<p>Wow, GH, we think alike, I drive a 2002 Odyssey, too and yeah, it is about 21, 22 on the highway or so. Speaking as a pretty much retired gearhead (I don’t have the time to work on cars these days, and also my skills are probably so so), the cars today, I don’t care how many people claim the ‘old cars were great’, are for the most part infinitely superior. Yeah, I have heard someone whose cadillac back in the day got 100k miles on it, but these days even relatively cheap cars can give you over 200k, and the maintenance is so much less. Sorry, but back in the day, pre 1980, if a car had 30 or 40k, for the most part you started wanting to dump it, the engines would start to burn oil, the transmissions would fail, and in places where you are in winter, rust out (think of how many cars you see these days with corrosion, most of the ones I see are 25 years old or older). Yeah, the cars are expensive, but to try and keep a car back in the day the way you can now, it would cost you a lot more in repairs (and I am not even talking the Italian sports car I once had <em>lol</em>). </p>
<p>I think this is an important discussion, debating starting a new thread. The reality of music education these days is that unlike prior generations, it takes massive support from an early age, you simply don’t go from being a decent student in a school orchestra or band and get into a competitive program, and while that has been true on piano and violin and cello for a long time, it is hitting all aspects of music. I have told the story about a prior teacher of my S’s, who had been basically an okay violinist in high school, who got into one of the higher level conservatories, and got into a pretty high level professional orchestra (ie actually is full time,pays decently, etc) right out of college…and they wouldn’t be able to do that today, I can almost guarantee it. Music schools and music teachers talk about the lack of diversity, the lack of kids from certain economic levels, racial groups and so forth, and a lot of that is the cost of it, and it isn’t just the cost of conservatory or pre college programs, it is the cost to get in there. Getting into a top prep program like Juilliard or CIM and so forth is competitive as all get out, you could have 150 kids competing for 6 slots on violin at a place like Juilliard (depends on the year and circumstances, these days probably is 20 slots or so). It usually means studying with a high level teacher at 100+ an hour, it means a lot of other things, too. </p>
<p>If you are a violinist or I would presume cellist, getting a decent instrument can cost you between 20-50k. We went through that last summer, and put a lot of time and angst into getting the instrument, we went to a lot of places, my S probably tried several hundred instruments, and the reality was to get the kind of sound and quality and projection needed, there were very few instruments <20k that were even in the running. And then there are the festivals, the special programs, the music, etude books, and then if they are practicing the way they should, bow rehairings, that with a really good place runs 70 or 80 bucks (or more).</p>
<p>We can kid ourselves that the horatio alger story holds true, that the kid with the dream entering school who has not had the opportunity to study with a high level teacher and so forth, but it simply isn’t true. I have seen kids from modest backgrounds who have made it, but usually it is because someone noticed them and got them the help they needed, or they had parents who knew how to navigate things. A kid from an underrepresented group, let’s say someone black or hispanic, may have an easier time, but even there, it takes knowing who to talk to, knowing how to navigate, to get it.And of course something that CC is here for in the first place, trying to even understand what is out there, unless you get exposed to the world of music, it is kind of a rude awakening, I bet if you polled people not familiar with the music world, most of them would tell you the horatio alger kind of thing of course can go on in music, that it doesn’t matter what you do in high school, it can work out…and it isn’t that simple.</p>
<p>I think my frustration is that knowing how hard it is, that the music schools love to pretend that seriously studying music (talking classical here) is this egalitarian thing, that kids with talent and passion are their joy, when leaving out that with all the talent and joy and passion in the world, without access they are often dead at the starting gate. The proof of this can be seen with the influx of incredibly talented kids from Asia or even Asian American kids, with the kids from Asia they tend either to be from well off families (little emperors of China, kids from well off Korean families), or in the case of China, access to state funded schools that search out talented kids, prep them, and then the kids can earn scholarships to top conservatories, and in all the cases, the kids have had high levels of support from the time they are small. </p>
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