It's an interesting question, whether one can force a child to love the piano: sort of a Stockholm approach to music appreciation. I guess it's possible that the musical knowledge gained through "encouraged" practice might result in the ability to pick up other instruments a person winds up loving.

I just don't remember the last time I read about a musical genius who was forced to study music, or a particular instrument, despite lack of interest. I thought Beethoven was an example, but it appears that there's no support for the idea that he was forced to practice in misery. Thus it seems unlikely that there's a massive hothousing effect to be gotten by forced practice for the highly gifted, who tend to be stubborn by nature. Still, we're not all cut out to be music geniuses, and there's value for the rest of us in appreciating and playing music.

So I'm on the fence. I have been thinking about starting DS5 on piano lessons, but then again, he's asked (we have had a nice consumer Yamaha keyboard since he was an infant, and he's been trying out chords lately on his own).

I think that there is a strong but usually unspoken idea in American culture, at least, that playing music enhances math ability and perhaps other areas of general cognitive ability as well. I don't know if it's based on anything real, but would be interested to learn. Is it a sort of hothouser's meme, based on popularly hyped notions like the Mozart effect? It seems certain that music, which is like DeeDee says a complex activity with many things going for it, is better than sitting around picking one's nose for developing general cognitive ability, except for fine motor control of that one finger, and maybe developing a mental 3D model of the unseen.

Striving to increase my rate of flow, and fight forum gloopiness. sick