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The question might almost be whether it's the kids that matter any more.   What chance does a kid even have to discover personal interests when parents are looking for vicarious triumphs and high schools are looking for ace players in their varsity leagues (yeah schools send scouts around to middle schools and try to recruit them for HS).


The pressure nowadays is not only in sports, either.   I knew some kids downstate who had shown some natural talent for music,  and their parents pushed them them to choose oboe instead of clarinet, and viola instead of fiddle, all because the parents figured oh my kids are going to be professional musicians someday, and these are the slots with less competition in both high school and professional orchestras.


Kinda takes all the joy out of it if the drift from your parents is that your interest in music has only one purpose and that's to score high on the potential career ladder.   Maybe you only wanted to play clarinet because your pal Joey picked that instrument and it looked cooler to play that than to play the piano you started out with just because it was there in the living room.    Maybe by time you're 9 years old you'd rather be playing soccer than learning how to split cane for the reeds of an oboe...


Number of states in our country minus the number of Supreme Court Justices?
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