China and Music

The article, China's six-to-one advantage over the US, is an interesting read.

"Chinese parents urge their children to excel at instrumental music

with the same ferocity that American parents [urge] theirs to perform well in soccer or Little League," wrote Jennifer Lin in the Philadelphia Inquirer June 8 in an article entitled China's 'piano fever'.

The world's largest country is well along the way to forming an intellectual elite on a scale that the world has never seen, and against which nothing in today's world - surely not the inbred products of the Ivy League puppy mills - can compete.

. . .

American medical schools accept more undergraduates who majored in music than any other discipline (excepting pre-med).

Any activity that requires discipline and deferred gratification benefits children, but classical music does more than sports or crafts. Playing tennis at a high level requires great concentration, but nothing like the concentration required to perform the major repertoire of classical music.

We live in interesting times.