I used to hate music exams. I mean, I loved when I did well in them, but I hated almost everything else about them. And when I didn't do well, it sucked. It made it feel like the whole thing had been a waste of time. I didn't get the validation I wanted after all that hard work I had put in, and it really put me on a downer.Looking back, there were so many things I could have done to make music exams a more fun and positive experience. I could have been so much more empowered, but...

  The written word is one of the cornerstones of modern civilisation, and yet if it had been up to the great Greek philosopher Socrates it would have been done away with a long time ago. He believed true learning could only happen through direct dialogue with another human being, through a back and forth of questions and answers, until a topic was examined from all angles. He feared that the written word would result in a superficial 'fake' knowledge, with people thinking they understood things merely because they had read the words on a page. Thankfully his student Plato...