Rendering Unto Caesar: Bonsai Education‏

[sophia_sadek]

The other day a bonsai sakura plant showed up in the lobby of the building where I live. It brought back memories of my time in public elementary school music class singing the Japanese ode to the sakura tree. I asked a young woman who works for the property management company if she had music classes in her elementary school experience. It did

Comments

[jerseycajun]

I like cheese.

And that's all there is to say on the subject.

[nairiporter]

Just don't tell me you mean that smelly cheese with the mould... :-S

[sophia_sadek]

Smelly cheese is usually appreciated by someone with a mature palate. I suspect Velveeta would be more apropos.

[sophia_sadek]

Faux News fits the bill.

[rimpala]

I do agree that art and music classes need to be taught, or at least exposed so that students have an opportunity to discover potential talents they not be able to outside the school environment.

Math is important too and is becoming increasingly important for artists looking to make a career out of what they do.

Because if you are going to render unto Caesar you need to get familiar with the XYZ axis and how to calculate Caesar's joints and program Caesar's rig and stuff like that. Also you probably should know how to translate Roman numerals.

[jerseycajun]

Screw rigging. That's what buying plug-ins are for :) Thank Heavens there are decent plug ins that will rig and skin well enough to keep you from having to tweak too much.

Love modeling and even enjoy texture mapping and lighting. But rigging and skinning...

Do you work in animation software?

[rimpala]

I'm a game design major

[sophia_sadek]

Perhaps someday I will tell you all about my experience working in Japan for Nintendo.

On the other hand, it would take far more than a day in order to tell all.

[harry_beast]

"The pursuit of broader skills" at times seems like a code word for "don't teach anything that requires effort and focus, either by the student or by the teacher". And yet without mastering basic skills, i.e. the mechanics, learning is severely limited. This is true of mathematics, it is true of languages and it is certainly true of music.
Discipline, commitment and structure in a learning environment does not stunt; rather, it challenges, it strengthens and for those willing to make the effort, it provides achievement far beyond what is usually possible in a free form environment.

[sophia_sadek]

Our music class was certainly focused and some students put in the effort to do well. Learning "Frere Jacques" at an early age paved the way for studying French in depth later on. There were basic skills involved in music class that translate to more utilitarian pursuits.

What is stunting is restricting instruction to a narrow set of topics and teaching children that other cultures are taboo or worse.

[harry_beast]

In senior elementary school, we had a singing class in addition to learning to play a musical instrument. There wasn't a lot of cultural diversity in the playlist, though I do recall learning Hava Nagila at some point. I don't know if singing directly helped in other subjects, but it seemed to promote confidence performing in front of people, which probably helped for presentations and public speaking, and at the risk of sounding like a hippy, it seemed break down social barriers in the class.

[sophia_sadek]

What is worse than sounding like a hippie is being afraid of sounding like a hippie.