Music lessons

Did, by choice. My kids do by choice. Anyone who was going to be more than a seat warmer at an instrument when I was a kid was advised (required!) to practice half an hour to an hour a day. 

Both kids have gone part of the way through band, which itself is somehow much more time involved, but the early years now involve practicing only a small amount of time comparatively and the elementary band directors recommend practicing in 7 minute blocks. I guess times have changed and kids sitting around bored just isn't a thing these days. As someone with a poor attention span, even as a kid, there was something to the idea of kind of breaking through the hump of not wanting to do something and getting into it deeper for the hour. That hump seems to me like it occurred around 15 minutes. 

That chalkboard thing existed in band rooms and music classes, but we were forbidden from laying staffs out everywhere. Often, they sat somewhere little used, but in view, missing a couple of pieces of chalk, which was really distracting in terms of seeming like a job incomplete. 

While the music side of things is more of an all participation type deal here (kids through  middle school have to choose something. if it's not band, not orchestra, they have to be in chorus each year....they have to pick something), across the board, sports have increased in "severity" far more than most parts of the music side of things. My daughter dropped band because of tennis. Nobody just plays a sport during the season this year - they play during the season, and get some kind of instruction and practice the entire offseason. And many travel (mine don't!) to an insane level, which looks from the outside to me like parental guilt of not keeping up with the joneses. Especially when it slaps moderate income folks with costs well into five figures in a given year. So far, of all of the travelers among my relatives, the dream of getting a college scholarship panned out only for one. Half scholarship, which was matched by a 1/2 academic scholarship at the same college. The kicker is, they were like coupons. You can use one or the other or both, so the only relative whose kid got a scholarship (and went to school less good than they'd have made otherwise just to play the sport) could've gone to the same school, done nothing, and gotten the same scholarship.