The Tragic Decline of Music Literacy (and Quality)


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When I was in 6th grade we had a school orchestra (7th through 12th, too). Learning to play a musical instrument was considered part of a well-rounded education. When Ronald Reagan was elected Governor of California (proving the state was not totally inhabited by far-left radical Socialists), he defunded many of the non-3R's (readin', ritin', 'rithmatic) school programs. This coming from a Hollywood "B" actor, one who enjoyed the fruits of the arts, or in his case more accurately the entertainment business.

Public schools are just for producing good little worker bees, right Ronnie? 

mahgister wrote:
"How can you distinguish head and tail in your life in north-america with a so abyssal ignorance?"

Seriously? North America has cornered the market on abysmal ignorance? Where do you suppose the wisdom resides? Europe? That’s laughable. Certainly not modern Europe and maybe least of all modern France. Both of which exist in their current state simply and precisely because the U.S. permits them to do so. If it is important to understand history one of the first things to understand about modern history is that the U.S. is the single determining factor that keeps Europeans away from each other's throats.


And don't get me wrong, I'm not an apologist for modern culture, American or otherwise. Far from it. Nor am I a cheerleader for U.S. policy. I'm just looking at the last 100 years of Western history. Nothing worse than Western European smugness after WWI, the Russian revolution, WWII and the Balkans.

@bdp24 That was over 40 years ago when Ronald Raygun was Gov.

You have had plenty of Liberal Governors to restore the art’s in that time.

Just making more welfare bees right Jerry Brown x2
@bdp24 , Are you seriously suggesting that the decline in public schools teaching the humanities began on the right? Even if you could prove such a thing, it would be hard to support that that is still the case. Technology has driven the STEM curriculum. Big tech keeps it that way. Even if not intentionally.

The public school system is the domain of the left. The left drives STEM. The right approves.

Hard to pin the creation of obedient one dimensional worker bees on the the right. That's a whole different ideology and politic there. It is certainly someone's goal right here and right now though.
You speak about Empire and wars....Technocratic and economic empire...Usa liberating Europe... Perhaps but not without Russian tremendous effort against all the German forces....

I was speaking about spirit and culture....Take a written journal, or a TV news in america now; what is the content?

Almost nothing about world events and culture....An invisible censorship is there coming from where?

Freedom is not about being in jail or not, first and mostly..... Freedom is in the consciousness nowhere else....It takes naivete of popular culture to associate freedom with guns....That remind me of those fearing death and believing in technological immortality now...
Both of which exist in their current state simply and precisely because the U.S. permits them to do so.
The power of America empire comes from the Us dollars and the money system after the war...This is what you spoke about....The real america is not that, it is the creativity and the idea of freedom and possibilities given to men...

I spoke about the spirit and it is what we see in the cultural world...I spoke about values not domination....Values are directly relative to our link to the rest of the world and has nothing to do with money or power...

For culture power or money dont even exist.....😁Not knowing that is absolute ignorance....

This was called with a word that has no more meaning now: the " soul"

Where is the soul in Hollywood now? A rarity indeed....

But there is great number of giant souls in America, they are not in the TV nor in politic, nor in sight....My example was Chomsky the Einstein of linguistic, and a great historian, taken in the invisible jail of the censhorship like Soljetnitsyn in soviet Russia, apparently free unlike Soljenitsyn, but silenced by indifference and powerful censhorship...I dont like Trump but who has the power to silence him few days ago?

Dont take my remark an attack against the soul of America but an attack against the new materialist power dominating us all in Occident now and breaking America and the world at the worst hour......Especially now this year.....Eyes are made to see....

How can we oppose Chinese dictatorship in this way? A war is not the way to go....Except if we stay so weak spiritually....Then the guns will be the only answer.... Idiots prepare wars which are the business of others way more powerful, was saying the general Smedly Butler a great american soul 80 years ago....

Ignorance is closure of the mind in itself for people or countries....