Monday, September 19, 2016

Teach and Learn: Supertramp




purchase Supertramp [The Logical Song]
purchase Supertramp  [School]

Ah! Supertramp!  One of my mainstay musics in the 80s and 90s. <Breakfast in America> and more. Co-founders Roger Hodgson and Richard Davies no longer collaborate, but in the prime of Supertramp, all their songs were marked Davies/Hodgson - much like Lennon/McCartney. They didnt see the need to differentiate. Today, it's rather different.

Seems that Hodgson was particularly affected by the trials of his education (sadly, more often than it should be, it is a travail that one has to survive). Perhaps that is why so many of the the lyrics/themes of Supertramp songs include references to schools (and our themes of learn and teach). Sadly, school is a process of learn and pass (or fail)- a path strewn with adverseties (tests to pass, schoolmates with agendas, teachers guided by who knows what all ...)


Hodgson was affected enough that he picked up the guitar and a certain amount of keyboard skills as well.  See below...


In examining the ills of educational systems, you can go back to the socio-political roots : a system that requires parents to work and are thus forced to send their kids somewhere during their working hours/ (ie: school) since they cannot care for them during those hours. You can look into the systems that describe the curriculum that your children are subjected to - from the spin on the history they learn to the scientific knowledge about global warming and evolution.  Without advances in these areas, as Hogsden says, it equates  to growing up just like the previous generation - a theme best put to word in The Logical Song (and apparently part of The Donald's platform: everything was better in the 50s).


 Most of us spend 12 of our first 20 years  in school - trying our best to learn. Outside school, we continue to do our best to learn from both our parents and society at large. Today's up-to-date educators espouse "life-long" learning as the successful path to a profitable future. Sadly - it's a fact - statistics show that all too few people read more than a book a year - and watching The Donald on TV doesnt count as education. no more than discounting global warnming or evolutionary theory - despite what your Texas textbook writes.