toot

The goal of schools is not to prepare you for capitalism. Luckily, they're one of the few institutions that are still concerned with human values beyond money.

You could argue it would be valuable, from a practical sense, to additionally offer classes on personal finance, sure, but it's abhorrent to use music lessons as a mocking point or suggest that somehow the school should teach finance instead of all other subject matters.

Music is far and away the more worthy subject.

...music teaches you to be a good person; financial literacy teaches you to be a tool...
No. Only CPAs are valuable because only having a high salary matters.
More note worthy even...
I'll see myself out.
I’ve had co-workers refuse a pay rise because they thought they would lose money due to higher taxes.
Music as a lesson has never once been beneficial outside of a classroom.
One skill is useful for life, the other is useful for the 3 people who intend to go on to study music.
- For you, maybe.
  Playing music is still my number one coping skill for stress, and still my number one activity that raises my self esteem.
  I have done nothing with my music knowledge except enjoy it for myself. I played this recorder here, then clarinet, then bass clarinet, and finally today I only play bass guitar.
  Still love it, and am grateful to have discovered I enjoyed playing when I was ten years old from school band. My band teacher was awesome. She encouraged me at a time no other adult did.
  Edit, in middle school we learned the theme song from Jurassic Park. It was the first time I got shivers when we'd play it together on stage. What an incredible feeling. And now, some 25 years later, that theme song still rotates in my brain music playlist. I still remember that feeling on stage the night we performed it on stage in concert. Absolutely incredible.
- You must be some kind of troll. Music literally transforms the structure of your brain, strengthens neural connections, and makes you smarter in every way. If you knew anything about either music or mathematics, you would know the two are fundamentally linked. There are many problems with our society, but too much access to arts and culture definitely is not one of them. Do they even teach music in schools anymore? States have been cutting the curricula to the bone, and the arts have suffered the most.
- It can catapult focus on reading, decoding, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, listening and responding skills, confidence and independence as well as learning play with an ensemble. These are skills that can be applied to all areas of life.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't know of any 1st grade classes teaching financial literacy, nor high school classes focusing on how to play a recorder.

I did have a few weeks that focus on domestic finances in 8th grade. That almost nobody paid attention to. So there's at least one school that did both 20 years ago...

Facebook tier meme

What's wrong with teaching music in school? I never got on with it, but some of my classmates genuinely loved it. And now that we're adults they aren't professional musicians by any stretch of the imagination, but they still enjoy playing just for the fun of it or as a hobby.

Few people I know do financial literacy as a hobby, no judgement though if that's what helps you unwind after a day at the office.

I’m pretty sure this is a song lyric from “the poor”, by Jesse Welles.
“I was memorizing capitols
I was in the spelling bee
I must've missed the part
Where they taught the art of private equity
I was selling chocolate bars
I had a disorder
I was cuttin' up a frog
Got lost in the fog
Learnin' how to play a recorder
“
I don’t think it’s supposed to be a slam against musical instruments.

This is a right wing meme

how
- there’s a reason that the acronym is STEAM now. the arts are just as important as science, tech, engineering and maths (both for society and culture at large, but more specifically it’s been shown that music helps people with learning other academic concepts). the right sees the only value in society as that which produces direct economic value. it’s a right wing meme because it paints the arts as a waste of time, and economic management as important
- It's anti art and culture.
Because they don't like being recorded?
Nah apparently recorders are a Nazi plot or something so this is based & wokepilled.

This is stupid.

In school they had us practice recorder in ghe 4th grade, ages 9/10. I took accounting in highschool, ages 16/17.

We did both. Not only did we do both, these two lessons were taught at very different stages of education.

Came here to say this, we also learned recorder in 4th grade. If you tried teaching 4th graders about trading securities derivatives you’d have a riot on your hands in less than 5 minutes lol.
- trading securities derivatives
  The fuck would you ever teach them that for?
  They're 10 years old not idiots, they can learn through age appropriate skills such as budgeting and decision making - which can be made into a fun game as can almost anything you want to teach.
- Exactly. I also had the thought, if you breakdown music composition, it's basically math. Music is math.

The recorder is not what was stopping them from teaching your finance.

People will be complaining about percentages and fractions being taught instead of teaching how to do taxes or do a budget. Which leads to the conclusion that people are idiots and it doesn't matter what you teach them. Other people are not idiots and they use the skills they learnt doing exercises and homework for good stuff but also sometimes for taxes and budgeting.

There is a cross section of smart people who only learned how to do school work and got straight As but failed to understand how that school work applies to real life.
I've been in classes with people who were in AP calculus have real difficulty in shop class trying to figure out how much square footage of whatever you needed. These are people who can figure out the area under a curve but fail to calculate a 20% tip.
Which leads to the conclusion that people are idiots and it doesn’t matter what you teach them.
There's a joke, once you get to college, that freshman year is about unlearning all the crap you were taught in high school.
This isn't an issue of "stupid people" nearly so much as it is deliberately manipulated and propagandized people.
What they're taught matters immensely. And one of the more insidious lessons of the Western education system is that schools exist to Stack Rank students, in order to segregate the Smarties from the Dummies and sort the deserving from the undeserving.
- I was a bit rude here, true. And I don't love all the testing and grading. A lot of teaching up to around seventh or eighth grade is putting material in front of kids until it clicks.
  But anyway, still a bunch of people will whine that they didn't learn this very unenjoyable, very specific thing in school while chastising schools for not being enjoyable enough. And chastising schools for teaching things that are the very basis of being able to figure out this very unenjoyable, very specific thing.

Yeah let’s teach 4th graders that read at a 2nd grade level and struggle with multiplication economics, this seems rationale

At the same time we're teaching them the value of coins, we should be teaching them simple budgeting. Only need addition and subtraction for that.
Gee sounds like they're the sort of people desperately in need of these lessons.
But hey lets teach 4th graders that read at a 2nd grade level and struggle with multiplication how to blow into a piece of plastic that's going to end up in landfill in 12 months time.

"Financial literacy" is victim blaming. Our economic system doesn't need to be this complicated. You're forced to invest or else your savings are destroyed by inflation. But these investments all involve trusting various institutions, and you have no way of knowing which ones are safe. Oh and don't put it all in one place; you need to find multiple solutions. By the time you're old or disabled, it's your fault you're in this mess.

Our economy is essentially forcing the public at gunpoint to make a prediction about topics they know nothing about. It's a design not for the humans who exist, but for perfectly informed spheres.

- In a few years: "Well, it's his own fault for putting it all in Vanguard."

Teaching finance is important, but being exposed to arts or different subjects like trade can be beneficial. A well rounded education to maybe spark an interest. Just think we had a whole world of accountants.

My guy, they're 6 to 8. It's not time to learn that mess

Yeah kids aren't going to engage with something like that if they've never seen a bill in their lives, or even had their own money to spend. Music is universal, and 6 to 8 is exactly the age when they can start developing talent.
And what that would amount to would be another math class. Like, it was a few classes in like 8th grade math between algebra lessons.

Now they don't do either.

I remember how in 6th grade my (i assume) well meaning teacher decided to have a theme week where we were to pair up, boy and girl and pretend to be a couple and figure out budgeting, finding rent prices for apartments and what kinds of jobs we could have.

That was the week I unlocked existential anxiety that never went away lol. Didn't help that every adult in my life told me to not worry about it and that it would take many years before budgeting like an adult would be relevant for me.

There also weren't any further classes about this type of stuff so I just walked around from age 12 and onward panicking about how I would fail at life because I was bad at math.

Weirdly enough I still remember that the boy I was paired up with insisted we should have a cat and that we should call it Møffe. I remember that our budget was very bad and full of holes and our teacher would come over from time to time. "What about the electric bill? What about the water and heating bill? Remember taxes." Every time she would remind us of something we had overlooked or missed, it felt like my nervous system was being electrocuted.

Pretty hardcore to just throw this type of assignment at 12 year olds with no warning and then never speak of it again.

As an adult I am terrified of spending money on anything that isn't food or bills. My boyfriend constantly has to remind me that we are financially safe because I feel like we could end up on the streets any moment. It's not all a result of that one workshop, but it planted the seeds for that anxiety to grow and blossom into what it is today.

I think a budgeting workshop would be a great idea for older kids who are approaching adulthood and are more ready for it. But holy shit, don't do that to actual children who can't even grasp the concept of taxes and rent money yet.

Just remember, Møffe will be with you even if you have to go live in the street!
- I think my partner in that workshop got Møffe when we split. He seemed more attached to him while I was too busy contemplating my existence.
"How are you going to make enough money?" The teacher asked us cause my partner wanted to live well.
"I don't know?"
"You'll need a very good job"
"I'll be in poverty then?"
"Don't you know what you want to do in life?"
I'M BARELY A TEENAGER I DON'T KNOW WHAT I WANT FOR LUNCH EVEN
"No."
"Then live in poverty"
Like the fuck was wrong with our teachers, man!

They did teach us financial literacy.

If you found it important as a reasonably intelligent adult you could teach yourself basic financial literacy in an afternoon.

I agree. A lot of people don't know where to start, though. And there is a lot of bad information out there.

These things put me off music for years. Maybe next time start us with an instrument that doesn’t sound like total shit in beginners hands and which stinks of antiseptic.

What instrument doesn't sound like total shit in beginner's hands? A keyboard?
- Guitar. Learn 3-4 chords and you can play half of the songs out there. Easy to begin with, hard to master.
  Alternatively, Ukulele. Just 4 strings, and smaller, so more suitable for small children, though the chords seem to be more complicated.
- The violin ofc.
- Yep! Great example.
- A guitar
https://lemmy.world/comment/18343253

I learned this in like the third grade. I don’t think a third grader can be taught financial literacy.

But the fact that I didn’t learn anything about loans or credit scores in high school is bad, yes.

Why not both?

Shit, that's even a Yamaha. They make a pretty decent entry level recorder.

All education should be about creating productive citizens for the state!

Well, it’s state funded, what did you expect?
Education should inform us how to least get fucked by the state and capitalism.
- You mean like teaching children the basics of musical theory and practice so they learn they can to enjoy life and create art without paying for it?

Maybe they tried. It's not like you remember how to play this thing perfectly either.

I do wonder how many people got their first spark in making music through these recorder classes. I figured that'd be the main purpose, introduce kids to a form of art they might later develop a passion for, which would make it pretty much ineffective as I believe most people passionate about music didn't catch if from recorders.

But apparently, it's to teach kids how to read music which makes a lot more sense now that I think about it but still feels like something some English guy decided was part of a well-rounded education and nobody's bothered to question it since.

I'm not saying that reading music isn't important or anything just that it's use is probably much more limited to professional spaces since the advent of recording devices, music notation is still pretty kick-ass though and I see why someone would still want it as part of the curriculum.

Personally, I think it'd be really fun if music classes could use apps like GarageBand or something- that way you could use whichever instrument you prefer and also play around with things like pitch and stuff so it'd have this sense of exploration. But, even aside from cost concerns there's already issues with how digitized educations so I'm not sure taking away analog instruments is really the best idea

Just an observation from a mathematician: I’ve never heard this comment from someone who was competent in high school maths. Whenever I mention that I’m a mathematician and someone responds how they “never got on” with maths, usually the next thing to leave their mouth is some gripe about financial literacy.

So you've tried art, and discovered it's not for you. That's still better than not having tried art at all in first place. You at least know where you stand in regards to that question now. ...Or at least I hope so.

Not of course that there is such a thing as professional recorder players.

OP yearns for the boot of capital

Am I the on,y one who never had to play a recorder?

I think it's an American thing, maybe? I don't think I ever played the recorder in school. My only experiences with the recorder was as a toy instrument that you'd get from souvenir shops. I didn't know the recorder was supposedly a serious instrument until my early adulthood. Always thought it was a joke toy pretending to be a flute. It was way below the kazoo in my mind.
- France, 1980's, we played the recorder thoughtout middle school.

I never learned an instrument (schools don't teach that here unless its of your own volition) and its not that I'm financially illiterate, I just don't trust anyone with my money. So, I guess knowing how to play a flute or some bullshit like that would be net positive.

Guess I'll keep on whistling while my money slowly becomes worthless.

Ya'll won't be laughing when people are paying me good money to get the snakes out of their cities.

why you were forced to learn the recorder in school

Watched the whole thing, just lovely

To be fair though if someone can't count up to four then financial literacy probably isn't in their future.

Looking back I'm actually confused why this was even a thing. Did Big Recorder have deals with schools to push this? Is Big Recorder a thing?

We only ever used them for like 3 weeks and then it was on to the next thing. Haven't touched it since.

They're cheap to make and easy to play. They're an excellent instrument to start with because you don't need to know any technique to make a proper sound.
They weren't really teaching you how to play the recorder, they were teaching you how to read music. The recorder was just the cheapest, least complicated way to connect the notes you read to sounds you could hear.
- We didn't learn to read music (I learned from separate piano lessons...)
  They just had diagrams of where to put your fingers and then the letters of the note, not actual notes on a clef...
Answers in Progress made a (great) video about this:
why you were forced to learn the recorder in school
Highlight begins at 8:06.
There's a decent bit of history involved, going back to the Nazis in WW2.
It's not because it's cheap to manufacture, because it wasn't back in the day. It became cheaper because it grew popular. It was about unity and cultural identity.
- Super interesting. Thanks!
I wasn't given an instrument to learn to read music, also I was taught the Kodály method, which is quite bad for this purpose, also we were taught the doremi instead of the proper letter names of the notes for years, which is not absolute, thus I never learned how to read music that way. When I learned the guitar, I learned sheet music so well I can still read it, although not at a fast pace anymore.
- I remember 4th grade was recorders, and in the fifth grade they began the elective of band, which I took because I could play the recorder. I chose to learn clarinet. Then in middle school practiced as a group with everyones instruments.
  It was then, in fifth grade we began learning to read music properly. Today, I cannot remember truly how to read misic, but I remember many of the fundemtals from that time, and it's aided in learning bass guitar after highschool. And now, I can aide my son in his learning guitar.
  But it all started with hot cross buns on the recorder.

why the fuck are you talking about recorders, it's a flute....? (searched for it just right now and found out that's the name in English and it doesn't make sense at all, but OK)

Anyway, they're cheap, light, accessible, straightforward: no complex skill required to blow or get a correct tone. Flute got me into reading music. Terrible teachers unable to comprehend that a teenager needs something fun to play instead of boring music study books got me out of it.

that's the name in English and it doesn't make sense at all
Faut arrêter avec le "c'est pas comme en français du coup c'est mal"
- je n’ai pas dit que c’était mal… mais que ça n’a pas de sens (étymologiquement parlant). C’est un mot étonnant pour une flute, on s’imagine un enregistreur.

As many comments pointed out already, in the USA we usually learn to play the recorder in 3rd grade. It's not exactly an age where it makes any sense to try and learn how home mortgages work.

Though, I very much recall having some basic "personal finance" education in elementary school. It's the age where you are learning about currency denominations. How many quarters, dimes, etc. to make a dollar.

When I was in high school we were all required to take an "Economics" class where they did try to cover balancing a checkbook and basics like that. I just don't think most kids paid much attention. I know I didn't.

Timmy, your teacher sent you to me because you opted not to disclose the liquidation of a foreign capital asset on your mock corporate tax filing, and instead paid the balance of sale out to yourself as a bonus and tried to hide this behind artificially depreciating the asset at an accelerated pace to make it appear as though there was no gain on sale. You're going to sit here until you can properly explain yourself, no capri sun or snack packs until I get answers!

I mostly pretended to play and copied the finger movements of the kid next to me.

I cast vicious mockery, Nat 20. Let's F'ckn go!

I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes.
Tuduludududoodeledie

Damned musicians!

How can ye exploit the workers if ye doon’t et yer meeeet!!

They could have also taught us how to change a tire, or make a casserole, or which fork is the salad fork. Ultimately our parents should be teaching us some stuff... but if the parents didn't learn it (maybe because ma and pa simply didn't have the patience to teach) then we start running into issues, and eventually we end out with a generation who can barely make mac and cheese from a box, so they get it doordashed.

Now if you could only afford some hot cross buns

And I'm still good at it!

You got a Yamaha? We got the semitransparent plastic blue ones.

Yeah because my elementary school teacher was crushing the market

yeah recorders sucked.... hey is that the ICQ flower? ah good memories...

I remember my dad telling me it was a waste of time, back then, I didn't listen

2 mins MS paint

If you’re wondering, Why recorders? — there are three reasons:

They’re portable.
Recorders in decent enough quality can be cheaply produced, so even low-income children get to play one. Compare that with a guitar where 30$ gets you a piece of wood that detunes as soon as you lay eyes on it. Not great for practicing.
Recorders have an easily memorizable fingering scheme that allows you to quickly pick up the C Major scale. Compare this with a guitar where you need to remember for each string individually which frets have the notes of the scale.

fingering scheme
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
- Wait until you hear about the g string
It was a gateway instrument into learning the clarinet then eventually the alto sax, then baritone sax for me, so I really appreciate it.
That being said, financial literacy is super important. Wasn't home-ec supposed to teach us that??
You make these good points, but all I'm hearing is that Big Recorder is paying out public schools to keep making children buy and play them. Hot Cross Buns? More like Huge Con Bunkos! Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!
Answers in Progress did a video on that subject: https://youtu.be/zyZY1dq5BFc
You don't need to remember for each string individually which frets have the notes of the scale on a guitar. If you know where the base note is, there is exactly one pattern for minor and one for major.
Guitars are very hard to play for kids because the strings are so thin that they hurt after very few minutes.
- Guitars are very hard to play for kids because the strings are so thin that they hurt after very few minutes.
  That’s a better reason.

For what it’s worth, as someone who graduated highschool in Utah (one of the shittest US states in terms of funding and education) I learned the recorder in Elementary school and was required to take a financial literacy class in highschool to graduate. True, that class taught now-useless skills like how to write a check, but it also taught me about 401Ks/Roth IRAs, how to file taxes, managing credit scores and lines of credit, mortgages and debt, budgeting, and a bunch of other skills besides. I’m not sure how standard this is across the US, but I can’t imagine it’s too uncommon given that it was a shitty small town high school in a deep red state. Hell, I’ve seen memes like this posted by people who graduated in my year and it always perplexes me because I know for a fact they had to take that class.

The number of times I have to explain to people here in California that are my age that they did in fact take financial literacy, or that they were in fact taught skills like what to do during pregnancy is unfortunately too high. Tons of people like to talk about what schools need without realizing that it has it and they just didn’t pay attention.
- Tons of people like to talk about what schools need without realizing that it has it and they just didn’t pay attention.
  A semester class that happened thirty years ago probably doesn't stick out in your memory beside the 20 years of Facebook memes pounding your brain like a mini gun.
  A lot of people just repeat things uncritically because they've been listening to the crap on the radio or the Joe Rogan podcast or whatever for so long that it's drowned the native memories out.
- Totally agreed. I have often thought the same thing when people claim that schools need to teach critical thinking skills. Mine did.
I had math, history, science, and English class with Spanish or French (one foreign language). None of those taught me anything as useful as your class.
At my shitty red state high school financial literacy was a "life skill class" and only meant for those not looking to attend college.
- Wild. That seems incredibly stupid, but incredibly stupid is very on-brand for the US education system lmao.
  I’ll take that to mean my experience was very much not standard, then.

Pleasant memories. The asshole next to blew as hard as he could point blank to my ear. Fuck I hate those things.

I got detention for a week because when one of my classmates did this to me I hit him with mine.
No ragerts.
- One assault for another

Did anyone here watch American Pie? I thought the benefit of this instrument is clear from that movie.

Isn't she using a "flûte traversière" in that movie (not sure of the English name, "sideways flute"?).
- Possible, don't remember exactly. But the principle should be the same, right?
That is a flute. This is a recorder. It's just not the same putting it up there.
- A recorder is a variety of flute known as a "fipple." But your point stands, some love to have a little fipple, while other's don't.

Now that its 10 years since I last set foot in a school, I hold three opinions about the public school system (in Germany; check yourself what applies to your country):

Schools are an institution where adolescents are detained during the day, so their parent(s) can work and not worry about their children setting fire to the city.
A lot of the curriculum doesn’t prepare you for life. And it’s not meant to. Instead it forces you to engage with a topic for a longish period of time without the possibility to quit. That is supposed to allow you to see if you find the problems that topic poses interesting and if you like finding solutions for these problems.
Schools should put more emphasis on life skills.