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Originally Posted by gianluca
3) Oh but I accept that people have the right to be different and choose to listen to whatever music they like. The question is, how great actually is the freedom of choice (with respect to musical genres) that kids growing up in this society have, if each day they are exposed to an almost exclusive diet of pop music? (The same could be asked for religion – how great actually is the freedom of religion young children have, if the Christian Protestant religion is almost exclusively imposed on them?)
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I'm not sure religion is a good analogy as you cannot believe in two religions at once where as I can listen to Stravinsky and REM quite happily. And if I were to discover a new band or piece I liked, I wouldn't be rejecting my old tastes in the same way a religious (or atheist) convert would have to reject what they were brought up with.
That point aside, I completely agree with you about what kids are exposed to. BUT, and here's where I think we differ, I'm not convinced the blame for their listening tastes (if indeed blame is the right word, which it isn't actually) lays squarley with pop artists and the big 4 record labels as you've been implying. It's not that classical is being squeezed out, as I'm not sure it's there in the first place for many children!
Blaming that vacuum on another genre is not right and certainly not helpful. We need instead to examine
how we get kids exposed to classical music; and that means looking at our school system, embracing new technologies, reviewing arts funding, looking at outreach programmes etc. Leave your personal prejudices against pop aside as I don't think they're helpful when addressing what is, I agree with you, an important issue.