wave-particle duality and TV reception

In article ,
says...

"Yellow" wrote in message
T...
In article ,

(My school had this weird idea that kids in the A stream would miss the
fifth form and go straight on to the sixth. Quite what was the point in
being able to go to university at 17 I don't know. Meant I had to give up
Latin in the second form which was the only foreign language I found
interesting.)

Schools were (are?) strange places. I am crap at foreign languages (and
even with extra lessons still only managed grade 4 CSE French and the
oral examiner asked me why I hadn't bothered to study!) so I was put in
the "remedial" class for French. No problem with that.

But it also meant I was put in the remedial class for English - but I
was quite good at English! The two things went hand-in-hand according to
the school.

Work that out because it has always stumped me!

Why have a remedial class for something as unnecessary as French? I knew I'd
fail Eng Lit, French, Geography and History O level and did. I passed the
important subjects like Maths, Eng Lang, Chemistry and Physics.

Yes, I got those too. I just failed the History, although I loved the
lessons, and totally tanked out on the English Lit. Stupid Shakespeare,
stupid Chaucer. Irony is I consumed books as a youngster, still do in
fact although now I prefer the audio kind and the rate has slowed as
there are so many other interesting diversions, I just prefer the type
that are written in English, make sense and are enjoyable.

Read The Martian by Andy Weir? Go out and buy it now! Haven't enjoyed a
book so much in years.


There was no real attempt to *teach* the subjects I failed in any case. You
could either do them or not. (My Eng Lit teacher said he would eat his
Panama hat if I passed, so I took pity on his digestive system.)

It might have been nice to have some proper Art in secondary school, like
teaching us to draw, paint and model. All we did was fiddle about and make
models out of drinking straws, and see how many shades of black we could
make with pencil.

We played with a few techniques and I particularly enjoyed the dies and
the wax resist, but I would have loved to have been taught to draw or to
paint - and we did neither. Not even an attempt.


A bit of encouragement to make music might have been useful, though I don't
suppose I would have excelled.

I was watching a film the other night and the main character was
teaching a class of small children how to read music and I realised that
we never even had a page of sheet music explained to us yet we had a
"music" lesson every week.

I did toss a book in that lesson once, to my friend at the next desk,
and the teacher got so angry she made me write an essay on why I must
nor throw books. Still, that was probably more useful than either the
remedial French or remedial English classes. :-)

Max Demian wrote:

Why have a remedial class for something as unnecessary as French? I knew I'd
fail Eng Lit, French, Geography and History O level and did. I passed the
important subjects like Maths, Eng Lang, Chemistry and Physics.

Chemistry and Physics aren't important subjects. They are the ones taken
by the spotty unattractive kids who are destined to low paid demanding
jobs that actually benefit humanity. No, the important subjects are
Media Studies and Sociology.

Bill

In article , Max Demian
wrote:

It might have been nice to have some proper Art in secondary school,
like teaching us to draw, paint and model. All we did was fiddle about
and make models out of drinking straws, and see how many shades of
black we could make with pencil.

I realised long after I'd left school that the art 'teachers' I'd
encountered at school had *never* made any actual attempt at teaching us
*how* to draw or paint. All they'd done is have us sit down and 'try'.

The penny dropped many years later when I watched a TV series on 'how to
paint' that gave the viewer some basic ideas about how to construct simple
shapes into useful drawings of people, etc. I then realised that being
shown this at school might have made a real difference.

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
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In article , Yellow
wrote:


Yes, I got those too. I just failed the History, although I loved the
lessons, and totally tanked out on the English Lit. Stupid Shakespeare,
stupid Chaucer. Irony is I consumed books as a youngster,

Similar here. The books we were 'required' to read for school were
uniformly uninteresting. Whilst 'at home' I was reading so many library
books that I used the cards for my mom, dad, and grandmother to be able to
get enough for each 2-week period.

Although I did get hooked by Shakespeare later, this was because I
encountered a brilliant and enthusiastic teacher.

He was also a keen actor (appeared a few times on TV) who would read the
works with real expression and arrange good group readings. He also
organised two coach trips a year to the RSC at Stratford-on-Avon and these
were highlights of the year. A friend and I used to sneak back onto them
for a couple of years after we'd left the school. 8-]

The productions we saw of King Lear and Taming of the Shrew were stunning.
In the Shrew it involved an actor riding down the main isle onto the stage
on a motorbike to establish how much of a 'lad' he was! The entry of Lear
at the start of the play was stunning. TV or film couldn't have matched it.


I was watching a film the other night and the main character was
teaching a class of small children how to read music and I realised that
we never even had a page of sheet music explained to us yet we had a
"music" lesson every week.

We did get to learn the basics of reading music in 4/5th years as we had to
play an instrument. But it never went much beyond simple piano scores if
you chose piano, or single line if you went for the trusty standby of the
descant recorder. I did spend time trying fuller scores, but decided that
for me they made an interesting study, but *not* whilst listening to music
when I found them a distraction.

Otherwise in music lessons it was limited to one or two simple cases like
getting the class to try and follow the 2nd movement of Beethoven's 7th
which is fairly easy given the persistent nature of the music. Basically
you can count your way though the first pages.

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
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Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

Jim Lesurf wrote:
In article , Max Demian
wrote:

It might have been nice to have some proper Art in secondary school,
like teaching us to draw, paint and model. All we did was fiddle
about and make models out of drinking straws, and see how many
shades of black we could make with pencil.

I realised long after I'd left school that the art 'teachers' I'd
encountered at school had *never* made any actual attempt at teaching
us *how* to draw or paint. All they'd done is have us sit down and
'try'.

I actually think that's the right approach as regards art. Get the
pupils to free themselves of their inhibitions and express themselves,
however they choose to do that. Then work from there, encouraging any
creativity they display, and improving technique.

The penny dropped many years later when I watched a TV series on 'how
to paint' that gave the viewer some basic ideas about how to
construct simple shapes into useful drawings of people, etc. I then
realised that being shown this at school might have made a real
difference.

But 'art' isn't about producing 'useful' drawings. We have machines
that do that called cameras and computers. It's about expression and
interpretation, not realism.
And it's not about an educational production line churning out identical
pupils drawing formulaic pictures of each other either.

On 17/12/2014 01:43, Yellow wrote:
In ,
says...

Why have a remedial class for something as unnecessary as French? I knew I'd
fail Eng Lit, French, Geography and History O level and did. I passed the
important subjects like Maths, Eng Lang, Chemistry and Physics.

Yes, I got those too. I just failed the History, although I loved the
lessons, and totally tanked out on the English Lit. Stupid Shakespeare,
stupid Chaucer. Irony is I consumed books as a youngster, still do in
fact although now I prefer the audio kind and the rate has slowed as
there are so many other interesting diversions, I just prefer the type
that are written in English, make sense and are enjoyable.

Part of the problem was the way things were taught and the daft
questions that examiners set. I liked the social aspects of history:
the impact that agriculture had on a previous hunter/gatherer lifestyle;
the drive towards urbanisation caused by progress via inventions etc.
But the teaching was all about when something happened rather than why
and how things came about, which made the subject unmemorable. Like you
I just failed it, because there were not enough questions on the bits I
had taken an interest in.

Likewise English Literature. I liked books (and still do) but couldn't
relate to them as exam subjects. Most of the poets I had to study
appeared to want to show how clever they were rather than write words
worth reading, and symbolism dates very quickly so that a lot of it was
aligned to the manners of the day and was pretty pointless in modern
times. Shakespeare was OK because most of the plots required an
emotional association (love, jealousy, ambition etc) which didn't date
and would resonate with anybody watching the performance and that meant
bigger audiences and Shakespeare would be able to afford dinner. Other
authors wrote good (or sometimes not so good) books, but were not so
predictable.

But no matter how interesting the literature, the daft questions "What
was in the author's mind when he wrote these words" had nothing to do
with the development of characters or plot, and the appropriate answer
"I don't know, and you are only guessing when you mark this" isn't
something you write on an exam paper so you make something up, and if
your imagination doesn't match that of the person marking, you fail,
like I did.

Then there was the assumption that certain subjects went together. I
liked foreign languages and I liked science, but there was no way my
school would let me study French, Spanish and Physics to A Level.
Physics went with Maths; I could do maths but didn't want to study it
for another two years. To do foreign languages I had to do English as
well. So I passed the foreign languages, failed English and read all
the physics texts books in the school library in my free time, and
played with electronics (all valves in those days - transistors hadn't
been invented) as a hobby.

After I started work, I became a programmer, because Assembler, Coral66
and Cobol were just different foreign languages, and for fun I still
write websites in HTML as a language exercise.

It might have been nice to have some proper Art in secondary school, like
teaching us to draw, paint and model.

I was told that art was imagination, and it wasn't that simple. I could
imagine a bonfire in my head, but putting paint on paper and having it
look anything like my imagination proved absolutely impossible. But
nobody took the trouble to guide me to improving, I was just one of
those "no good at art".

The only art that was actually taught was by a temporary teacher filling
in while the normal teacher was away. I got taught Calligraphy and
liked it enough to get my own set of pens and ink and when I was good
enough I wrote all the posters advertising jumble sales for the local
scout troop. At the start of the next term, it was art as usual:
watercolour paint on white paper and a total waste of time. It was may
years later that I discovered that other schools used charcoal, and
taught other techniques like silhouettes.
Crap teacher; crap outcome.

Jim

In article , Norman Wells
wrote:
Jim Lesurf wrote:
In article , Max Demian
wrote:

It might have been nice to have some proper Art in secondary school,
like teaching us to draw, paint and model. All we did was fiddle
about and make models out of drinking straws, and see how many shades
of black we could make with pencil.

I realised long after I'd left school that the art 'teachers' I'd
encountered at school had *never* made any actual attempt at teaching
us *how* to draw or paint. All they'd done is have us sit down and
'try'.

I actually think that's the right approach as regards art. Get the
pupils to free themselves of their inhibitions and express themselves,
however they choose to do that.

Well, as I recall most of the artists who've become famed for their
non-representational work can actually draw and paint very well. Art is
based on having a set of relevant skills.

And a good friend of mine who went to art school was, indeed, taught the
relevant methods and techniques.


The penny dropped many years later when I watched a TV series on 'how
to paint' that gave the viewer some basic ideas about how to construct
simple shapes into useful drawings of people, etc. I then realised
that being shown this at school might have made a real difference.

But 'art' isn't about producing 'useful' drawings.

Misunderstanding of useful. I meant the ability to draw or paint and get a
result that looks as you intended.

We have machines
that do that called cameras and computers.

Which misses my point. And as artists will tell you even a
'representational' work is *not* something you'd get using a camera. Even
biologists and field-workers like archeologists know that a drawing or
painting will show details in a way that a photo often fails to show.

It's about expression and
interpretation, not realism.

Have a feeling that the art establishment moved past that false dichotomy
ages ago. :-)

In order to write you need to know how to use a pen or keyboard or similar,
and to know the rules that allow scribbled to be read by others as words.

A visual artist who wants to "express their interpretation" in paint or
drawing has to have the skill to actually be able to draw and paint
what they want to appear on the canvas or paper.

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

In article ,
says...


Big nip

So I ...
played with electronics (all valves in those days - transistors hadn't
been invented) as a hobby.

So you completed your secondary education before the transistor was invented
in 1948?

By 1960, when I left school, magazines like Practical Wireless carried lots
of projects based on surplus Red Spot and White Spot transistors and the
transistor radio was starting to dominate the portable radio market, albeit
at a premium over their valve counterparts ...

After I started work, I became a programmer, because Assembler, Coral66
and Cobol were just different foreign languages ...

That's a bit of a gap, isn't it?

CORAL didn't appear until 1964 and CORAL66 followed six years later.

COBOL first appeared slightly earlier, in 1959 (about the time the original
Bush TR82 was released) and were well on their way out by the time it was
standardised in 1968 ...

--

Terry

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"Norman Wells" wrote in message
...
Jim Lesurf wrote:
In article , Max Demian
wrote:

It might have been nice to have some proper Art in secondary school,
like teaching us to draw, paint and model. All we did was fiddle
about and make models out of drinking straws, and see how many
shades of black we could make with pencil.

I realised long after I'd left school that the art 'teachers' I'd
encountered at school had *never* made any actual attempt at teaching
us *how* to draw or paint. All they'd done is have us sit down and
'try'.

I actually think that's the right approach as regards art. Get the pupils
to free themselves of their inhibitions and express themselves, however
they choose to do that. Then work from there, encouraging any creativity
they display, and improving technique.

You can't do something until you have the technique. Even Picasso knew how
to draw people properly before he became 'creative' with women's faces.

Just 'freeing oneself from inhibitions' and getting 'creative' (whatever
that means) will only work if you have some kind of natural ability to draw
&c.

The penny dropped many years later when I watched a TV series on 'how
to paint' that gave the viewer some basic ideas about how to
construct simple shapes into useful drawings of people, etc. I then
realised that being shown this at school might have made a real
difference.

But 'art' isn't about producing 'useful' drawings. We have machines that
do that called cameras and computers. It's about expression and
interpretation, not realism.

You've still got to know how to do it before you can 'express' and
'interpret'.

--
Max Demian

Max Demian wrote:
"Norman Wells" wrote in message
...
Jim Lesurf wrote:
In article , Max Demian
wrote:

It might have been nice to have some proper Art in secondary
school, like teaching us to draw, paint and model. All we did was
fiddle about and make models out of drinking straws, and see how
many shades of black we could make with pencil.

I realised long after I'd left school that the art 'teachers' I'd
encountered at school had *never* made any actual attempt at
teaching us *how* to draw or paint. All they'd done is have us sit
down and 'try'.

I actually think that's the right approach as regards art. Get the
pupils to free themselves of their inhibitions and express
themselves, however they choose to do that. Then work from there,
encouraging any creativity they display, and improving technique.

You can't do something until you have the technique. Even Picasso
knew how to draw people properly before he became 'creative' with
women's faces.

He could, but it wasn't /necessary/ for him to be able to do so in order
to create his best works.

Can Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko draw people? I've no idea, but I
rather doubt it.

Just 'freeing oneself from inhibitions' and getting 'creative'
(whatever that means) will only work if you have some kind of natural
ability to draw &c.

The penny dropped many years later when I watched a TV series on
'how to paint' that gave the viewer some basic ideas about how to
construct simple shapes into useful drawings of people, etc. I then
realised that being shown this at school might have made a real
difference.

But 'art' isn't about producing 'useful' drawings. We have machines
that do that called cameras and computers. It's about expression and
interpretation, not realism.

You've still got to know how to do it before you can 'express' and
'interpret'.

Not necessarily. Formal training can be stultifying and kill individual
creativity stone dead.

It depends on what you see as the objective of 'art' as a subject taught
in schools. Is it just to churn out people who can all draw a
recognisable human being more or less by rote using the same taught
techniques, or is it to give free rein to personal expression that is
not possible in other subjects?

The former I would suggest is pretty mechanical. The latter is art.