[baby]

I think music is the best example. There are two ways of learning music:

* learning solfege

* learning how to play directly

Most great school of musics will teach you solfege first, and you will have to go through hardcore solfege classes while you start learning how to play an instrument. Some teacher will do the same, or some family will make their kid do the same.

Now I can tell you this is not fun, but this is the way to become a great musician. You need the theory, you need to know how to read that stuff like you're reading English. But this is not fun, and I've known many in my youth who gave up learning an instrument because of this.

Now if you would teach every kid to play an instrument first, and have fun with it, and actually producing music with their fingers/mouth then... they would maybe enjoy it enough to get interested into taking solfege classes and music theory later on.

[jimmydddd]

I agree that music is a good analogy. For example, in the US there is a guy who has "shortcut" piano courses. His point is that yes, if you aspire to be a concert pianist, then you should spend years learning scales, reading music, and playing music from classical composers. But if you just want to play a few Billy Joel or Beatles songs, you can skip all that and cut to the chase. You won't have that great "foundation" needed to be a master player, but most people don't want that in the first place.