The Theory of Evolution

I now find myself in the middle of a recording project of the complete Widor Symphonies, plus his Suite Latine, Trois Nouvelles Pièces, and Bachs Memento. I am having the time of my life. Recording is an expensive habit, but it works for me.

My recording process is evolutionary. I think, "Gee that's a wonderful piece. I should record it." Or I think, "Gee, that's a wonderful organ. I should record on it." Once I get those two ideas into the same sentence and have rep matched to an instrument, then I call my producer, and we start looking into it. He and I and the recording engineers he calls "the secret weapon" have already recorded three times together. Our first was the Widor Sixth and Romane Symphonies on the landmark Aeolian-Skinner at St. Mark's Cathedral in Shreveport, detailed here. That organ needed recording, and the Romane needed to be recorded on it. A few months later, the four of us met in Houston and recorded Jongen, Brahms, and Reubke on the Fritts organ at St. Philip Presbyterian, detailed here. That recording is done and on the Centaur label, entitled "Sonatas and Variations." Our third project was an all-British program recorded on the landmark Aeolian-Skinner at First Baptist in Longview, Texas.

It wasn't long after that that we just HAD to get our hands on my beloved Aeolian-Skinner at First Presbyterian in Houston, where I "presided" from 1997-2005. Our first thought was all-Howells, but then the idea of doing two more Widor Symphonies presented itself, and then Evolution took over, and the complete Widor project was officially born.

I'll be heading to Houston on June 12 to record Widor Symphonies I and V. That will leave only six Symphonies to go, plus the three extra pieces. We have already received clearance to record on the E. M. Skinner at First Presbyterian in Wilmington, N.C., and we have received clearance to record on another landmark Aeolian-Skinner in the Midwest.

Evolution also struck in the selection of instruments to record Widor on. As it turns out, Aeolian-Skinners, E. M. Skinners, and maybe even an Aeolian have become our instruments of choice. At first, that was coincidental. Now it's deliberate. Now I'm on a mission. And I believe in evolution.

New deal breakers for a new year

This blog has tended to state how things are rather than what they can be. I tend to wax complainingly rhapsodic about the increasing amount of paperwork in education, overwrought society, overwrought weddings, fabulous organists who don’t know how to behave in public, and churches removing Christ from Christmas by canceling church when Christmas Day falls on Sunday. But how to move on from the point of calling it what it is into starting to make it what it can be? I suppose I can only start with myself.

I have two stacks of books I want to read -- one in my house, the other in my office. In the office, I resolve to devote at least an hour each day to reading. Reading about Duruflé, Sweelinck, research methods for Felix Mendelssohn’s slurrings, the complete works (or so it seems) of Robert Donington, and about the perennial question of pronouncing that pedal stop name “off-ih-clyde” or “off-ih-slayd.” In the stack of books at home are the Iliad and the Odyssey, books on North Carolina architecture, and self-help books by Harville Hendrix and Elizabeth Gilbert.

I also need to swim every day. Jog every 3 days. Stretch every day. Practicing every day might be nice, too. And I just might want to throw in writing every day. That’s a soul feeder and should therefore be a deal breaker. Writing student textbooks, blog posts, and that zombie novel I have been pondering.

What's on YOUR console?

After a bit of a blogging hiatus, I’m back. Let’s have a little fun today, shall we:

Unlike Samuel L. Jackson, I don’t care what’s in your wallet. But I care a great deal about what’s on your console, and I prefer that it be nothing at all. I follow those rules for school and church organ consoles, definitely. But when it comes to the two consoles in my own house, I break my public rules.

“Clara Belle” is my Aeolian-Skinner, and “Big Al” is my Allen Bravura. You can read about Clara Belle here and watch videos about her here and here. Clara Belle’s console is nicknamed “Clyde.” On top of Clyde is some music and a nice music rack lamp. On Clyde’s side flats are a pair of nail clippers, a small emery board, a Kleenex dispenser, pencils, an eraser, a small pencil sharpener, a tube of chapstick, and a very nice Franz metronome (you know – the one that looks charmingly like a 1960s Kodak camera). There is also a small book in which I make repair notes for my tech, Morris Spearman. And yes, I’ll admit – there is also a small tube of l’Occitane hand cream, plus a coaster for the occasional water glass. Oh, the humanity. But with all these items, I have within arm’s reach everything I ever need during practice, and that helps me not to interrupt practice time by getting up to go get something I want/need but don’t have.

Big Al is a bit more heavily decorated than Clara Belle. On his top is everything “Clyde” has on him, plus a rather intriguing 4-dimensional puzzle of Manhattan that I chose not to put back in the box:

[The fourth dimension of this puzzle is Time. When you follow the directions for assembling it, you place the buildings in chronological order. It is so cool to see the city taking shape as you assemble it.] On Big Al’s side flats are the same items that Clyde has on his. Big Al adds a remote control for the playback sequencer. And there is a small wooden statuette of Elvis at his famous Hawaii concert:

[Elvis was a post-recital gift from Sondra Tucker and the wonderful audience from Holy Apostles in Collierville, Tennessee. I am reminded of good friends and happy times while I’m slaving away at these practice organs.]

Finally, next to each console is a fan, and each fan is plugged into the switched outlets inside the consoles, so that they come on automatically with the organs. What can I say -- practicing makes me warm.

In Search of New Models, Part VII: An unexpected one

Since the creation of this blog, I have kept a Word file “scratch pad,” into which I have deposited random thoughts and inspirations for blog posts. My near-weekly routine has been to scroll through and decide on a topic, write the post in Word, use Word to check grammar and spelling, and then paste it into the website. It has been a simple and easy process for sharing my thoughts with any Dear Reader who stops by the site. This blog has covered everything from hymn playing to owning a practice organ to liturgical goofs to practice habits to funny stories to heartfelt tributes to reharmonizations to exciting news and more.

This particular series on “broken models” has brought to mind a number of increasingly disserviceable ways that some things are done in various sectors of our profession. But in fleshing out the ideas and the general organization of the series in my Word file, I developed a longer laundry list than I am comfortable with. In other words, my ability to tear down in this blog is currently greater than my ability to edify, which is a complete, unsettling reversal from the approach I followed in my first months of blogging. Despite my best efforts toward compassion, the rant factor threatens to increase in my written output. I do not want that.

I believe it’s time to apply this New-Model philosophy to this very blog for a while. I’m suggesting that perhaps it is time to pursue a new model for the very vessel through which I have been discussing the need for new models all over the profession. Ironic, isn’t it!

But of course, I still have plenty more I could say about the necessary but broken model of having a booth at organist conventions. I still have plenty more I could say about the hard lesson I learned about the broken model of trying to advertise in convention tote bags. I still have plenty more I could say about the difference between a wedding and a marriage, or the horribly overblown attention given to the former over the latter in today’s society. I still have plenty more I could say about how utterly mystified I continue to be by the rich rewards given to deliberate mediocrity and pervasive arrogance in our profession. I could still go on and on about church sound systems, salaries, student evaluations, search committees, and beauty pageants organ competitions.

But more writers are stepping forward in their blogs and Facebook memes to offer passionate but levelheaded thinking and timely assessments of modern liturgy, marriage, and the devastating effect movie screens in church have had. I’m seeing a welcome re-thinking of contemporary worship trends and how much they have nearly decimated congregational singing and theological brain cell activity. I’m seeing Facebook friends wonder to their organist groups how to deal better with church matters or recital ideas. My church music majors are showing up for their freshman year with a better knowledge of liturgical and hymnological matters than their predecessors did more than a decade ago. In short, I’m seeing things turning around. New models are being posed all around us in music, arts management, politics, education, and child rearing. This is good. More people are asking the questions I have been asking. Although this blog has been the only one of its kind, I don’t feel so alone on many troubling issues now, and so I think I’ll move on to something else now.

My pattern after a “soft reset” like this is to renew my energies in my teaching. Not only will I follow my usual model of seeking improvement in my teaching at every turn, I’m also going to create and post more videos, which you can access on the “Watch” tab of this website or on my YouTube channel. I’ll also keep updating my newsy posts of this site, available at the News tab. Meanwhile, perhaps you’d like to read through the archives of my blog – it’s all still right here on this site. Click on a month in the right-hand sidebar of this page. Feel free to visit individual posts or click on some tags in the right sidebar. Or search for a subject in the search field. Perhaps you’d like to read about my teacher or my take on playing Franck. Perhaps you’d like to browse and print some of my reharmonizations and use them in church sometime. Perhaps you’d like to read about crazy things I have witnessed in church.

In any event, I’ll say ‘So long for now’ to blogging, while I continue to enjoy new models for inspiration. And since I’m posting this on December 23, 2015, I’ll also offer you my best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a happy 2016.

In Search of New Models, Part VI: Backstage at the teaching show

In the theater, there are two shows going on: the one in front of the audience and the one behind the scenes. When you're attending a show, you have no idea of the beehive of activity going on behind the scenes. And if you are performing in that show, then you have no idea what's going on out in the house. Rarely do the two groups meet, and when they do, it's considered a breach of theatre protocol.

There are two shows going on in higher education, too. The students see a show, but they have no idea what professors are required to do outside the classroom or how much data we are required to gather each semester. Most students have no idea of the difference between a department of music and school of music. They have no idea what a Provost is or does. They have no idea of the difference between a President and a Chancellor. They have no idea how much their in-state taxes save them on tuition. And did you know that the school of music where I teach is one of only a couple (if not the last one standing) of administratively freestanding schools of music left in this state system? And did you know that of all the organ professors in the system, I am the only full-time? (All the others are adjunct, part-time, or split with a church or another school or an administrative post.) Impressive? Maybe. But I had nothing to do with any of that. It has all been in place since my teacher was here 30 years ago; I just show up for work. If you were a prospective student, I doubt you’d care about any of this, and I’m certain you wouldn’t need to. None of it changes my teaching.

Broken model: “state” universities. "State-supported?" More like merely "state-located" these days. I don’t think a table could call itself "supported" on less than half a leg. The state owns the university, yet these days it funds only about 12% of its operations. And in some states, that number has dropped to single digits. How do you own something, lay claim to it, govern it and enact [myopic] laws for it to follow, yet provide only a fraction of the funding it needs to be excellent? If universities are having to seek outside funding at every turn, then they might as well seek out the really big bucks and buy themselves out of the system.

Broken model: Peer reviews. Across my university system, all non-tenured tenure-track faculty must have three tenured faculty members observe one class or lesson once per year, and all tenured faculty members must be reviewed this way every five years. The idea for this appears to be an attempt by the legislature/university system to provide greater accountability within the system. (But to whom, and when?) Okay, so we do it, and we can prove on paper that we do it. But how do we prove that it did any good? What will be done if a tenured faculty member doesn’t perform well in that one lecture that a peer happened to attend? Who am I to suggest that the most senior faculty member in the unit adjust his teaching style? Who is a non-organist to suggest to me ways to adjust my church music curriculum? What happens if a long-tenured professor doesn’t do anything with the advice dispensed by the review committee? And what do you do with the long-tenured and much-beloved professor who is otherwise a womanizer or a horse’s ass or allows his favorite students to screen his emails? I believe it would be far more instructive if a higher admin-type or even a legislator attended a lecture and then attempted to fill out the review form. We’d see the model change pretty quickly.

Where do we find new models for all this ranting? Honestly, in the case of higher education, I'm afraid a new model can rise only from the ashes of a complete implosion. It’s too complicated to re-work a lot of it, like a failed pottery throw. It wasn’t always this way, of course. But things evolve, and in the case of higher education, money became the driving force behind a lot of players’ actions, and off we went.

Our passions are the only salvageable part of all this and will be the only things left if all else fails. Fortunately, they are still at the heart of all education. Teach your passions. Show students how to cultivate theirs. Teach something the students can’t get anywhere else. I’ll keep showing up for work and training the organists who also show up to work. And let us help others stop being so pleasantly surprised when a teacher or professor goes the extra fifty miles to show a student the passionate and compassionate approach. It’s just what we do – behind the scenes.

’Tis the season

I am the ‘sole proprietor’ at my university of an annual Messiah Singalong, the format for which I ‘stole’ from the same event at First Presbyterian, Houston. When I was at that church, one of my highlights each year was the first Sunday evening of December, when we would fling wide the doors to a full house (roughly 1000) of eager singers. We would hand them each a Watkins Shaw edition to sing from. There was a pickup orchestra, yours truly on harpsichord, and a hired friend of mind to play the organ or “cattle prod,” as I liked to call it. Our choir soloists sang the arias, our beloved John Yarrington conducted, and the assembled audience sang all the choruses. We would perform every note of Part I, plus Hallelujah, Worthy, and Amen. It was the greatest night of the year, to kick off the most wonderful time of the year.

So when I moved back to my alma mater to teach, it only took me a year without my annual Singalong fix to re-invent it for our purposes here. So, each fall I audition any interested voice majors for the arias/recits. I have the program and publicity prepared, I borrow Messiah scores from two local churches to add to our own stash here, and we have at it! I play the organ, no orchestra. We are about to mount our 11th annual performance on December 6 at 6 pm.

The event has evolved only slightly to include student conductors, rather than a recruited faculty member. Otherwise, it is unchanged from what I was used to in Houston. One year, we were nearly snowed out, but I went on with it, minus a few soloists who couldn’t get there. But I learned my lesson – NEVER cancel Messiah unless the university closes, because there are community members who would brave snow or fire to get here. They wouldn't miss singing those first four notes of ‘Hallelujah’ for anything.

Each fall, I remind our voice faculty and staff accompanists to be on the lookout for potential soloists to send my way for auditions. And so, Dear Reader, if you’re interested in auditioning, here’s what I look for in soloists:

-- I like it when a singer owns the story and doesn’t get stuck on the rests in a recit.

-- Anyone auditioning for ‘O thou that tellest’ or ‘He shall feed’ should prepare the recit as well. I tend to blackball people who don’t know the recit. And I certainly blackball anyone who is not willing to learn it.

-- Fast arias: the faster and more fearless, the better.

-- Transposed arias are fine. I’m also happy with sopranos singing the tenor pieces.

-- I like both versions of ‘Rejoice.’

-- I like it when mezzos sing ‘He shall feed’ in 4, not in 12. That will always be a deal breaker.

-- I like it when sopranos sing ‘He shall feed’ and ‘Come unto him’ in 4, not in 12. That will always be a deal breaker.

-- Anyone who sings more than one thing in the audition stands a better chance of getting something. That would allow more joy to be shared with more people, e.g., a recit to one person and the aria to another.

-- Assuming pitch and rhythm are intact, a singer’s fearlessness will usually tip my scales. It’s what we need for this performance that goes up with several handicaps: 1) little time for more than only one run-through onstage per singer; 2) a big acoustic; 3) a distant, non-percussive accompanying instrument (the organ).

Sing on.

Because it is

It is increasingly difficult in our society to defend those disciplines that on the surface don’t make us more viable in business and military sectors. But most any reader of this blog knows that music and all the arts are an integral part of any successful society’s fabric. We keep discovering – or reminding society that we have already discovered – that music has huge extrinsic value. It has been shown to lower blood pressure, raise social awareness, heighten collaborative skills, raise math scores, create lasting relationships, thrill the mind and soul, boost brain cells, and banish cancer cells.

Music is also intrinsically valuable. We need to study music just because music is a great thing, and not just for what it does for us. It is worthy of study on its own merits, not just those merits that “contribute to society.” Rain dances, ecstatic expressions of gratitude, parades, ceremonial marches, fight songs, hymns, concerts, recitals, lullabies, movie scores – music is all around us and is worthy of our rather undivided academic attention. If we can keep that message alive, we can stay alive.

Yeah, so the arts are important in our lives. And you and I agree that all artists should be paid handsomely for our work. What we provide is just as sustaining and nurturing to society as anything else. However, I know that I’m howling at the moon to think that a recently earned Ph.D. in Art History is going to make a living without a day job or attachment to a university, archive, or museum.

While I recoil in horror at those who would strip our society of music and the arts, sometimes I use language similar to theirs when I question the usefulness of an organist who can play the complete works of Naji Hakim from memory but can’t sightread a four-part hymn or keep it at a steady tempo. I question the usefulness of fresh grads complaining about having to take a church job to make ends meet until they land the teaching job they feel they deserve with all those degrees. I question the depth of education of someone who can talk about Buxtehude’s summer vacation activities in exquisite detail but can’t compose a coherent, properly spelled memo about appropriate wedding music in the church they serve.

We keep hearing that our children need courses in accounting, business management, personnel management, computer science, business Mandarin Chinese, and standard Spanish if they have the remotest prayer of “making it in the world.” Children have been conditioned to question, “Am I going to need this after graduation?” Facebook buzzes with memes about ‘look, Ma -- I didn’t need to use Algebra today’ and how ridiculous Common Core sounds to people. And yet I myself use much the same language when I ask, “How in the world does he expect to make it as an organist if he can’t play a hymn?!” If I say that organists need to learn service playing or else wither on the vine, I also have to remember that my parents nearly pulled me out of the NC School of the Arts because it didn’t offer courses in accounting, business, or typing. (I nearly lost my place at the table in a conservatory – for TYPING class?)

Pipe organs in Medieval Christianity were mechanical novelties. And since the mechanical brains of society tended to be monks, the organs resided in monasteries. Organs didn’t accompany services until later. Therefore, would it be more historically accurate for me to complain that anyone who doesn’t know how to build an organ is not worthy of a degree in organ performance? Or fast-forward to today, where the organ is being eschewed in many churches: am I wasting my time teaching students how to play for church while fewer churches these days need their services? Do I need to be asking ‘is this important?’ myself?

Service-playing courses have made their way into many previously all-performance conservatories. In other places, entrepreneur-related courses are showing up in music curricula. Almost too little, too late, but we’re getting there. (Hear that? I sound like my parents.) If they’re going to survive, students need to know how to set up a CV file, how to network, and how to advertise. And if they’re one of my students, then they also need to know how to spell, write, shake hands, smile, do their own taxes, and sightread. Not every organist needs to know how to accompany an oratorio from the piano reduction, and not every organist needs to be able to memorize the complete works of Ned Rorem, but the vast majority of all organists will need to be able to dabble in both. It’s music either way, and music is beautiful.

I’d say that as a society we need to stop playing the my-discipline-is-more-important-than-yours game. We (you) need to stop conditioning our (your) children to question the importance of a particular study in their schooling. It’s important because it is. It’s important because it exists in the world in which you live. And if it exists, then it has a history, and history is also important. It’s important because we can learn from it. It’s important because some of us are inspired to go create more of it. It’s important because someone in your classroom, with whom you have to live for a time, finds it important. It’s important because it was created by some of your fellow human beings. It’s important because a ninth grader has no idea how to answer the question of importance yet. It’s important because J.S. Bach made it so. Shall I go on?

As for my learning accounting, business, and typing? Thank goodness for TurboTax, real life, and Mavis Beacon, respectively.

In Search of New Models, Part V: Doctorate required. Or not.

Here’s a frightening question: How many organists will there be on the committee that interviews you? Indeed, at your interview, you will probably be the only true expert in the room. The process is already flawed, but is the model?

In most cases, a search is an Episcopal, not a Presbyterian, process. Most search committees are doing the legwork on behalf of the one person who will ultimately make the hiring decision. Broken model? Who knows?

Job announcements are always off the mark. That’s no one’s fault, really. It’s just that a committee can’t expect to know exactly what they’ll get, but they need to have done the best they can to advertise for what they want. Think about what it might take to replace you as a complete human being, and not just as a professional. Can a committee really put in the job description that they’re looking for someone compassionate to a fault, who will take walks with the students to discuss pressing matters, who knows as much about fixing an organ as playing it, who has seen the writing on the wall regarding travel funds and will take the students to conferences, anyway? The models seldom match between the job ad and the person who gets it. A committee is always blown away by something they didn’t expect or weren’t even searching for.

Broken model: Search committees put out an ad and then wait for the applications to come in. Applicants send in their materials and wait for an answer. Applicants even close their cover letters with the subtle signal that they have made their play in the waiting game: “I look forward to hearing from you,” which means, “I’ll be waiting over here.” Everyone is waiting for the phone to ring, the email to chime, or to see a letter lying behind the glass in his PO box. Professors waiting for the state legislature to come around will die disappointed. Students waiting for the urge to study or to practice will just end up playing poorly. Organists waiting for their churches to stop treating them like the hired help may never find joy in the music again. Waiting will be the death of us all.

Rather, search committees might be better served to seek nominations from all sectors and actively recruit specific people to apply, right up until they make an offer. No harm in expanding the pool at all times. For upper-level administration searches, colleges even pay big bucks to a search firm to seek out applicants and invite them to apply. A new model says that an applicant who is content in their current position is the perfect candidate to consider taking another step somewhere else. And their being actively asked to apply says a lot about them and about the asker. Better to land a person like that than landing the one who is desperate to get out of their current situation.

Ever-changing models: During high school at the North Carolina School of the Arts, I noticed a recurring title on virtually all professors’ doors: “Artist-Teacher.” There were only 2-3 doctored faculty members in that school in those days. Now they’re all doctored. My generation that scrambled to get doctorates was chasing the model that said we had to have one to get a job. But now, non-doctored professors are gaining tenure-track positions, which is an aggregate of the previously separate models of artist-teacher vs. professor. The fine print in NASM standards says that the boss may hire whom s/he likes, if that person has equivalent experience and has demonstrated the desired SuperManliness.

We all seem to serve on only the most nobly-intentioned search committees, but searches we observe from the outside often appear “flawed” and “scandalous” and should be declared “failed” from the beginning. Although I’ve never served on an organ professor search, I’d say that some of them I have observed from the outside look a little, um, interesting, to say the least. One school hired a friend of the incumbent. Another hired the person who taught during an incumbent’s sabbatical. Another hired the biggest name they could find, but only after their even bigger first choice kept turning them down. Another hired an alumnus who had already been teaching there on visiting status for two years. Another hired a local boy from the nearest big city. Another hired an early music scholar to teach on the electric-action organ. It’s not that none of those searches turned out well or even for the best. It’s just that they looked sort of … misaligned … from where I was sitting. And yet, one of those scenarios above describes how I myself was hired! (I’m not telling you which one.)

Who is to say that those committees were not completely honest? The favorite model today appears to be one of familiarity – committees hire names they already know, even if the name is too big for them or is from several degrees of separation away. The point is that all those new hires mentioned above were known somehow to the committee. Getting your foot in the door is still the way to go, apparently. The trick lies in figuring out which foot and which door to use. Perhaps hand-picking was always the best way. That may work better for the hiring body, but it’s hell on an applicant trying to figure out an entrance strategy from an incomplete job description. On top of that, some committees behave in the other direction, refusing to hire any former student of the outgoing professor. There’s no way the applicant can know what the committee really wants. This is all part of the reason why a committee’s recruiting is so important. It helps reduce the beauty contest factor in the search.

I stopped job hunting a while back. The waiting games, sham searches, doctored vs. non-doctored, and big-game name chasing are not part of what feeds my passions or makes me happy. And so I began to question the model that says my current position is but a stepping stone to a final destination. Rather, I should turn my stepping stone into a destination. And I have done just that. Moving on is no longer on my mind. I have grown to know myself, and I’m doing just fine where I am. Having said that, I am not opposed to being actively recruited. (Who wouldn’t welcome a new pursuer? A healthier form of the waiting game.) But I don’t have much time to think about that – I’m too busy teaching.

First ad?

This website will never go commercial, except for peddling my own wares. But here is a worthy cause that I will gladly help promote:

The Steering Committee for the 2016 American Guild of Organists National Convention in Houston, Texas, has established a fund to honor the legacy of Clyde Holloway (1936--2013). The fund will underwrite concerts held at Rice University during the June 2016 convention. Contributions may be made via check or PayPal. For more information, visit the fund's webpage.

In search of new models, Part IV: I go to college; I must be smart

Higher ed keeps finding itself in the position of defending its existence and proving its worth, all at the expense of its ability to deliver its goods. The value of higher education continues to be slowly eroded by disserviceable shifts in our mindsets. Many students go to college because their local society expects it [broken model]. Many students go to college because they think it’s the only way – or their last chance – to ‘get smart’ [myth]. Many students go to a particular college just because daddy did [yawn] or because they have been told that it’s the best or only route to getting married and having children [double yawn]. We have all heard the non-sequiturs: “This is your senior year? Oh, that’s wonderful. Where are you going to college?” “Go get the education I never got.” “You’ll need a degree to get a job.” “You’ll need a doctorate to teach.” No wonder colleges are full of students who don’t really know what they’re doing there. Many have lost touch with – or were never shown – a serviceable model of why we go to college.

The disserviceable models continue after college. Junior comes home after Commencement, and at the first sign of disagreement, he is accused of being “too smart and too good for us plain folk anymore. I guess that college didn’t do you any good, after all.” Nice double standard there, Dad. The chronic stereotyping continues: College graduates in movies are routinely portrayed as complete nerds or even idiots, having virtually no street smarts, while the street folk are portrayed as fourth-grade dropouts and just fine on their own, thank you very much. TV shows and the Internet offer lists of the most useless degrees, based on how immediately employable the graduate won’t be or how much money she won’t make in her chosen profession. Meanwhile, we see the success stories on TV of college dropouts making it big and then blaming college for being a waste of time: “See, anyone can do this!” If only it could be so black and white.

Myth: college is supposed to make you smart. Really? What about those prior twelve years of public or private schooling? They worked for me. Where were you? And smart has nothing to do with it by then. We need to stop apologizing for kids who choose not to pursue a four-year degree. Learning a trade is every bit as difficult and fulfilling as anything else. I’m not lying when I say that truck driving is my next career choice if this music thing doesn’t work out. We need mechanics, computer techs, piano tuners, organ techs, and Physical Plant personnel more than they need us.

I’d settle any day for focused and well-spoken over smart. I can train “smart” and resourcefulness into students, but I can’t do much for their poor spelling or inability to carry on a grown up conversation. The Univ. of North Carolina system routinely hears from hiring agencies complaining that the first-year hires out of college are not adequately prepared for the job, let alone for the real world. There the elaborate blame game commences: the hiring company blames college for not preparing the student; the college blames the public schools for not preparing students for college; the public schools blame teachers for not preparing students for the next grade; teachers blame parents for not preparing students for school; teachers blame state legislatures for gutting budget and teacher pay. Meanwhile, legislatures use number-based criteria to blame teachers for not producing better results. And then everyone turns back around and blames the colleges for being too busy pursuing bleeding-heart liberal agendas to teach students “what they really need to succeed” (whatever that might be). Then we see new laws being written for teachers and professors to take up the slack that mama and daddy (the real culprits here, by the way) left behind, and then everyone thinks it was the babysitters’ teachers’ fault all along. So education continues to bear the brunt of the lapse in good judgment in our society, higher education continues to be the first thing cut in a struggling state budget, and the arts continue to be viewed as a bleeding-heart liberal agenda item.

Is the college model broken? Certainly not. The greatest benefit of the college experience lies in collaborating with others, learning of other fields and sharing ideas. There will never be a substitute for that community, the shared experience. I have never been a fan of online degrees, and I fortunately teach an instrument that ultimately requires teacher and student to be in the same room. So the college model is not broken, but many students are when they arrive there. College is one of the most liberating yet intense models for learning to live in society. But increasingly, students are not prepared for college or even for the real world when they show up. Many don’t know how to collaborate, how to share a bathroom, how to be quiet for and respectful to their roommates, how to dress, how to do laundry, how to make change at the store, how to cope when a business doesn’t take plastic, how to eat healthy, how to spell, how to write, how to follow directions, or how to speak without over-using the words ‘like,’ ‘so,’ ‘um,’ ‘actually,’ ‘literally,’ and ‘awesome.’ I blame the parents.

My thinking constantly circles back around to recurring societal problems and the one solution for them all: Education. Not just attending class. Not just getting a degree. And not just “getting an education to get a job.” But rather learning how things work, how the world works. Learning about better things to do with a tax refund than go to Wal-Mart with it. Learning how to fix your own car or door jamb. Learning how to hike, bike, raft. Learning how to master more than one language in written and spoken forms. A little education exposes the dangers of over-population, over-indulgence, over-eating, and waiting around for things to improve in our legislatures. Educating our legislators on how higher education and art work is vital to our survival as artists. We organists are always educating congregations, brides, and students on musical matters. We have to educate our college administrations on why organs are so expensive and why the money is so well spent on them. It’s all education!

Education begins at home, dear Reader. It’s a process, not an event. It begins immediately at birth, takes no vacation, and does not stop until death. The college experience seeks to be a precious jewel in the crown of that ongoing process, refusing to consider itself the beginning of smarts nor the end of the job hunt.