It's the Humanties, Stupid

The Toronto's Star's top story right now is about how employers are saying that young people don't know how to read and write.

Keeping in mind that the "employer survey" is not a terribly scientific document, and are usually used to signal employers' desire to flood the market with a particular kind of workers (whose wages coincidentally go down due to the glut of people) The solution  being proposed would be something akin to an SAT test, which generally test you more on test taking than critical thinking! 

However, the thing that really shocked me about the article was how the obvious answer, that there has been a decades-long assault on a humanities education at virtually every level of secondary and post-secondary education, was completely ignored.

Instead we're treated to the usual bromides about how kids these days are all sheltered babies who cannot be more than five seconds away from their cell phones without going into withdrawal. Or that schools have lowered their standards.  All of which may be true (although in my teaching experience I don't really see it, except for the cell phone bit), but the reality is that the place where students best learned critical thinking was in a good old well-rounded liberal arts education.

However, universities, starved of public cash and hungry for private money, listened to these same employers who, in the 90's, declared that learning a foreign language and reading Chaucer would ill-equip you for the "real world" and have been shutting down or reducing the sizes of humanities departments, a culling that has only intensified since the 2008 financial meltdown.  Now it turns out that those things also, coincidentally, benefited employers, who are now seeing the results of their influence in the 90's come back to haunt them! 

So instead of blaming these anecdotal problems on the Internet or bad parenting, perhaps we could look at the actual systemic changes we have made to education over the past 20-30 years, and question that.  Or failing that, simply stop listening to employers. 

Very, very Slow News Day

Despite the very many things going on right now, here in Canada and around the world, the Toronto Star managed to make one of today's top stories the fact that the Department of National Defense is buying a bassoon.

Could this be the stupidest non-story ever to grace the Star's pages?  Maybe not, but the "reporter", Oliver Sachgau, perhaps trying to obscure the fact that he comes from the land of classical music, manages to open the story with the following:

How much would you pay for a bassoon?

Probably nothing, seeing as you can just buy a fog horn for cheaper, and get more use out of it.

A-Hyuk!  I can just imagine young Oliver, sitting in the Star bullpen thinking "This is it, this is my chance to really make a difference.  We've all heard those stories about expensive screwdrivers - who would pay good TAXPAYER (cue angels) money on a musical instrument for a military band? I'm really going to have to pull out the stops on this one.   Think Oliver, think  -what does a bassoon sound like - a foghorn! And a foghorn is more useful than a bassoon!  This story is going to bring down the entire military musical industrial complex!  I'll be a hero!"

This, my friends, is journalism in the digital age - a mere 5 minutes of research would have revealed to him that actually, a professional bassoons could cost this much money. 

Moreover, why shouldn't a military band have a good instrument to play?  When I was in high school, I was lucky to receive a brand-new professional Yamaha tuba to play on.  The instrument cost $7,000 20 years ago.  Go on, Oliver, go write a sanctimonious hit piece about how the TDSB is wasting money on musical instruments for students.  Hey, you should really look into this - I bet they buy music for the bands too, new music at full price!  What an outrage!

I guess that's why I'm bothering to right about this - this is sanctimonious garbage reporting on the part of the Toronto Star, where they take something that's probably, on balance, in the public good, but turn it into a criticism of government spending.  The underlying message is: the government is wasting your hard-earned money on these things when they should be giving money to "better" causes. 

Here's a novel piece of information  - governments do a lot more then issue you a driver's license every 5 years.  I thought the Star knew this, but playing the arts for laughs doesn't really sit well with me, and they should be ashamed.

Relieved but disappointed

That's how I feel today.  About what you may ask?  That's for you to figure out!

Jon Vickers

has died.

I know I never write on this stupid blog anymore, but man, I really felt this.  He was 88, so it's not as though there was some tragedy to this, but he was probably one of the most distinct and emotionally powerful opera singers ever, and the fact that he is no longer around is really sad.

Something I spent listening to last year, over and over, was his singing of "So starben wir, um ungetrennt" from Act II of Tristan und Isolde.  So amazing, and really, it's the part of the opera that you need to hear before the Liebestod to really punch you in the gut, because Isolde is there, alone, singing what she and Tristan had been singing together.  I would encourage you to seek it out, to hear that voice of his.