[bingerman]

The quality of general music teaching in schools varies wildly, and I'm afraid the average experience is not too helpful. As usual, some countries are better than others.

Personal anecdote from a medium sized generally pretty average school in Finland: we were never expected or required to know anything about music, the lessons in primary school were just listening the teacher play some simple melodies with piano (we weren't allowed to even try that precious instrument), "singing" random stuff (it was more like shouting, there were never any exercises or guidance), and occasionally listening some pop cds, no exams of any kind (which meant music was our favourite subject after physical education, drawing was pretty popular too).