(please note that i'm focusing here on my own highly subjective personal experience with music education. the only part of this that's meant to be in any way prescriptive is the part about letting people have creative freedom to approach music in the ways that click with them, which is what i feel was missing from my own musical education)
while i'm not losing sleep over it and feel grateful for how far i've come musically in recent years and for the theory i did learn in school, i do feel some disappointment with the ways that music education was unhelpful to me as a kid with a quiet aversion to authority and Correctness and a desire to have space for unstructured creative play
i remember Having to Practice Piano, whereas what i really wanted was space and permission to play music that felt good to me, to experiment, to have fun, to take risks, etc.
school bands were fun in some ways, but i didn't enjoy what i perceived as the rigidity of the "playing it correctly" vs. "playing it wrong" framework, and the trumpet, while a wonderful instrument, was not at all the right fit for my personality or musical mindset. competing for chairs with other kids was the worst for me too - i had to play an instrument i didn't like, and which i found fiddly and capricious, in front of a bunch of my peers at an awkward age
overall i think the main issue was enforced adherence to an arguably arbitrary standard of musical correctness, which i found stifling and uninteresting, for me specifically. what finally shook up that internalized mindset, though, was my love of jazz, because its spontaneity and boisterousness excited me and helped me eventually see that Doing it "Wrong" and making it up as you go can actually be liberating, fun and eye-opening
then as an adult i wrote a silly island theme in the animal crossing music editor with the structure of a jazz solo in mind, and that prompted me to get korg gadget and go buck wild just making whatever the frick popped into my head. and now i can see that this is what makes music fun for me
anyway, just to clarify, i do think that tradition, technique and the constraints of genre absolutely have their place in music as well, and i'm not saying it's wrong to approach it that way at all! if that's what works for you, that's genuinely awesome, go for it and have a great time! music rules! it's just that this approach is the opposite of what works for me, specifically
so yeah, i think people should be given the freedom to engage with music (or not!) in the ways that align with their personality and creative style, especially children, who, like me, may be too shy, or too encultured to Behaving Themselves Well, to realize that it's also ok not to approach things in the established, traditional manner
thank you for listening to this unprompted pedagogical-philosophical perspective on music that has taken me rather by surprise lol