We have at my workplace a paper towel dispenser that cannot properly dispense a paper towel. It can rip, shred, and tear a paper towel. It can peremptorily dump a half-dozen folded paper towels into your hand or onto the counter. But convincing it to release a single unmolested paper towel requires two hands, finesse, and the gentle persistence needed to coax a frightened kitten out from under the bed.
How, I wonder, could any designer be so inept as to screw up a simple paper towel dispenser, which is just a long shallow box with a wide slit along the bottom? The box is filled with fan-fold paper towels. Pull out a towel by its leading edge through the slit and the next towel half-emerges, thanks to the fan folds. Only by truly bungling either the depth of the thing, or the size of the dispensing slit, could something go wrong.
And yet something has gone wrong. The dispenser sucks doodoo. I suppose we should be grateful that this appalling incompetence was applied to a kitchen device and not, say, to the drive train of a Toyota Camry. Still, how did it get past quality control? And why should our faculty lounge be stuck with such a sodden failure of a towel dispenser when there are no doubt umpty-million forthright and fully functional towel dispensers to be had at the same price?
To make things even worse, a paper towel dispenser has only one function: it dispenses paper towels, and nothing else. It cannot be pressed into service as a substitute can opener, cheese grater, or welding torch. Therefore its ignominy is all the more severe. It is a one-trick pony that bungles its trick.
I am reminded of the occasional music stand that cannot hold music; put a score on the stand and the platform promptly sinks until the music has reached knee level. In some cases a feckless stand can be returned to full social responsibility via the tightening of a screw, but many music stands depend on friction to keep themselves appropriately upright. Once age and usage have diminished that friction, not even a box of Viagra will make it right. And there it is: a music stand that cannot hold music. It has failed at its one and only function.
Contemplate the fate that awaits Little Dobbin the One-Trick Pony, after he is no longer able—or willing—to perform his trick. Little Dobbin the One-Trick Pony will soon be appearing in a glue pot near you. Or consider the appropriate destination for the rip-it-up towel dispenser or the impotent music stand: both are headed for the dumpster, and please let it be sooner rather than later.
Which leads me to Conservatory-type music students. Far too many of them are opting for careers as aural Little Dobbins, their focus largely on the narrow single objective of playing an instrument really, really well. Not that there is anything wrong with being a hot-shot player. But wanting isn’t getting, and the brutal fact is that for many of those students all those long hours spent cranking away in a practice room are going to amount to precisely squat. They just won’t become good enough. Or there will be no place for them to go. Or both. At best they’ll wind up racking up the miles in the Freeway Philharmonic, or teaching piano to tone-deaf cretins in a strip-mall music store, but for many, even those dour career paths will prove elusive. There they are: trained up the wazoo yet without marketable skills. What to do? The dumpster is out of the question, and since they lack gelatin-filled hooves, the glue pot isn’t a viable alternative either.
Thus conservatories must ensure that their students have been exposed to a reasonably broad range of learning. Many conservatories evince cavalier attitudes about such training, more concerned at mollifying the accreditors—who tend to suspect that conservatories offer degrees in cupcakeology—than in providing an intelligently planned and properly executed core curriculum. Yet such carelessness is, in the long run, a dreadful disservice to the students. True, the trade-school aspects of conservatory education must be maintained if the profession is to persist. Yet the heart of post-secondary education isn’t about acquiring skills or filling heads with facts. It’s all about learning to learn. Learning to think. Learning to explore. Learning to experiment. Learning to imagine.
Without such a broad base, Little Cindy the One-Trick Violinist may land in dire straits should it turn out that her violin playing can’t keep her clothed, fed, and housed. Little Dobbin wound up in the glue pot; the towel dispenser and music stand wound up in the dumpster. Little Cindy could wind up selling parakeets at Sammy’s Pet World. How grim. Little Cindy, and the conservatory that trained her, would do well to take steps—right now—to forestall a joyless lifetime of bitten fingers, dirty cages, and budgie poop.