Our very existence is threatened annually, and we cry out at the inequity of the threat, and yet many continue to only value the talented ones.  You may be thinking, “This isn’t true though!” but I urge you to sit down with a big group of music educators and listen.  Listen carefully, because once your eyes and ears are open to the exclusionary trends within this field, you will notice more and more that what we often do is segregate our own students into the talented and supported versus the “untalented” and underrepresented, whether we do it intentionally or not, it is there.