number of "broken families" where a single parent may be doing his or her best, but in which the child is spending relatively little time with (and being molded and guided by) the parent, and is being "raised" (or more accurately, not raised at all) by a set of competing and self-indulgent bureaucracies. What do you expect?

I'm also saddened by the increased responsibility with which teachers are burdened today - combined with the decreased authority today which handicaps teachers. Why are people who wish to do so much good abused so badly by politicians and parents? I obtained a secondary schools music teaching certificate in 1977, entered the profession for one semester, experienced the front end of all of this mess, and left the profession permanently.

Now I will touch another sensitive button. This time frame (basically late 60s, early 70s and later) corresponds to the rise and spread of "schools of education" and the development of "education" into its own autonomous "speciality" and genuine academic discipline -- with its own "theoretical base" and criteria for advancement of those choosing it as a profession. There came to be "educationists".

What had been "teacher's schools" morphed into large departments of education in universities. Where previously the primary goal of a teacher was to master his or her discipline (English, mathematics, biology, history) and learn to teach it effectively, the goal now became primarily to master the (often rapidly changing) theory of teaching. You spent a lot of time "learning to teach" (this is actually inaccurate: you spend a lot of time learning about what a lot of people speculate and theorize about teaching, almost always without spending much time in the classroom themselves). I'm not denying that there are things to be learned about teaching, or that some of these things can be learned in a university classroom. But things got really out of whack in this regard, and universities started turning out graduating classes of "teachers" who were ill-prepared for the classroom and at the mercy of administrations that were now being guided and supported by the wealth of theory coming out of the universities -- where education had become its own academic industry. Honestly, anyone who has a degree from an ed department knows the huge amount of crap they had to sit through to get it. Then they had to learn to teach -- or not. (Keep in mind that I'm in a family of teachers. I taught for ten years at the university/graduate level and then walked away from a tenured position. My wife taught -- middle school, college, and then medical ethics in a medical school -- for about ten years. My daughter is a teacher. I'm not just making this up or speculating.)

And to solidify this approach to "education" we then got a Department of Education in the federal government. Somehow in all of this, what got lost was the teaching and the real role of the teacher -- and a system that overall (there are definite exceptions) burns out those who care and self-selects for people willing to tolerate misguided and incompetent bureaucrats. And we end up with people graduating with degrees from major universities -- with majors in the humanities -- who can't consistently write a correct sentence, have almost no hope of writing a coherent paragraph, and can't make out an understandable job application to save their lives.

That's it. I'm done with this. Too depressing. Tuba topics are more interesting and rewarding. Think I'll go practice now.