I am commenting on your segment "Raising Musical Prodigies" This may not completely relate to your segment, but I hope you will find it interesting:
My father was a violinist with the NY Philharmonic from 1946 until his retirement in 1979. He was also a fine pianist who, at various times, subbed for the orchestra pianist, and also accompanied other Philharmonic musicians on the concert stages of NY. One such musician, who comes to mind, is clarinetist Stanley Drucker.
My grandfather, who was from a Russian-Jewish background, started my father on the piano at such a young age that my father used to say he had no memory of actually starting the piano. Then,at about age 7, the violin became my grandfather's obsession. He would brag to the neighbors that someday, on the earnings of his son "the musical genius," the entire family would move out of the tenements of Brooklyn, into a fancy apartment on Park Avenue.
My father never became a famous musician, and my grandfather never got his fancy apartment So, in spite of my father's accomplishments my grandfather considered him a failure.
About twenty yeas ago I was trying to figure out where my grandfather's obsession with raising a famous musician had come from.
One day I came across a short story by Isaac Babel called "The Awakening." In the story Babel describes the obsession Jewish parents, in Odessa Russia, had with violin lessons for their children. The reasons were similar to my grandfather's: Parents hoped they might find that one in a million musical genius, right in their midst, who would elevate their entire family's financial fortunes, and social status. After all, Mischa Elman had played for the Czar of Russia himself!
Babel called this obsession "a lottery with children as its stakes." My father called what had been done to him "the genius business."