[CAUT] CAUT credential vs. academic program?

[Israel Stein]

At 07:26 PM 11/6/2007, caut-request at ptg.org wrote:
>Subject: Re: [CAUT] CAUT credential vs. academic program?
>Message: 2
>
>Jeff:
>
>I guess this is where we'll have to agree to disagree.  If what you 
>say is true, our educational systems have been putting one over on 
>the public very well, and for a long time.  I, personally, don't 
>think that's really the case.
>
>dp
>
>David M. Porritt, RPT
><dporritt at smu.htm>dporritt at smu.edu

David,

This is just another variation on the "nature vs. nurture" debate 
that only the most simple-minded take an extreme position on. The 
world is full of very talented "musical" hamburger flippers, taxi 
drivers, hospital orderlies, bicycle messengers and - well - piano 
"tooners" who don't have the patience or the discipline or - frankly 
- the maturity to work their way through the formal training and the 
discipline that would give them the musical vocabulary and the 
technique to fully develop their talent, who never let their talent 
come under the influence of other creative and well-trained talents 
so that it talent can bloom - because they think that their talent is 
enough. These are called "underachievers" and tend to throw stones at 
the educational system they apparently did not know how to take 
advantage of... Then, of course, there are the talentless "tools" 
without a talented bone in their body who dutifully plod their way 
through conservatories and music departments for no reason but - 
perhaps - to make the institutions financially sustainable. So what? 
Rarely does anyone make it in music without either formal training - 
or someone with formal training behind them fixing the screw-ups... 
It's possible, it happens - but very rarely - that someone can make 
it on raw talent alone.

So stick to your guns, David

Israel Stein


>
>From: Jeff Tanner [mailto:jtanner at mozart.sc.edu]
>Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2007 1:41 PM
>To: Porritt, David; College and University Technicians
>Subject: Re: [CAUT] CAUT credential vs. academic program?
>
>
>On Nov 5, 2007, at 5:47 PM, David M. Porritt wrote:
>
>
>"Someone who holds a music degree has merely demonstrated that they 
>can absorb material long enough to regurgitate it on an exam, and 
>that they have shown some degree of incremental improvement in 
>musical ability over a 2 or 4 year period, that they have attended a 
>certain number of performances per term and have been present and 
>accounted for in at least one performing ensemble each term.  It has 
>not made them musical if they were not already."
>
>I hope that's not indicative of the music program there at USC.  If 
>it is, then I see your point.
>
>That's all any degree program is.  Where the difference lies is in 
>the natural talents of the student, and that isn't planted by any 
>degree program -- it is planted at birth.  I don't care who the 
>instructors are, what kind of resources the institution has or what 
>kind of reputation it has.  You cannot turn a non-musical person 
>into a musical one by sending him/her to college, and one who is 
>born with music inside them will always have it whether they pursue 
>a music degree program or not.
>
>True musicality cannot be taught.  Only technique can be 
>taught.  And if any music background helps a piano technician, it 
>would be musicality - not technique.
>
>Jeff

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