KEITH BENSON'S PERSONAL MESSAGE
 |
Keith BENSON Photo Courtesy: Thomas Edison State College not available for download |
For me, education brings a balance into my life -- a sense of awareness, accomplishment, and happiness. Outside of music, history is the subject that I am passionate about. That is why I was involved with Standing in the Shadows of Motown - we were story tellers. We wanted to dig out their story, tell it and feel satisfied that we’ve righted an unintentional wrong. All the positive public reaction is just gravy.”
I have been a studio musician playing with top artists including Teddy Pendergrass and The Four Tops, and have just recieved my Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Thomas Edison State College and I am now 48 years old.
My family has always held education in high regard. My two kids have just finished getting their college degrees and my son will start law school in the fall of 2004. I didn’t want to be the only one in the house without my degree.
It has been 30 years since I enrolled in his first college course at Howard University in Washington, D.C. and I have has always stressed my children and to the children in his neighborhood the importance of going to college, until one day, one of the boys asked me if I had my college degree, I had no more excuses.
I was selected to deliver the Response for Graduates speech at Thomas Edison State College Commencement Ceremony where I said . . .
“In my quietude, when I think of the history courses and of the differing requirements and the personalities of the professors, most of whom were PhDs; when I think that I earned As with every one of them—it gives me a rush that I can’t get from a stage. And I love it."
“The stage thrill goes away with the crowd or the post concert party. But the feeling of academic satisfaction is still with me even now. I don’t know why, and I’m not going to try to analyze it. I’m just enjoying the feeling of accomplishment,” he said.
When I think of the formal education I have received and earned in life, I’m not only grateful but also see its use every day.
That’s right. Even the calculus class comes in handy in the result of critical-thinking skills. But I’ve always had a love for learning . . . learning just about anything.
I pride myself on the fact that because of my liberal arts education (both formal and informal), I find pleasure in having a conversation with just about anyone -- whether talking about physics or dolphins.
peace,
Keith Benson
P.S.
Please take a look at the links I have recommended to you below, including the link to MY SISTER CARLA BENSON.
Funk Brothers Webquest
|
RECOMMENDED LINKS FOR STUDENTS AND TEACHERS
INTETGRATE LITERACY, MUSIC AND TECHNOLOGY
Folklore, Music, & Traditional Culture
Digital Divide / Digital Equity
Interdisciplinary Curriculum - Science and Music
Like Albert Einstein, another inventor Ray Kurzweil made the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments and much more.
More messages from artists and athletes
Ear Health- IT'S TOO LOUD You may be going deaf.
DID YOU KNOW THAT Children who have musical training also have significantly better verbal memory than children who don't, and the difference increases the longer they study?
Music training during childhood contributes to the reorganization and increased development of the [4]brain's left temporal lobes in musicians. After administering verbal memory tests that calculated the number of words children could recall from a list, and a comparable visual memory test for images, the researchers found that students with musical training had better verbal memory. Musically trained students retained more words even after a 30 minute delay. Even though having fewer than six years of musical training can boost verbal memory, the researchers say that more training boosts cortical reorganization in the left temporal region and improves the ability to handle other functions such as verbal learning. And the benefits of musical training appear to be long-lasting. Students who dropped out of the advanced training group were tested after a year and found to retain the verbal memory advantage they had gained earlier Source
