I found this link to what are considered among the top ten rock bass players in music. While this list could be argued, one point is clear and needs re-affirming; there isn’t a single rock bass player anywhere that acquired skills in rock classes or any kind of rock education that helped them to form a career. This means that rock education does not work. It is a modern invention to accommodate players interested in rock who should be learning rock as it was always learned, as a self taught investigation. It has always been learned this way.
If one disagrees, I invite you to name anyone in rock’s lengthy history who ever acquired a career as a rock player and who sited any kind of rock classes that helped them acquire their career since the 1980’s when rock education began. I predict that no one can name anyone. Going to schools to learn music is not going to schools to learn rock. Rock classes is today’s system to accommodate students asking to learn in a certain way, when what they are asking for doesn’t work. As long as students think that it does, then rock education will never go away. People that believe in rock education need to find a verifiable history that rock can be learned in a classroom by naming anyone in rock that learned this way. If you cannot do this, then this is where a change in music education might begin. If students stopped paying for rock classes, then they would be removed from music school curriculums, and hopefully replaced by music-first educational opportunities.
