My daughter Leah and my son Peter attend a Walnut Hills High School, which is typically ranked as one of the top public high schools in the country. If you start there in 7th grade (which Peter did and Leah is doing now), you have to take three years of Latin. (Ah, the romance of the original Romance language!)

Students also have to take at least one semester of music class… which went over like a pregnant pole vaulter at our house. Leah had never had a single music lesson in her life prior to choosing her musical weapon of trumpet. Practice isn’t always pretty… in fact sometimes it sounds like an elephant is being tortured:

But it’s a prime example of “practice makes perfect.” They may not put in the 10,000 hours required to reach Malcolm Gladwell’s “mastery” but they certainly become quite proficient by the end-of-semester concert. And the kicker is they wind up liking it. After completing his mandatory class, Peter wound up signing up for another semester of music of his own volition. So no matter how practice sounds to other folks, it’s music to my ears.

It’s like ol’ Bill Shakespeare said “If music be the food of love, play on”