

Is Music the Key to Success? - leothekim
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/opinion/sunday/is-music-the-key-to-success.html

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geebee
As a parent of two little kids, I learned from the NYTimes/Atlantic/New
Yorker/National Enquirer that there are several dozen essential keys to
success. They include:

\- sports (that enhance "executive function") \- music \- art \- reading a lot
\- learning a second language \- unstructured play time \- engaging in lots of
conversation \- dance \- creative writing \- playing in dirt \- identifying
animals and plants in nature \- games that involve spatial reasoning \- mind
melding with pregnant martians

...and many, many more!

And here's the truly terrifying thing - you have to do _all_ of them. After
all, your friends on facebook have posted pictures of their kids doing all of
them. So, ahem, get to it!

Seriously, it's easy to get yourself all wound up, and there is no way you
could possibly do all these things. So I'd just ask, is your kid engaged in
something interesting, and does your kid seem to enjoy it? I'm going to guess
that if you're the sort of parent who stresses about something you read in the
NYTimes, your kid probably isn't parked in front of the TV eating cheetos for
6+ hours a day.

Just for the record (heh), I particularly love music, and I'm all for it as
one good choice among many, but there are a lot, and I mean a lot, of things
your kids can do that build all kinds of wonderful life skills. You're doing a
couple of them, right?

You're doin' great. Seriously. Don't stress.

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Camillo
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that professional success and studying
music both correlate with having an upper class background.

------
orasis
Confirmation bias. This is hack pseudo-science.

