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My mind was flying all over as I read your post ... 

My first thought? 

The day they bring Eno to the halls of the museum, I'll visit one ... than you!

And now to read it, and I'll post reactions afterwards!

Hi,

To me, this is the failure of the educational system, and when the Republicans started 50 years ago to take money away from all the arts ... because they were too liberal, and one witch even stated that PBS didn't deserve a cent.

We still elected those folks! At that point it tells you that the voting population does not care, and neither does the educational system, all of whom "disappeared".

rbeasley wrote: ... There just aren’t many teenagers who will find a strong connection to music of their great-grandparents’ generation. By over focusing on jazz’s early music, we represent jazz as an artform which lacks current relevance and limits students’ opportunities to see themselves represented in the music. As rich as jazz history is, it lacks in diversity, especially when it comes to gender. ....

Again, I think this goes back to education and how the parents look at things ... if they don't care about classical music or anything else except their top ten country station, how can we expect, and hope that their kid will learn more about music? I am not sure we can, as we are, in general, a child of our generation, and mine had the arts studies removed from schools to prevent more kids from learning about different things and learn about how some artists changed things ... guess what the commercial America wanted ... more money ... jazz? classical? what a crock that whole thing is, right?

The gender thing I don't like to comment on ... there are some phenomenal women in the music areas alone, although I really can only count Hiromi in the jazz related area, though I'm not sure she is as much jazz oriented as we think. And there are some others, but the commercial controls are all run by men, and created by men, who still think that women are not important, other than for one thing! It is so obvious in film, and how hard it has fought from the days of Sidney Poitier to this day, and still the nominations are leaning to one side only .... Women are more appreciated in film, but sadly, the over abundance of the commercial design and sex is more appealing for making money than any of the women stars. And it's worse in the music area, and country and western has had a bad history in this area.

But we love our stars! It's unreal to me that we allow the media to TELL US what to think and like ... and we don't stand up against it ...

rbeasley wrote: ...  For jazz to thrive, those who teach it can’t afford to be stuck in the past. In order for students to see jazz as a living, viable artform, it’s essential that jazz educators actually present it as such. ...

But that means that a music teacher is not also the math teacher and he/she does not know squat about music! And this is a serious issue in a lot of schools. 

The sad side of it, is that not enough parents actually know what is happening in many schools, and how so many of them have killed the arts due to budget issues ... it's always the first to go! Not the excessive amount of benefits so many educators get, some portion of which could be used for something more interesting as one of the arts.

I had a similar issue at UCSB when I was there ... I was already onto Film Directors, and Theater, and was well versed in a lot of their work and I knew who was improvising left and right (Godard and Truffaut in the early days!) and who was having a laugh (Altman) and who was so serious I decided to never see his work again (Hitchcock). And guess what ... the professors there did not like me being so independent ... and compared to the other 2 Directing students (Theater), I had a vision ... they did not seem to, and I could do really well, for example, in Opera Directing, where I did a scripted version of the Act 2 in Tosca to the astonishing response by Peter Mark (Emeritus Virginia Opera) that I had solved all the issue an opera has on stage ... heck, let's do it ... never heard from him again after that class!

Vision is important, and my take for the Educational Systems across the country is a lack of vision, and the thinking that all students only need to learn one or two things, so they will remain subservient to the wants of the political/commercial age!

Jazz? Yeah ... 

Classical? Yeah ...

Music in general? Yeah ...

But somehow I don't think enough of us folks want to change some things in the "system". I do my best ... but the choices are so poor and empty word'ed ... it's not even funny or fun!