Lox, you may be right about the lack of creative education, but now has been I think well proven that teaching people what is essentially a mechanical process, involving eye to brain to finger (dot on page straight to keyboard or recorder or whatever) bypasses the part of the brain that needs to be developed to interpret music fully (the auditory cortex, is it?).

This does not mean that everyone who learns this way will be unable to hear or interpret music, or be unable to improvise, play from memory etc, but it may mean that some people will not develop as fully as they would have done if music had been learned the other way round.

Obviously you can do the theory/written stuff as you go along, but the priority always needs to be sound/listening/making noises first - which is not how most UK kids are taught, sadly.

It;s not only the music teachers who have got this wrong.

The BBC - an audio medium managed to contrive language courses which used books as the primary reference, with just a little cassette tucked into the back cover for pronunciation.

As any fule kno, the best way to lear a language is to go to where they talk it and join in (just as toddlers do). Then catch up with the spelling and grammar afterwards.

Tom