Music Is Its Own Reward

You know, I get irked. 
Irked, I tells ya!

When some parent or student says that "music is GREAT for raising SAT scores!"
Next, we'll be hearing that Flute Playing leads to colon health. 

Who.  Cares?

Isn't the music enough? Isn't the sublime experience of letting all your bajillions of synapses float on a sea of sound enough?

[BTW: did you know that if you plopped your brain in the blender, it would come out to roughly 6 cups of material?  I'm just sayin'.]

So anyway.

When I teach, I love to let the music teach the instrument.  I don't bother teaching scales and arpeggios (to the younger kids -- college students, yes).  I teach music.  If I sense a student has issues with some note combinations, I work on Vivaldi or Mozart of Perilhou or Rodrigo.  I find MUSIC that makes the idea of becoming fluent in these combinations ATTRACTIVE.  How Borrrring are scales?  Yet ask a kid to play "Joy to the World" in several keys (using different starting notes), they get intrigued.  "Can I do it?  how does it sound?"

Then they do it.  ANd they have just focused on the music, not the scale.

I hate when people make music boring.  Pedantic.  Methodical.

Let the damned MUSIC make musicians. 
Thoughts?