<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> Not much to add to your last two posts Israel except an encouraging  "Amen".  Funny how hard it can be to see ones self in the mirror sometimes and how easy it is for others to see you staring right at yourself think'n all along you are pointing your accusing finger at someone else.  Too bad to see so much good experience and knowledge get lost in a wash of bitterness against whatever it was whenever it was that pushed whichever button once too often.  Irony is... an awful lot of bad educators are bad because they have stumbled into this same pitfall. We've all had more then our share of poor teachers.  Most of us at some point manage to look past these experiences and find what is positive in the education system and draw on it.  Learning to learn is unfortunately one of the more difficult chores we are tasked with in life. And tho it is true there are many paths to take, it is equally true that the more of these you close off the longer your own road becomes. Still, it is gratifying to note this time around that rational and reflected posts have very much more then held their own.  A decent education shortens the learning path far far more often then it lengthens it. Kinda goes without saying really.  Cheers RicB <blockquote> > Most (not all) of the stuff I hear and read from some of these "self > taught" guys (and Mr. N is one of the worst in that regard)  suffers > precisely from this lack of varied perspective. They see things from one > pair of eyes - their own. Never engaging in the give-and-take that a > true student/teacher relationship is based on, from which both learn. > Perhaps that's why some of these folks have such a jaundiced view of the > educational establishment - they seem to universalize their own > miserable experience which may have been caused in part by their own > unwillingness to perhaps listen to someone else's voice but their own... > > Israel Stein <blockquote>I see that I've missed out. Had you been around to guide and inform me throughout my miserable mislead life, I might have eventually learned something worthwhile and become knowledgeable and competent at what I do. Pity it's too late for me to take up the Stein way of thinking at this point. I'm already ruined by too many rational cause and effect connections. And I still have met more than a few people who became quite accomplished musicians without formal instruction of any kind, which is what this was all about. Ron N</blockquote> </blockquote> </body> </html>