Speaking of competition ..

Here’s what happened to me today.
Waiting for my son to finish his Yamaha group music lesson I was talking to the mother of a girl in the same music class as my son about whether our kids will continue next year or not.

I said that we will probably continue another year since my son said he wants to and I think that in addition to being beautiful and providing training it gives him less time to whine that since he finished his homework he should be allowed to use the computer. I added that after next year, .. I don’t know .. we’ll see.

So she asked me: “You mean you aren’t going to continue until he gets his RCM grade 8 exam?”.
“I don’t know I said. If he keeps being interested and willing to practice, maybe .. but that’s probably at least 3 years down the road, and we’re sure we don’t want him to make a career out of music. It’s just serious fun for us.”
So she told me: “Well, he should continue until he gets his RCM grade 8, at least. It’s a milestone. And if he gets that he gets an arts high school credit so he doesn’t need to take art or music in high school. Most of the students taking lessons here have this as a goal.”
I was flabbergasted. It never occured to me that’s why some continue music lessons.
I said: “Well, I don’t see much point to work for 3 years just to get a high school credit. If the child does’t like learning music that much, then it is a lot of work for very little.”
She said:“Well, he will need to take one less credit in high school and so he would be able to concentrate more on his other subjects so he could have better results.”

The lady is chinese, her daugther is 10, in grade 4 and she has been studying piano for 4 1/2 years.

All interesting.  When my son was interviewing for his last job (he’s an engineer) it was down to three candidates from South Korea; India; and Canada.  Luckily he got the job.  Global competition has already started!

Europe, your conversation with the other mother was interesting, but it made no sense why she’d put her daughter through the paces of the RCM, as it’s much tougher than an art high school credit, so I don’t really understand why she made such a decision regarding her daughter’s education, unless she had other things in mind as well.

Bev, I agree. It didn’t make sense to me either.

The mother was dead serious. It seems that to her that her daughter not having to take that art credit and being able to study harder or perhaps take another credit instead was an advantage worth the effort.

At the end of our conversation she actually condescendingly encouraged me that different parents have different reasons for their children’s activities and that’s ok )!

Yes, we all raise our children according to our personal values. 
When I lived in Asia, I remember children taking music lessons in order to enhance their future resumes.  That stuck with me, and although I wanted my children to grow up in a more old-fashioned way (we live in the country, so they could play for hours in the bush building forts, skate when fields flooded etc) I still had them do their swimming,  music, and the sports they liked.  Besides the value of the above, I thought of their resumes when first graduating from university.  I had assumed at the time that I was influenced by the Asian culture, but perhaps many of us think that way over here in NA as well…