This sounds a bit, well, stupid. It assumes that the only long-term benefit to knowing how to play the piano is that you can then earn money as a musician. Bull. He cites a paper that finds that learning Latin does not affect other test scores. He twists the results in this article by saying "X" instead of "Latin" -- which is dishonest of him, he should have quoted what he actually said in the other article. Numerous studies have found correlation with musical ability and math test scores, although I'm too lazy to look them up for a comment on HN. The other thing going on is that by practicing so intensely you are getting better at practicing things. That is an extremely valuable skill, or an extremely valuable habit if you wish to look at it that way. Now I don't have any studies to back this up, so take my assertion with a grain of salt.

What's most sad about this article is how little he sees his own cultural bias.

He says that playing the piano is a worthless skill. I don't see how that statement can be anything other than a value judgement about culture -- music is culture. He says "Cost-benefit analysis is not a Western prejudice." However, the particular cost you assign to training and the benefit you assign to the resulting skill is inherently relative, and his judgement that forcing a kid to learn piano is bad and knowing how to play a piano is worthless IS a prejudice.

His main attack on the science of the book is that he says there's no evidence that parents have any effect on a child's personality. Let's assume this is true. So what? What about skills and habits? Aren't those important? (He mentions skills but not habits. I assume that you can give a kid habits, such as brushing teeth before bed.)

It's also torturous to have to read how he discusses questions #1 and #2, which are presented up-front in the source material and don't really need 23 cm of article dedicated to them.

Now I'm not one to say that Amy Chua's method of parenting presented in "Tiger Mother" is superior. I suspect I'd find "Tiger Mother" to be just another pop science book. But this cost-benefit analysis is a particularly unsound attack on the practice.

I want to see evidence, one way or the other. Sadly, it's not likely to come any time soon.

</rant>