I would be interested to here from more people who are directly involved with teaching music to young people today, to see the direction we are going. I one thing that prompted this thread was the number of people know who' s children have been taught to play instuments like the flute, clarinet, violin, formally at school and can play their pieces well but put their instuments away and never play them or get involved in any other musical activity. I remember when I was about 18, having been messing about on the guitar for a few years, I met an old school friend who in the same period had studied classical guitar Not suprisingly I was very impressed with his playing but he was impressed with mine. He played his pieces well but couldn't jam along or just adapt sections of his pieces or his techniques, and he really wanted to badly. I just put the little bits of technique that I had picked up together and made up pieces/songs with them. I couldn't understand why with his far superior technique, he just couldn't do the same. It would be interesting to know what direction he took or if indeed he is still playing, so Grahame Kippel if you are out there!