Yes, they have parents with disposable income and/or free time. If you have one, you don’t need so much of the other. But a parent who’s drugged, depressed or just flat-out stupid won’t bug a kid to practice or go to rehearsal, etc.

Arts education–does that mean art history, music theory or messing around with finger paints?

Here’s Peter Drucker writing about his own experiences in elementary school in Austria:

“even Miss Sophie could not make a craftsman out of me…But I took from her a lifelong appreciation of craftsmanship, an enjoyment of clean honest work, and respect for the task. My fingers have never forgotten the feel of well-planed and sanded wood, cut with rather than against the grain, which Miss Sophy–her hand on mine and guiding my fingers–made me sense.”

The luxury in this case is the luxury to define education as anything the pundit or edu-theorist chooses. In fact some skills are foundational, providing skills on which further education builds and without which those further skills are unacquirable. Ignore that relationship and you’re just arguing about the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.

I do think a case can be made: I don’t think that this author has made it. Is the argument stronger in Kagan’s original source material?