Thesis: the average 18 year old student in, say, York in AD 800 (the middle of the so-called "Dark Ages") had read more, knew more languages, was better trained in logic, could read more music, knew more mathematics and astronomy than the average student from a university today.
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(Those are math terms, look it up) Musical training is so much more common in society in the modern era than in eras past it's ridiculous You can just put up a sign at the mall and relatively quickly gather enough people to form a band
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Like do you understand what a privilege that is, what level of economic surplus that entails that we have a society where vast swathes of the population can buy a guitar and learn to play it in their spare time and do so long enough to get good at it
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Pedantic, I know, but if “people who don’t still outnumber people who do” that means both the modal *and* the median student are “people who don’t” know or play music.
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Yeah, okay, I'm not the biggest math guy either
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Maybe I know above averagely musical students, but there's zero chance that more than half of students I know don't know how to read either chords or sheet music, both of which are more sophisticated than early 9th century European musical notation
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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Would you permit "the typical student" or even "most students" - who have completed their Carolingian schooling? I was not being precise. I certainly did not expect the attention I got, from a tweet!!
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Okay so a huge chunk of what you're complaining about is just a greater degree of specialization within modern education And even that is absurd because being "educated" at all in that time period WAS AN EXTREME SPECIALIZATION
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