The most important benefits of musical education are harder to quantify than awards in competitions. Unfortunately, the latter are easier to use as college application fodder.
Why study music? Because it can let you explore the edges of what your fine motor control is capable of, and what your senses and consciousness can perceive. Because it is a doorway to the mysteries of art and being. Because it can bring people together. Because several years of intense study can bring someone pride in skill and deep joy and happiness for the rest of their lives.
Prioritizing a short-term gain (like enabling your kids to signal to college admissions officers in their teens) over all of the above strikes me as shallow. To me, there is no excuse for besmirching something so wonderful as music by turning it into drudgery for the sake of impressing strangers.
That said, prioritizing an even shorter term gain -- like being untruthful to your kids and praising them for looking cute and making noises so they can experience an ersatz pride -- is an even shallower wallow in mediocrity.
Honestly, I wish I could play the piano so I could play piano music I like, and more easily compose music. No financial gain, but I think I'd just enjoy it. Unfortunately as an adult w/ little time to practice, it seems like learning to play is not likely.
I can listen to recorded piano music, but it's not like actually playing.
Towards this end, it's useful and good to make your kids practice when they are very young. Your brain is actually changed by doing music before the age of 12, in a way that's actually visible on MRI. If I ever have kids, I'll do this for them when they are young but let them find their own way to music or artistic expression of some kind as young adults. (Despite the circumstance that I'm an accomplished musician.)
If you aren't an excellent player of music yourself, but genuinely enjoy music, the thing to do is to take your kids along to see live music, outside of the paid perfomance context. If you can be there, taking joy in music that's not paid for, but played for the pure joy of it, then there's a good chance for your kids to pick up on the magic of it and be influenced to do music for the right reasons. (Yes, I've been a firsthand witness to this phenomenon.)
Then again, there's also a chance that it won't become your kid's thing, or that you could lock them in a tower and forbid them to do anything musical, and they'll still find their way to playing music. By these lights, making your kids engage in musical drudgery in order to impress judges so they can impress college admissions officers is about the worst thing you can do.
It's a matter of choice. I've taught music to both children and adults. The majority of adults who haven't had childhood exposure to music are operating with a tremendous handicap. If they later decide to pursue music, they will wish they'd had the early exposure. I have yet to meet such an adult who doesn't wish this. Conversely, I have also never heard of someone who has felt their thinking was hampered by exposure to music as a child.
By all means, if you have children and wish to foster the diversity of "non-musical thinkers" go right ahead. My children will be getting this exposure when they are young, then the choice to do what they will with it later on.
Why study music? Because it can let you explore the edges of what your fine motor control is capable of, and what your senses and consciousness can perceive. Because it is a doorway to the mysteries of art and being. Because it can bring people together. Because several years of intense study can bring someone pride in skill and deep joy and happiness for the rest of their lives.
Prioritizing a short-term gain (like enabling your kids to signal to college admissions officers in their teens) over all of the above strikes me as shallow. To me, there is no excuse for besmirching something so wonderful as music by turning it into drudgery for the sake of impressing strangers.
That said, prioritizing an even shorter term gain -- like being untruthful to your kids and praising them for looking cute and making noises so they can experience an ersatz pride -- is an even shallower wallow in mediocrity.