

Branford Marsalis’ Take on Students Today - r11t
http://www.joeydevilla.com/2008/12/30/branford-marsalis-take-on-students-today/

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mixmax
I shared an apartment with three jazz musicians at one point, and I was amazed
at how dedicated they all were. One of them has now become a semi-star on the
Jazz scene - but it didn't come cheap. On a normal day he would get up at
eight, go to school, then head straight for some training session when he
finished. After a quick dinner he would go out and play one or two jobs. On
weekends he played 4 or 5 jobs and did some jam sessions or did recordings.

Being a jazz musician may sound like a cozy job, but to get anywhere it takes
an 80 hour work week.

~~~
stcredzero
Much of that 80 hour "work week" can be filled with moments of joy and neural
stimulation so rich and fulfilling, that it can be fairly compared sex.

Then again, lots of being a musician involves prostituting yourself by
pretending that you're enjoying playing something you think is stupid or
boring.

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bd
I wonder if at least part of this phenomena cannot be explained by observer
bias.

People complaining about their students are usually the ones with superior
performance compared to the average student. Usually, top students become
graduate students, top graduate students become professors. They are also more
likely to have friends like them.

Couldn't it be that complainers were simply not aware of the extent of how bad
students really were in their "good old times"?

~~~
orib
Or maybe they were aware of it in the good old times too, and they think it
was crap then too?

I have no patience for working on lame assignments, and my marks suffer, but I
still have no patience for people who are in school hoping to coast through.
If you don't challenge yourself, you're wasting everyone's time.

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anthonyrubin
Some interesting end of semester remarks from a CS professor:

[http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2008-1...](http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2008-12.html#e2008-12-28T21_34_06.htm)

The Postlude section is especially relevant.

~~~
jwinter
Thanks for that link. His site is very interesting, the functional programming
patterns especially:

<http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/patterns/recursion.html>

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Todd
This is similar to comments I've heard from profs in the CS area. It's
probably cultural. We still have the students that break their backs to be the
best, but the majority have been indoctrinated in this "everyone's a winner"
mentality.

~~~
jyothi
I think it is the high influence of reality shows. And the portrayal of
winner, the drama around and the gaga stories then after.

If people watch more of sports or any other shows where hardwork and
performance is an absolute necessary to win, and winning is not just about
people praising and talking about the winner they would shape up better i
feel.

~~~
pmorici
I don't thing that anything on tv is going to cure a lazy person of their
laziness.

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petercooper
Yep, and year after year the media bleats on about how exams are getting
easier because the scores are going up. The kids nowadays are going to hell in
a handcart.. we've heard this since time immemorial. (Yeah, Marselis isn't the
media, but still.. :))

~~~
stcredzero
There's a part of that which is some weird inter-generational perceptual
phenomenon. There's another part of that which is the general advance of
culture -- somehow kids are becoming more sophisticated at an earlier age.
Scores can also go up because more people are gaming the system y hiring test
tutors. However, in the US, there's another part of that which is a genuine
degradation of the US public school system.

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JabavuAdams
Get back to work on your businesses, fools!

Quit circle-jerking on wannabe Entrepreneur feel-good sites.

The most successful programming entrepreneurs I know didn't have time to read
news sites. They were too busy getting things done.

 _quietly closes browser and switches to Xcode_

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jeeringmole
Teachers have been complaining that students today aren't what they used to be
at least since Plato -- probably even longer...

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eli_s
Today's universities are yesteryear's technical colleges. Universities used to
produce intellectuals now they are primarily geared towards producing worker
ants for modern "factories".

I'm a CS graduate. I don't consider myself a "Computer Scientist". I'm a
factory worker who taps on his keyboard all day.

The fact is that a degree is now often considered the minimum qualification
necessary to join the workforce.

~~~
diN0bot
it depends on where you go. people from one university will say they weren't
taught to think, just to write code. people for a different university will
say they weren't given enough hands-on experience, just computability
theorems.

the real problem is that universities are marketed to kids. it's funny how the
moral of many kid stories is "be yourself" and yet it seems to be taking
longer and longer for people to find themselves and what they really want to
do. not that the constant advertising from universities, corporations and
society at large helps.

~~~
brandonkm
> not that the constant advertising from universities, corporations and
> society at large helps.

Indeed.

It also seems to me that a large part of the university experience is 'finding
yourself'. Unfortunately, I don't think this process fully materializes in the
vast majority of students.

