A couple of years ago I wrote a column "Why Don't Men Sing" for the Reader Weekly. I gave various cultural reasons for men's lack of interest in singing. One I mentioned was our becoming more passive with respect to entertainment because of radio and TV. John Allen Paulos gave a broader look at this problem in Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences.
He wrote that the averages in a small collection and a large collection are about the same but that the extremes will be wider in larger collections. For example, in a small town there may be some good singers, but in a large city there may be some even better singers. When the small town singers performed in their home town, people appreciated them. However, as people in the small town heard the better singers available in the big city on radio and TV, they were no longer satisfied with their neighbors' singing. This is even more discouraging to beginning singers because they are judged by a cruelly higher standard.
We can see the reverse in the performances of small children. Some indulgent adults go overboard in praising any effort by small children, even if half of them can't even be heard. That is, the wonder is not how well they sing, but that they sing at all. It's a pity that encouragement of effort won't last for more of their lives.
