And yes, the jazz and classical people always did much fancier chord work.
And even there, it's a lot of formula - it ain't called "twelve bar blues" for nothing, after all.
Of course, the chord progression isn't really the point in jazz/blues - it's what you do around it. And there is something oddly magical about being able to build a song on the fly with nothing more than "OK, blues in B-flat, and one and two..."
I would be astounded if that was the case - my music teacher (back in the early 90s) had software that varied the tempo during playback (specifically to make it feel less mechanical). I played along with it for an audition tape. You could even control how much it varied (both in total amount and change-over-time)
You may be right. I was working from past history of a lot of student athletes being BPE or BE/BPE students. Maybe there needs to be a variation of a Bachelor of Performing Arts for this?
I mean, spend time with the family. As in, "take the daughter to the park", or "play a game with the family".
Your fallacy is that people "should be mowing the lawn". It's lawn. Grass. Unless you're the gardener-type who gets a kick out of a Homes and Gardens lawn, it's a chore, and there's no virtue in doing it yourself. If my daughter didn't like running in it so much I'd put in rocks instead. It's sunk time, just like commuting. The only reason I don't pay someone to mow my lawn is that mine is pretty small (intentionally so), and because I catch up on my podcasts when I do it. So it's still "cheaper" for me to do it myself. (And I do it while the daughter and wife are off doing other things.)
But they described a very generous wage and benefit package for nine months of work which is to be expected given that the school is high tier in terms of pay.
Actually, let's break the "generous wage" talk down for a minute.
Let's compare to the other job that involves "dropping your kid off for the day" - a day care.
In my neck of the woods (Alberta), it costs about $700 a month for full-day care of a child. Using this month as an arbitrary example, that's for 22 weekdays of care, or just over $30 a day. If you're lucky enough to live close to your daycare, figure a nine-hour day watching your kid. So, about $3.50 per hour, per kid.
(Let's all take a moment to remember that while you can complain about the cost of child care, you really are trusting your child's life and health to someone for about a third of minimum wage here.)
In basic terms, a teacher is just higher-level day care. (We'll ignore the actual "education" angle for the moment). If you're very lucky, your kid will be in a smaller class - say 20 kids. The average here in Alberta is in the mid-to-high 20s right now, but again, let's lowball. That means your teacher should be making 3.50 x 20 = $70/hour to watch that classroom of kids. Oh, and not just watch them - teach them a variety of subjects, be a mentor, disciplinarian, supply the odd snack and juicebox to kids who don't have a lunch that day, etc, etc, etc.
The post above listed $4K a month (ignoring the summers) as the entry wage. Again, 20 kids in the class means that the teacher is actually charging you $200/month, per kid. (Or, about a third of what you'd have to pay someone to just *watch* them all day).
Yes, teachers are only in the top 75% (not counting benefits) of earners in the country when you don't count the months they don't work. When you count the months they don't work, they drop down to being paid in the top 50% (plus year long benefits).
And "the months they don't work" is less than you'd expect - teachers are generally in the school a week or two before classes start and a couple of weeks after classes end. Our local school opens up August 22 for a Sept 4 startup, for instance.
Given that home-schooled kids consistently outperform their public school counterparts
Source? My siblings are home-schooled, and while they turned out OK, we knew a lot of home-schoolers who were getting an indoctrination rather than an education.
(And yes, there's a lot of kids going through the motions at public school too - but I would be surprised to see a consistent outperforming.)
My daughter's just finished kindergarten, so I've had my first experience with the "smart boards" (for those who don't know: projector + touch screen), and the teacher had a good reason for it - not only are you getting around the dust of chalk (and the kids who are allergic to everything), but the practical point of having a room full of kids to which a computer isn't a fancy toy; it's standard issue. This is the generation that will grow up to expect videoconferencing as a routine thing, for instance. The schools are simply using the tools that the kids are used to. (My daughter's been playing on my iPad for years now - a touch screen is nothing fancy).
It also has the benefit of letting the teacher write out her lessons in advance (less time with back to class writing), the ability to easily put multimedia in, etc etc. Basically, all the bells and whistles from our generation (wheeling in the TV or overhead projector) are just standard issue.
Ironically, chalk is now a "bell and whistle", because a lot of kids have never used it until they get to school.
In fact my current Grade 12 math teacher is a prime example. He visibly does not care..
Then talk to your principal (with your parents, if need be) about transferring to another class, or taking it remotely (plenty of Canadian school districts offer remote learning these days). School won't do it unless you press, but if you make your desires clear you generally can get something. (Particularly if you start talking about doing it off-campus, where they'll lose funding for you).
Your suggestions include getting rid of junk degrees (why, if enough people are interested why not offer them?) and create a sports degree??
There already is a sports degree - BPE (Bachelor of Physical Education). And amusingly, you can also take a five-year combined Education/Phys. Ed degree - pretty much a "Bachelor of Gym Teacher" program.
Show me a teacher who's willing to give me a random, informative, 5-minute lecture, for free, with a 30-second lead time in my own bathroom and we can talk.
Well, you might have a problem with the bathroom parts, but it's the rare teacher who doesn't donate their time after class for something or other - if nothing else, having to take home and mark all those essays. And most are there after school for clubs and sports, or just generally in the community.
I think this is one reason why a voucher system would be a good idea. Allow private schools to kick out the bullies and gangbangers, and they can sit in public schools where it's basically impossible to get kicked out.
Yeah, because the bullies and gang-bangers never belong to wealthier families who will make sure their kids get into the good private schools.
Not to mention that it requires you to stay employed with Amazon for three years. There's two big caveats there - first, how many people working in the warehouses actually work for Amazon (as opposed to whatever temp agency they're contracting out to)? Second, considering how many US states have at-will employment, what's to stop them from punting you out the door at 35 months? (And if they're particularly screwy, waiting two weeks, then offering your job back - it says "consecutive", so any break in your work history will reset the clock.
I'm sure we'll hear some selected "success stories" from this, but I doubt Amazon is going to be funding a mass of long-term employees.
c) most grade schools no longer teach cursive writing
Quick - when's the last time you did any serious amount of cursive writing (say, at least one page). They're not teaching cursive because almost no-one writes by hand anymore. Same reason we don't learn calligraphy in school - it's not a generally useful skill anymore.
d) most kids not only don't write code (vbasic, c++, js, whatever) but they don't even know what 'code' is.
Most kids have never known what code is or how to write it. That's not news.
f) high school kids now would rather work for minimum wage in a 'cool' place than make a lot more money doing construction labor
You know far different kids than I do - most of them would happily make construction money, if you could get a job away from the adults who take all those jobs. (And this is a general problem - kids get the jobs that adults don't want.)
It probably cost me a little less than paying someone to just come do it, but in the end, now I know how to do it again, and I have the tools.. so the couple weeks of "vacation" from work was worth it.
While you're compiling costs, don't forget the fact that you spent your vacation doing the project (instead of spending it with your family, say).
Not disparaging, but ignoring your time in the costs makes the comparison meaningless.
Nothing wrong with getting someone else to mow your lawn. Does every 100 sq feet of grass need it's own dedicated mower?
Other good justifications:
If you make $X per hour, and you can pay someone
If you can afford it, you can spend that hour of lawn-mowing with your family (or something else recreational), instead of doing Big Boy Chores.
And for reference, my school in the mid-90s didn't offer woodshop *or* automotives - remember, we were all supposed to be Knowledge Workers or some such. (Luckily, a/v and programming has paid off for me, although I do wish I'd taken the time to learn silkscreening and Illustrator). And in today's world of "don't get a kid hurt at all costs" it's not surprising schools aren't jumping at the class to hand band saws to kids who don't want to take the earbuds out.
Something I read during the big 600m MegaMillions thing: Most people who win the lottery blow through the entire sum in under 5 years and come out with debt to boot.
And the reason is obvious when you think about it - lottery winners suddenly are Rich (and are expected and encouraged to live the lifestyle associated with Rich - big houses, cars, boats, presents for all your many relatives and friends, parties, etc.), but they don't have the income to support the lifestyle, so once the money's gone, it's gone.
The joke up here usually goes: "He won two million dollars, so he bought a million dollar house, and a million dollar boat, and a million dollar car..."
Of course this ignores the question of what the uncreative people are going to do with themselves. What's to keep huge mobs of people with nothing to do off the streets, rioting for a hobby?:)
Watch NASCAR?
OK, slightly more serious answer: creative people need audiences.
Properly serious answer: there are very few completely uncreative people in the world. And given unlimited leisure time to pursue hobbies, I'm sure they'll all find something to do.
I think part of the problem is that being a craftsman isn't cool anymore...
You're apparently unfamiliar with the massive hipster DIY craze sweeping the US, and centered in Brooklyn, NY. If anything, being a craftsman is the definition of "cool" these days.
There's a difference - there's a lot more tinkering going on, but not production in any large amount.
Don't get me wrong, it's cool to see the stuff being built these days - but unless I missed the link, people aren't building mass-market bookcases (of any quality).
I would turn it around and ask, if you value your time so much that you don't want to spend it building things, what are you doing with it thats so valuable?
Doing something enjoyable isn't valuable enough?
Some people like building things, some people don't. Neither is more correct than the other.
Agreed, with a further guideline - IKEA durability and quality is inversely proportional to complexity.
I spent a few months temping at IKEA back in my younger days assembling furniture, and the bigger/fancier it is, the flimsier it usually is. The simple stuff tends to be rock-solid, simply because there's no-where for them to get fancy and flimsy.
And obviously, wood over particleboard whenever you can.
If by average joe you mean people who live on a budget and can't always afford quality.
Or who don't yet own a house and might not want to have large, heavy, hard-to-move furniture.
When I rented (up until two years ago), I had IKEA bookshelves and a futon-couch. Would I have liked oak bookcases? Not really - I was moving every couple of years, so the ability to easily get them from apartment A to apartment B was far more valuable to me. Not to mention that all furniture suffers during a move, so if I'm going to kill stuff, I'd rather it be the $99 Billy bookcase than something that's intended to be heirloom quality.
Now that I own a house (and don't expect to be moving out of it anytime this decade or next), I'm happily shopping for nicer bookcases and heavier furniture, because I know it's going to stay put.
I went into software rather than hardware because it took me a summer's work to buy my first computer. I couldn't afford to replace any parts I broke while tinkering.
You're reading the case backwards - Amazon doesn't need to raise it's prices until there *is* no competition.
Example: Amazon sells a widget for $5. You open a store, find a way to sell it for $4.50. Amazon changes their system so that people ordering in your area get a $4 price. You get starved out, and once you're gone they return the price back to the original $5.
Loss-leaders are old news - grocery stores have been doing it for decades. It's trivial for Amazon or Walmart or any other large chain to do the same.
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And yes, the jazz and classical people always did much fancier chord work.
And even there, it's a lot of formula - it ain't called "twelve bar blues" for nothing, after all.
Of course, the chord progression isn't really the point in jazz/blues - it's what you do around it. And there is something oddly magical about being able to build a song on the fly with nothing more than "OK, blues in B-flat, and one and two..."
Currently, artificial drums have the same tempo.
I would be astounded if that was the case - my music teacher (back in the early 90s) had software that varied the tempo during playback (specifically to make it feel less mechanical). I played along with it for an audition tape. You could even control how much it varied (both in total amount and change-over-time)
I had a music instructor with the same opinion - specifically, that music was melody + rhythm, and rap did not have a melody.
I used to agree, but then Leonard Cohen got into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so I'm not so sure anymore.
(Yes, I know he almost certainly got in for his songwriting, not his voice - but they keep letting him record!)
You may be right. I was working from past history of a lot of student athletes being BPE or BE/BPE students. Maybe there needs to be a variation of a Bachelor of Performing Arts for this?
I mean, spend time with the family. As in, "take the daughter to the park", or "play a game with the family".
Your fallacy is that people "should be mowing the lawn". It's lawn. Grass. Unless you're the gardener-type who gets a kick out of a Homes and Gardens lawn, it's a chore, and there's no virtue in doing it yourself. If my daughter didn't like running in it so much I'd put in rocks instead. It's sunk time, just like commuting. The only reason I don't pay someone to mow my lawn is that mine is pretty small (intentionally so), and because I catch up on my podcasts when I do it. So it's still "cheaper" for me to do it myself. (And I do it while the daughter and wife are off doing other things.)
But they described a very generous wage and benefit package for nine months of work which is to be expected given that the school is high tier in terms of pay.
Actually, let's break the "generous wage" talk down for a minute.
Let's compare to the other job that involves "dropping your kid off for the day" - a day care.
In my neck of the woods (Alberta), it costs about $700 a month for full-day care of a child. Using this month as an arbitrary example, that's for 22 weekdays of care, or just over $30 a day. If you're lucky enough to live close to your daycare, figure a nine-hour day watching your kid. So, about $3.50 per hour, per kid.
(Let's all take a moment to remember that while you can complain about the cost of child care, you really are trusting your child's life and health to someone for about a third of minimum wage here.)
In basic terms, a teacher is just higher-level day care. (We'll ignore the actual "education" angle for the moment). If you're very lucky, your kid will be in a smaller class - say 20 kids. The average here in Alberta is in the mid-to-high 20s right now, but again, let's lowball. That means your teacher should be making 3.50 x 20 = $70/hour to watch that classroom of kids. Oh, and not just watch them - teach them a variety of subjects, be a mentor, disciplinarian, supply the odd snack and juicebox to kids who don't have a lunch that day, etc, etc, etc.
The post above listed $4K a month (ignoring the summers) as the entry wage. Again, 20 kids in the class means that the teacher is actually charging you $200/month, per kid. (Or, about a third of what you'd have to pay someone to just *watch* them all day).
And we consider teachers over-paid, why?
Yes, teachers are only in the top 75% (not counting benefits) of earners in the country when you don't count the months they don't work. When you count the months they don't work, they drop down to being paid in the top 50% (plus year long benefits).
And "the months they don't work" is less than you'd expect - teachers are generally in the school a week or two before classes start and a couple of weeks after classes end. Our local school opens up August 22 for a Sept 4 startup, for instance.
Given that home-schooled kids consistently outperform their public school counterparts
Source? My siblings are home-schooled, and while they turned out OK, we knew a lot of home-schoolers who were getting an indoctrination rather than an education.
(And yes, there's a lot of kids going through the motions at public school too - but I would be surprised to see a consistent outperforming.)
My daughter's just finished kindergarten, so I've had my first experience with the "smart boards" (for those who don't know: projector + touch screen), and the teacher had a good reason for it - not only are you getting around the dust of chalk (and the kids who are allergic to everything), but the practical point of having a room full of kids to which a computer isn't a fancy toy; it's standard issue. This is the generation that will grow up to expect videoconferencing as a routine thing, for instance. The schools are simply using the tools that the kids are used to. (My daughter's been playing on my iPad for years now - a touch screen is nothing fancy).
It also has the benefit of letting the teacher write out her lessons in advance (less time with back to class writing), the ability to easily put multimedia in, etc etc. Basically, all the bells and whistles from our generation (wheeling in the TV or overhead projector) are just standard issue.
Ironically, chalk is now a "bell and whistle", because a lot of kids have never used it until they get to school.
In fact my current Grade 12 math teacher is a prime example. He visibly does not care..
Then talk to your principal (with your parents, if need be) about transferring to another class, or taking it remotely (plenty of Canadian school districts offer remote learning these days). School won't do it unless you press, but if you make your desires clear you generally can get something. (Particularly if you start talking about doing it off-campus, where they'll lose funding for you).
Your suggestions include getting rid of junk degrees (why, if enough people are interested why not offer them?) and create a sports degree??
There already is a sports degree - BPE (Bachelor of Physical Education). And amusingly, you can also take a five-year combined Education/Phys. Ed degree - pretty much a "Bachelor of Gym Teacher" program.
Show me a teacher who's willing to give me a random, informative, 5-minute lecture, for free, with a 30-second lead time in my own bathroom and we can talk.
Well, you might have a problem with the bathroom parts, but it's the rare teacher who doesn't donate their time after class for something or other - if nothing else, having to take home and mark all those essays. And most are there after school for clubs and sports, or just generally in the community.
I think this is one reason why a voucher system would be a good idea. Allow private schools to kick out the bullies and gangbangers, and they can sit in public schools where it's basically impossible to get kicked out.
Yeah, because the bullies and gang-bangers never belong to wealthier families who will make sure their kids get into the good private schools.
Not to mention that it requires you to stay employed with Amazon for three years. There's two big caveats there - first, how many people working in the warehouses actually work for Amazon (as opposed to whatever temp agency they're contracting out to)? Second, considering how many US states have at-will employment, what's to stop them from punting you out the door at 35 months? (And if they're particularly screwy, waiting two weeks, then offering your job back - it says "consecutive", so any break in your work history will reset the clock.
I'm sure we'll hear some selected "success stories" from this, but I doubt Amazon is going to be funding a mass of long-term employees.
Gotta call you out on a couple of these...
c) most grade schools no longer teach cursive writing
Quick - when's the last time you did any serious amount of cursive writing (say, at least one page). They're not teaching cursive because almost no-one writes by hand anymore. Same reason we don't learn calligraphy in school - it's not a generally useful skill anymore.
d) most kids not only don't write code (vbasic, c++, js, whatever) but they don't even know what 'code' is.
Most kids have never known what code is or how to write it. That's not news.
f) high school kids now would rather work for minimum wage in a 'cool' place than make a lot more money doing construction labor
You know far different kids than I do - most of them would happily make construction money, if you could get a job away from the adults who take all those jobs. (And this is a general problem - kids get the jobs that adults don't want.)
It probably cost me a little less than paying someone to just come do it, but in the end, now I know how to do it again, and I have the tools .. so the couple weeks of "vacation" from work was worth it.
While you're compiling costs, don't forget the fact that you spent your vacation doing the project (instead of spending it with your family, say).
Not disparaging, but ignoring your time in the costs makes the comparison meaningless.
Nothing wrong with getting someone else to mow your lawn. Does every 100 sq feet of grass need it's own dedicated mower?
Other good justifications:
And for reference, my school in the mid-90s didn't offer woodshop *or* automotives - remember, we were all supposed to be Knowledge Workers or some such. (Luckily, a/v and programming has paid off for me, although I do wish I'd taken the time to learn silkscreening and Illustrator). And in today's world of "don't get a kid hurt at all costs" it's not surprising schools aren't jumping at the class to hand band saws to kids who don't want to take the earbuds out.
Something I read during the big 600m MegaMillions thing: Most people who win the lottery blow through the entire sum in under 5 years and come out with debt to boot.
And the reason is obvious when you think about it - lottery winners suddenly are Rich (and are expected and encouraged to live the lifestyle associated with Rich - big houses, cars, boats, presents for all your many relatives and friends, parties, etc.), but they don't have the income to support the lifestyle, so once the money's gone, it's gone.
The joke up here usually goes: "He won two million dollars, so he bought a million dollar house, and a million dollar boat, and a million dollar car..."
Of course this ignores the question of what the uncreative people are going to do with themselves. What's to keep huge mobs of people with nothing to do off the streets, rioting for a hobby? :)
Watch NASCAR?
OK, slightly more serious answer: creative people need audiences.
Properly serious answer: there are very few completely uncreative people in the world. And given unlimited leisure time to pursue hobbies, I'm sure they'll all find something to do.
I think part of the problem is that being a craftsman isn't cool anymore... You're apparently unfamiliar with the massive hipster DIY craze sweeping the US, and centered in Brooklyn, NY. If anything, being a craftsman is the definition of "cool" these days.
There's a difference - there's a lot more tinkering going on, but not production in any large amount.
Don't get me wrong, it's cool to see the stuff being built these days - but unless I missed the link, people aren't building mass-market bookcases (of any quality).
I would turn it around and ask, if you value your time so much that you don't want to spend it building things, what are you doing with it thats so valuable?
Doing something enjoyable isn't valuable enough?
Some people like building things, some people don't. Neither is more correct than the other.
Bottomline is: don't discount all IKEA furniture.
Agreed, with a further guideline - IKEA durability and quality is inversely proportional to complexity.
I spent a few months temping at IKEA back in my younger days assembling furniture, and the bigger/fancier it is, the flimsier it usually is. The simple stuff tends to be rock-solid, simply because there's no-where for them to get fancy and flimsy.
And obviously, wood over particleboard whenever you can.
If by average joe you mean people who live on a budget and can't always afford quality.
Or who don't yet own a house and might not want to have large, heavy, hard-to-move furniture.
When I rented (up until two years ago), I had IKEA bookshelves and a futon-couch. Would I have liked oak bookcases? Not really - I was moving every couple of years, so the ability to easily get them from apartment A to apartment B was far more valuable to me. Not to mention that all furniture suffers during a move, so if I'm going to kill stuff, I'd rather it be the $99 Billy bookcase than something that's intended to be heirloom quality.
Now that I own a house (and don't expect to be moving out of it anytime this decade or next), I'm happily shopping for nicer bookcases and heavier furniture, because I know it's going to stay put.
+1 Truth.
I went into software rather than hardware because it took me a summer's work to buy my first computer. I couldn't afford to replace any parts I broke while tinkering.
You're reading the case backwards - Amazon doesn't need to raise it's prices until there *is* no competition.
Example: Amazon sells a widget for $5. You open a store, find a way to sell it for $4.50. Amazon changes their system so that people ordering in your area get a $4 price. You get starved out, and once you're gone they return the price back to the original $5.
Loss-leaders are old news - grocery stores have been doing it for decades. It's trivial for Amazon or Walmart or any other large chain to do the same.