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Comment by gradstudent | Hacker News Reader

Music education makes you a better rounded human. IMO it should be mandatory in early development. Kids are fickle and shortsighted. Why even let them decide these kinds of things at an early age? As a grown adult a parent is obviously in a better position to choose. Expose them to music, math, programming -- all that good stuff!

Obviously you wouldn't take it to extremes and torture the kid but I have noticed a trend among Anglo parents to let their children make important decisions during their elementary years -- like what is and isn't a worthwhile pursuit. It then comes down to pure dumb luck whether the child is engaged in a worthwhile recreational activity or a dumb one.

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Again, worthwhile - to whom? And again, you can apply the very same logic to (some) adults. Many people, actually, do this. That's why they ban drugs, for example. That's why they setup(or allow the setup of) censorship systems(china great firewall and many others). Some people are just too dumb to think.

This may sound irrelevant to the discussion, but it is not. What age is not early age? Parents always be more "grown"(their age number will always be bigger).

Coercion is killer of motivation: force kid to play violin, and he is likely to hate violin in the (near?) future.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't "expose" kids to music, math, programming and other great stuff, but I'm saying that you probably shouldn't force them.

IMO, you should parent your children until they go off to University. They live under your roof and need to follow your rules. If they do not follow your rules they need to argue their case in a rational adult manner and to your satisfaction. If they cannot and act like petulant children you need to treat them as such; i.e. tell them to shut the hell up and eat their dogfood.

I don't care that the same arguments could be applied to adults. Adults are grown individuals who by virtue of their age have earned their right to be bone-headed and make stupid choices. As a parent all you can do is try to instill in your children values that prevent them from turning into boneheads.

Clear enough?

Is the child being a "bonehead" if they decide they don't enjoy the violin and would prefer to play clarinet or percussion instead?

You're putting words in my mouth. I only argued in favour of mandatory exposure to a broad range of activities, including musical instruments. The precise instrument probably doesn't matter but. I would prefer e.g. a piano or clarinet over a guitar or drums but hey, whatever. Just learn some music theory!

You said that you agreed with the list, the list explicitly says "nothing apart from piano or violin".

I pretty much do? I definitely have some strong personal biases toward particular instruments and not others and I would push for those. Asking a kid to choose a music instrument yields a decision every bit as informed as rolling a dice. Why bother?

> Asking a kid to choose a music instrument yields a decision every bit as informed as rolling a dice.

Except that is his own decision.

> Why bother?

Because a kid is a separate person, not an extension of your personality.

I don't know if your comment is a troll or if you're simply dim. I assume troll. Still, I'll bite:

The relationship between a parent and child is not a democratic one. As a parent you have a responsibility to make choices for your child until they can make them for themselves. I do not agree with letting kids decide which developmental activities they will or will not partake in or how they will do so. Is that clear enough for you, sunshine?

Surely the kid can choose an instrument on the basis of the one that they like the sound of or even what seems 'cool'. They will probably have more motivation to study something that they have chosen themselves even if it is for fairly superficial reasons.

It's not like there is an objective way to choose a "better" instrument anyway since half of the fun is playing with others who use different instruments.

So why not, as a parent, present a set of options that seem reasonable to you and have them choose amongst those? i.e. you can play one of e.g. {piano, violin, clarinet}. When the child is better informed, they can choose for themselves. Until that point comes though, asking children to make arbitrary choices, particularly ones that affect their development, seems silly to me.

Surely the choice is basically arbitrary anyway?

Why would it affect their development if they picked say a trumpet, guitar or flute instead? They can always pick up a different instrument later.

It would be like if a kid wanted to learn python and you said "no! you must learn Java instead".

Python and Java are equivalent in the sense that both a Turing Complete. Is there a similar equivalence between all musical instruments which makes choosing one over another a purely arbitrary decision? I don't know but I suspect not. A pair of bongos seems to have much less to offer as an instructional vehicle for learning about music than, say, a piano.

EDIT: Setting aside the above argument for a second, there are practical considerations too that make the choice of musical instrument a non-arbitrary decision. For example: the cost of the instrument, its portability (important if the band decides to tour) and of course the availability of instruction.

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