Whether the subject is piano playing or new music our media-crazed culture seems to be favoring the mechanical, the standardized. Even in education that last word comes up with alarming frequency. Where is the great thrust of individual drive on which this country was built and which represents our culture, including our political system, at its most meaningful?

In my sense of things as a parent and educator much of that new drive is going to come not from frenzied competition to win prizes but from paying attention to the greater world we inhabit: the planet, our mutual habitat, and one another, including people with disabilities.