Strange tribal customs

In the deepest jungles of South America, there lives a primitive ethnic group. Its tribes regard juggling coconuts as a great art, and the best coconut jugglers are highly regarded; everyone supplies them food so they don't have to hunt.

So if you go visit these tribes, you can see kids practicing coconut juggling for hours and hours each day. Many kids really don't like coconut juggling, but the parents force them to practice. "For the sake of their future", one tribal parent told me as she was smacking her daughter for refusing to practice juggling coconuts.

Sounds ridiculous right? But our society is doing the exact same thing. It's just that this custom goes by a different name, that of "piano".

Tons of parents keep forcing their kids to practice piano when there is no interest whatsoever. I was one of the unlucky ones when I was young. Needless to say, nothing good came out of it whatsoever.

Points that parents use to justify their pressure on their kids (who dislike piano) to master the piano are as follows:

1. Learning music is good for the kid, it gives him a sense of art and beauty!

2. Other people will respect him for playing the piano well.

3. We force our kids to learn maths and reading, why not piano?

4. If one wants to be great in piano, one has to train from young or there is no chance of making it to Carnegie Hall.

5. After you force at the start, he may grow to love it.

My answers to these points are as follows:

1. Tons of other things give a sense of beauty too, like painting or sculpture or dance. Why not go for those? Besides if the kid hates it, the more you force the less beauty he will see in it.

2. In my adult life I have never heard someone ask another person "so you play piano? wowwwww". What parents actually want is when they invite guests over they can get their kids to play on the piano then the guest will go "ooh your kid is so cultured", then the parents can beam proudly.

3. Basic maths, reading and writing are necessary in our society. Piano is not.

4. If the kid loves piano then yea. If he doesn't then either a: he will never be great, or b: he will be great but hate the lifestyle.

5. Have you ever seen someone start to love something after being forced to do it a lot?

So, in a nutshell, forcing a kid who doesn't like piano to practice for hours on end is a STUPID TRIBAL CUSTOM.

Yes you can say that "the parents are doing this with good intentions". But,

STUPIDITY AND GOOD INTENTIONS ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE.