I don't get this. Why aren't kids taught music just for the sake of it instead of for a career? You most likely have mastery by not doing it "full-time" but at least you will enjoy it and get to a point where yo would be able to play it socially and enjoyably!
Well, if you want to teach kids music that they actually enjoy and that will be more applicable to this generation, focus on pop music, rap music, hip hop, any popular music genre. Hip hop and R&B are the most popular genres of music in the US [1], classical music and jazz are the least popular genres of music [2]. Why are we still teaching classical and jazz over genres more popular, enjoyable, and accessible? It is not a good career path, it is not popular with kids or with the masses, and it is a lot more expensive than any other genre of music.
I try to imagine a high school band playing rap music... this is not easy. I think you'd have to assign the rap itself to the percussion section, and there wouldn't be much left for the rest of the band to play.
Copyright makes that idea rough anyway. Classical music is far easier to get. Sousa marches and the national anthem are also easy to get.
I mostly don't see how any of this relates to a career path. We teach kids music because they enjoy the teamwork and accomplishment.
Why are we still teaching assemby and C over development languages more popular, enjoyable, and accessible? It is not a good career path, it is not popular with kids or with the masses, and it is a lot more expensive than any other genre of software development.
That is comparing apples to oranges. C and assembly are what most applications and operating systems are built on in one way or another. Classical music is not the root of popular music nor does it carry over to other music genres that much at all.
Also, the way that music is taught in band rooms, is based almost entirely on sheet music and nothing on actually creating music. In fact most of the people I know who were very good classical band players had very underdeveloped ears and sucked at music creation. If you program in C, you will become a better python/js/etc. programmer, the same can not be said for classical music.
Plus, most computer science programs have switched from starting with C to starting kids off on Java or Python, so that argument does not make any sense. Most public schools do not even teach anything other than jazz or classical music.
Music is frequently taught at schools but not pushed as a career choice, so I'm not sure that the original complaint holds (at least not everywhere). Almost all children where I grew up studied music in some form at school and virtually none took it as a career, those who did were amply warned about the risks. This was considered unremarkable.
