Our daughter Rebekah, who is in second grade, takes three after-school classes every week. On Monday there is violin; on Wednesday, Hebrew; and on Thursday, ballet. One of these classes connects her to a religious tradition going back three thousand years. Two of them are pretty well pointless.

Thus starts Mark Oppenheimer's article, Stop Forcing Your Kids to Learn a Musical Instrument. The article is so full of faulty arguments, it seems not worth responding to. What's the point? The author completely misses the point. Yet I feel compelled to respond.

The first part of my response is borrowed from Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. If you haven't watched the video, find an hour and a half that you can sit down and watch it.

Perhaps the most important point that Pausch makes is about head-fakes:

the other thing about football is we send our kids out to play football or soccer or swimming or whatever it is, and it’s the first example of what I’m going to call a head fake, or indirect learning. We actually don’t want our kids to learn football. I mean, yeah, it’s really nice that I have a wonderful three-point stance and that I know how to do a chop block and all this kind of stuff. But we send our kids out to learn much more important things. Teamwork, sportsmanship, perseverance, etcetera, etcetera. And these kinds of head fake learning are absolutely important. And you should keep your eye out for them because they’re everywhere.

Besides talking about perseverance, he talks a lot about the importance of learning fundamentals.

Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. You’ve got to get the fundamentals down because otherwise the fancy stuff isn’t going to work. And the other Jim Graham story I have is there was one practice where he just rode me all practice. You’re doing this wrong, you’re doing this wrong, go back and do it again, you owe me, you’re doing push-ups after practice. And when it was all over, one of the other assistant coaches came over and said, yeah, Coach Graham rode you pretty hard, didn’t he? I said, yeah. He said, that’s a good thing. He said, when you’re screwing up and nobody’s saying anything to you anymore, that means they gave up. And that’s a lesson that stuck with me my whole life. Is that when you see yourself doing something badly and nobody’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a very bad place to be. Your critics are your ones telling you they still love you and care.

Another great video is Benjamin Zander's Ted Talk about The transformative power of classical music. It is a shorter video that stands pretty well on its own.

When i was a kid, I took music lessons. They were important to me, but I wasn't supported at home in them, and never practiced as much as I should have. I still regret that. So, I strongly encouraged my kids to play music. It has stuck with them and I'd encourage you to listen to some of the music my middle daughter has written and performed.

She also wrote about book about the creative process, Don't Make Art, Just Make Something. Making something is what allows you to practice the fundamentals and learn the indirect lessons that Randy Pausch talks about.

Yet there is more, there is the existential question of what's the point. Recently, I've been making jam. As a kid, my mother made jam. It preserved the fruits of summer. It fed the family. Yet it was also a creative endeavor. Creativity. It brings meaning to life. My jam making is a tribute to my mother. It is about creativity. It is about being connected to my past, to something bigger than simply myself.

A friend from high school is a widowed artist in the Berkshires. The other day, she posted on Facebook.

There is a freshness to the morning as dove blue light slips through the spaces in the venetian blinds. The big black cat, Kit, has come in for his breakfast, and the smaller black and white cat, Lily, has sniffed Kit as her good morning ritual, taken a few bites of her food, and now disappeared to a private nap place. Kit has gone back outside to check his territories. He will later rest on the back porch until I get home from teaching all day. Their life is simple, and mine is, too.

That's the point. The simple life of a cat, of an artist. It is part of the indirect lessons. It reminded me of a great Zen story:

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.

Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

Last Sunday, Kim took Fiona to her guitar lesson at the same school that Rebekah is studying violin at. I will take Fiona to her next lesson, and I will enjoy the strawberry, the simple life of cats and friends. I will enjoy feeling the connectedness between me, Fiona, Miranda, my mother, and everyone who struggles to create, through music, movement, and whatever other ways the spirit moves. I know that there will be times when encouraging Fiona's creativity will be a challenge, yet that too will be a simple strawberry.

I think that's the point.