Is Music The Key To Success?

[mjzee]

Courtesy of a link on Mosaic's home page. Good think piece, but it obviously discounts all the people who've studied/played music yet have not become successes in other fields.

NY Times

[colinmce]

Also centralizes its focus on the extremely wealthy, and wealth in general. Just motivation for rich, overeager parents to cursorily involve music in the lives of their children in the hopes that it = more money. No attention paid or value placed on the holistic value of music, or the ways in which it can open up your brain in ways that might help you do or understand things better in a more "in and of itself" type of way. Typical NYT/NYC blinders.
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[Hot Ptah]

It also ignores people who tried to play music in their student years, quit because of a lack of interest, uninspiring teachers, or lack of natural ability (such as no innate sense of rhythm, or no ability to discern pitch), and then became successes in other fields.

Edited October 24, 2013 by Hot Ptah

[A Lark Ascending]

Hitler loved Wagner. Stalin loved Georgian folk songs.

Then there's Ted Heath (no, the other one).

There was even a rumour doing the rounds a while back that Thatcher loved Bartok (Bluebeard's Castle, I expect).

Case proven.

Edited October 24, 2013 by A Lark Ascending

[disaac]

Boy, is this the right place to come for proper perspective. Particularly like Colin's comment (especially having grown up in NYC inundated with the perspective promulgated in the NYT article) -- teaching your kids to love music is about so much more than learning an instrument. I try to impress upon my girls just how fun it is to make music without making them feel obliged to learn how to make it. Moreover, it has never been easier to expose your children and loved ones to all of the wondrous things music is and can be. I feel like if I do just that, everything else is gravy.