Enculturation

Following on from another thread (sort of...)

Teens are now to have culture lessons at school.

'Ministers are concerned that children from poorer families miss out on top arts events because their parents cannot afford tickets.'

Can anyone else see the problem with this premise? There are plenty of 'poor' families (especially in big cities) who take full advantage of free museums, art galleries and other so-called (almost laughably perhaps) high-culture activities (and why do people assume that theatre is better than cinematics or baroch better than rap?) Surely the problem is that parents can only pass on what they themselves have.

And parental and academic nurture is I think a small part of the equation. For example, people look at my family and see 6 children who play 9 musical instruments between us (1 to orchestral level, 4 instruments to grade 6 and above and all of us play at least one instrument). The assumption is our parents were music lovers who paid for music lessons and applauded us at every turn. In fact my father is tone deaf, thinks music as an academic discipline is a waste of time and forbade practising indoors so we could only practice for a short time each day out in the garden or garage on battered instruments on loan from the school. Lessons were either shared lessons (free from the council), paid for with paper-round money or from teach-yourself books.

I think there is more 'nature' than 'nurture' than we give credit for in the 'how our kids turn out' debate although nurture is of course important.
I don't see how trying to spoon feed kids 'culture' is going to help. In fact when I look at an average middle class 12 year old's life, that is so strictly regimented by pushy parents who map out their every waking hour from homework to viola lessons to horseriding, I think it is crushing true creativity by not allowing them to ever be bored or to find space. And it is our deepest creative selves that find solace in all kinds of art. Poeta nascitur non fit!