Does College help your originality?

When I went to music school (and I will be nice and not name names), we had this standard joke phrase amongst us as freshmen, which was, "everything you know is wrong."

The basis of the joke was that, no matter what it was that you had learned from any of your high school level teachers, and no matter what unusual or unique performance-related styles or ideas that you may have brought in your valise with you to school, it was relentlessly and mercilessly made quite clear to you that these must all be abandoned in favor of the institution’s way of doing business.

All in all, it was sort of an artistic "basic training" experience, of tearing us down to build us over again. Sounds good on paper, and, not knowing any better, most of us went along with the program. (The most successful performance majors, of course, did not. I was thought by all teachers to be "just impossible," I took no advice from anyone, and turned pro at age 19.)

I had long since forgotten about all this, until a friend of mine recently told me that their son had gone off to some fancy music school, and had reported this series of experiences: this kid, a cello player, had studied with one teacher for about six months. For some reason, that teacher left, and the kid had to switch to another teacher. The new teacher immediately told this kid "everything you know is wrong," and made the poor kid conform to a new system of, who knows, probably fingering or holding the instrument, or whatever. And then… that second teacher had to leave for some reason, the kid went to another teacher, and this third teacher again said "everything you know is wrong." And the poor kid had to learn yet another system.

Let’s face it, this kid is screwed. He’ll never get back to who he is. What confusion.

The point of this blog entry is that, all too often when people "teach," particularly in the artistic realm, they are really indoctrinating . . . into a particular "school of thought." The word educate comes from the Latin "educere," to draw out . . . But mostly it seems education nowadays means to "stuff in."

I do not have massive amounts of data on this, but in my own experience, many people I have known who had fabulous unique creative styles and abilities were, for the most part, in terms of their artistic psyche, badly beaten up if not completely destroyed by their college experiences. They get onto a whole hierarchical mindset instead of a unique personal development path. I know the college brochures say otherwise, but the academic world can be very harsh on the creative spirit.

I know that many people are extremely loyal to their colleges (and that is another problem, the confusion between social and educational functions), but I feel compelled to make some not so complimentary observations on some of the less positive aspects of the university system and how they adversely affect unique originality. The university system is looking, to me anyway, more and more like the catholic church of 800-1400 AD . . . More in future posts . . . – justin

© Justin Locke

PS many thanks to the Horndog Blog for mentioning me in his top five blog list!!!