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1. So is every other job.

2. It's an acquired skill like anything else. Also, let's not equate private tutoring with teaching a class, they are different things entirely and while some teachers certainly fill that role it is entirely unreasonable to suggest that most students will either demand this kind of attention or that most teachers will provide it (outside of what their job entails). I should probably disclose that my mother is a teacher too.

3. I'm not sure what you mean here. What I'm saying is people who don't want stress in their job and potentially don't want to put in a great deal of effort work in more secure positions, typically government related. I am not saying that all government employees are lazy and unmotivated, I'm simply saying that the obvious and apparent perks they provide attract certain kinds of people disproportionately.

4. This is why I would argue there needs to be a way to evaluate performance and reward teachers that do well. Rewarding them will allow the wages of teachers who are good at what they do rise and encourage more talented individuals who want to teach into a field they would otherwise not consider. As I said in my previous comment as far as I'm concerned the primary skills that schools should be teaching are reading, comprehension and rudimentary maths. These are also easily able to be evaluated with standardised tests. The same standardised tests that determine university enrollment. As far as I'm concerned I see no reason a test like this cannot evaluate a teacher's capability in improving year upon year results of students. Yes, it cannot be a primary measurement and it is certainly not perfect, but if your intention to increase the standards of teaching and you accept the impractically/implausibility of vastly increasing the teaching budget, you have to accept that improvements have to come from improved efficiency and effectiveness. You can't begin to address that unless you have some way of measuring it.

5. No skilled or academically minded industry is a factory. Yet everything from engineering to consulting to scientific research companies thrive in a competitive economy. Am I suggesting privatising and cutting funding? Not at all. I think poor neighborhoods need to be subsidised to encourage good teachers to teach there. I have no particular issue with public schools although I see no reason charter schools should not receive eligible to such government assistance and what currently exists where the funding is there to serve the common good of creating an educated and knowledgeable society. My problem is entrenched union interest groups who by virtue of the campaign contributions they endow to their elected representatives, block any capacity to reward good teachers and who in effect keep teacher wages depressed and a whole bunch of talented individuals who would have otherwise genuinely considered teaching out of schools.

My point is not that I don't think art/music/drama are valuable aspects of schooling. Rather that schools in poor neighbourhoods are failing to endow students with the basic skills they need to enter a skilled job or for that matter to enter university. I think when people make arguments like this (which if I recall one of the people in this video did), they fly in stark contrast to reality that many simply do not even grasp the basics of education.

Schooling at it's base is not rooted in wishy washy concepts of creativity, expressing individuality or character, they are part of growing up but not the function of school at its core. Math and reading skills are ultimately rooted in effective teacher instruction followed by repetition. No amount of related activities will dress up the fact that if you want to function in modern society you need to go through these trials and tribulations. Until all schools can do that, the last thing I want to listen to is some guy at a rally preaching about abstract skills.

>> ^DerHasisttot:

>> ^RedSky:
Pretty much all their answers are half truths or platitudes. They're impassioned rather than particularly fact backed.
1 - It is hard to get a teacher fired in a private school in the US, the job security is markedly better than in other private jobs.
2 - Not all teachers go into teaching because they are necessarily passionate about it. The work hours are only long if you put in the hours to prepare for classes. The mandated aren't very long, yes you have to cover supervise sports, participate in events which all adds up but they're still undoubtedly shorter than the 8-6 + every other weekends I'm doing now.
3 - A portion of all professions are bad at what they do, and yes it is more likely that with increased job security that there are more lingering in teaching than other professions.
4 - Teaching is not free and the amount of taxpayer money it is apportioned at least partially depends on the reputation it has for delivering results. Particularly given the mood in most rich economies right now of debt reduction that's a terrible attitude if you want to improve the results of students with limited money.
As far as I'm concerned, schools should be focused primarily on teaching the skills that will enable them to achieve in a workplace. Yes arts/music are great, but only if the school is already achieving good standards on the core learning that is required in most jobs like reading, comprehension and rudimentary maths. Having these core skills will ultimately allow them, coming from either a rich or poor background to make a living comfortably and ultimately spend money on developing any number of those skills later in life.

1. I'm not Usasian, I don't know. What I do know is that teaching is immensely stressful. Having to worry about your position would only add to that.
2. Imagine having the responssibility of teaching 30 different, growing individuals per class times the amount of classes you have, correct and test 30 times x people on sth different every week/month. This is no job in which you have to do routine. Routine is easy.
3. Why would they want to work an insecure underpaid job? Isn't it more likely that the benefits outweigh the lingerers?
4. True. American education needs an overhaul. Which will cost money, which is why it doesn't happen.
5. Schools are not factories which educate to produce workforce robots. They impart the whole cultural knowledge of a society. Art helps your brain to think abstractly and understand what you are reading. Music gives you a sense of aesthetics. Would you play computergames which are badly written, have horrible graphics and have no music? No? Well, then you need a culture which teaches these things.
Why do I even have to tell this to someone? Have you painted your profile picture yourself?

>> ^RedSky:

Pretty much all their answers are half truths or platitudes. They're impassioned rather than particularly fact backed.
1 - It is hard to get a teacher fired in a private school in the US, the job security is markedly better than in other private jobs.
2 - Not all teachers go into teaching because they are necessarily passionate about it. The work hours are only long if you put in the hours to prepare for classes. The mandated aren't very long, yes you have to cover supervise sports, participate in events which all adds up but they're still undoubtedly shorter than the 8-6 + every other weekends I'm doing now.
3 - A portion of all professions are bad at what they do, and yes it is more likely that with increased job security that there are more lingering in teaching than other professions.
4 - Teaching is not free and the amount of taxpayer money it is apportioned at least partially depends on the reputation it has for delivering results. Particularly given the mood in most rich economies right now of debt reduction that's a terrible attitude if you want to improve the results of students with limited money.
As far as I'm concerned, schools should be focused primarily on teaching the skills that will enable them to achieve in a workplace. Yes arts/music are great, but only if the school is already achieving good standards on the core learning that is required in most jobs like reading, comprehension and rudimentary maths. Having these core skills will ultimately allow them, coming from either a rich or poor background to make a living comfortably and ultimately spend money on developing any number of those skills later in life.


1. I'm not Usasian, I don't know. What I do know is that teaching is immensely stressful. Having to worry about your position would only add to that.

2. Imagine having the responssibility of teaching 30 different, growing individuals per class times the amount of classes you have, correct and test 30 times x people on sth different every week/month. This is no job in which you have to do routine. Routine is easy.

3. Why would they want to work an insecure underpaid job? Isn't it more likely that the benefits outweigh the lingerers?

4. True. American education needs an overhaul. Which will cost money, which is why it doesn't happen.

5. Schools are not factories which educate to produce workforce robots. They impart the whole cultural knowledge of a society. Art helps your brain to think abstractly and understand what you are reading. Music gives you a sense of aesthetics. Would you play computergames which are badly written, have horrible graphics and have no music? No? Well, then you need a culture which teaches these things.

Why do I even have to tell this to someone? Have you painted your profile picture yourself?

Screw NASCAR and driving simulators...clearly they are a terrible analogy and basically a thread derail.

Look, the point is you don't know this guy doesn't play in a band and just uses RB for practice/conditioning/fun when his band is doing other stuff? Maybe his band broke up? Shit, you have no idea, so making comments saying you should learn real instruments are pretty pointless.

Seems like a good way to build up your endurance/timing to me, even if it somehow doesn't translate directly into actual drum kit skills. Obviously as stated above, this works for drummers and not anything else (until RB3 gets the guitar/piano closer to the real thing). As a thing that allows you to practice and grades you, what better thing exists?

Yes, it's beneficial to learn to read/write music, but IMO that isn't too hard...I started learning in 5th grade. Sure maybe it's harder to pick up as an adult, but wtf...it's just a specific written code for certain sounds. It's not magic. Furthermore, why should traditional written sheet music have a monopoly on the communication of musical concepts for all eternity? There are thousands of languages/dialects in the world that all have different ways of communicating the same things.

I'm out of practice, but I can read music. For my brain and the way it works, RB's style of displaying drum beats speaks to me in a different (and possibly better) way...a way sheet music cannot.

Because its fun? Seric need to google "famous musicians who can't read music."
hint: rhymes with mennen and lacartny.

>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

>> ^Seric:
I wonder how good he would be if he'd spent that time learning real drums

Feel free to knock any other "Music Hero" game experiences.. just not this.
He's learning "real drum" concepts and techniques.
Professional drummers play, practice and record on electronic drum sets similar to this all the time.
You can't, however, expect to learn how to play stringed instruments by tapping buttons on a plastic guitar-shaped controller.
That's the difference.


Techniques yes, he'll learn how to hit shit whilst hitting other shit and perhaps some rhythm. But what I'm getting at is while he might become masterful at hitting shit with other shit, he might not, for example, be able to read music.

Sure, he could pick it up, and the techniques are transferable - but that's really my point. The game and the real thing are similar in technique, a similar amount of skill is required to begin to learn, so wouldn't it have been better if he invested his time into learning an instrument in the first place?

Perhaps he could be playing with a band now instead of (all be it quite impressively) 100%-ing a level of a game.

Yes, yes, I am indeed aware of electronic drums and the lack of transferable ability in pressing buttons whilst flapping some plastic.

It doesn't change my opinion that all the games are a bunch of balls - you're better off spending time learning real instruments.

Either way, it shouldn't stop me from asking the question in the first place, or from voicing my opinion, should it be knocking your games or not.

It's only an opinion :>

>> ^Esoog:
>> ^jerryku:
I would love to be able to have a game train me in playing real drums.

Sigh. Does your school not have a music program? How about private lessons from an actual person? While these games are fun, and I love playing Rock Band, they do nothing for teaching you to read music (yeah, Im on that high horse). The game can teach you muscle memory but will not teach you how to play drums. Drummers are musicians too. (I cant believe I just said that)


It seriously depends on what kind of music you want to play. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I would think only band and classical music would require a drummer to be able to read music. Most drummers don't need to be able to read music, and drumming is mainly about muscle memory and rhythm. You really can learn how to play drums from it though; through the different songs you'll get a handle on different patterns, beats, and fills, and you can take and apply that to an acoustic drumset.

Incidentally, I saw a DrumMania game set up in a music store in Kanazawa, Japan, so that customers could just play it (it was the home system version), and there was an ad next to it that encouraged people that were interested in drumming to sign up for lessons, lol.

>> ^jerryku:
I would love to be able to have a game train me in playing real drums.


Sigh. Does your school not have a music program? How about private lessons from an actual person? While these games are fun, and I love playing Rock Band, they do nothing for teaching you to read music (yeah, Im on that high horse). The game can teach you muscle memory but will not teach you how to play drums. Drummers are musicians too. (I cant believe I just said that)

I was literally going to post this today. I've had this (as an mpeg) for years. I wish there were more video clips of django, his style is visually amazing to guitarists.

Many django enthusiasts have tried taping their fingers back to imitate the sound. His skill came despite his deformity though, not because of it.

He has a HUGE catalogue of music, maybe 30 or so albums. Couldn't read or write, couldn't read music.

I suggest that if this interests you, you check out the movie "Sweet and Lowdown" which is a pseudo-documentary about a Django-like character (played by Sean Penn) who ironically has sort of a complex about Django (because of Django he is obliged to call himself the 2nd best in the world)