private classical piano lessons from the age of 7 until I was 13
private classical voice lessons from the age of 16 until I was 21-ish
jazz vocal workshops and master classes from the age of 37 (those still continue)
private classical voice lessons from the age of 38 until I was almost 40
private jazz vocal lessons/coaching from the age of 46 until I was 47
And yet, today I’m a 49-year-old jazz singer who can’t read chord symbols (and who knows very little about music theory in that regard). I can read music, and I never stopped playing the piano: there has been a keyboard of one kind or another in every home I’ve ever had. My proficiency when playing sheet music hovers somewhere around the “intermediate” level. But I can’t play charts, and I don’t know an augmented from a diminished.
Part of me feels like I should know/take the time to learn that stuff, but I’m not trying to ever play jazz piano so it’s not critical. At least for now, I’d rather work on things that will more directly help my jazz singing (e.g., time feel).
When I hear about “gaps in education” I think of something I should know but don’t, for whatever reason. There are certainly many things I would like to learn more about, like becoming someone good at photography or art, but I don’t think anyone would argue that the average person needs such skills.
Like many here, reading more of the “classics” is probably the closest thing I can think of. As it happens, my dad had a subscription to one of those book-of-the-month type deals, where each month he received a faux-leather-bound volume of some classic book, like Moby-Dick or The Red Badge of Courage. I don’t think the collection is completely but he ended up with about 40-50 such books. One day I’d like to read them all (although I have already read the two examples I gave).
Someone here mentioned learning calculus. I took the full suite of math classes required for a typical engineering degree and one of my takeaways was that I had only barely scratched the surface of mathematics. I think it’d be cool if I could learn enough to become one of the people who can fully understand the proof of Fermat’s last theorem by Andrew Wiles.
Oh man, there are a lot of gaps; but this is another vote for history - and I mean all of it. For two years up until you were allowed to select exam subjects, I seemed to do nothing apart from fail to memorize dates. Kings; battles; treaties… I have always had an awful memory*, and this was way beyond what I could cope with. I couldn’t wait to give the subject up.
Almost inevitable, then, that I should marry a history teacher.
j
(*) - Example of just how bad: you know that quadratic equation thing (that I just had to look up) about “x equals minus b plus-or-minus the square root of b squared minus 4ac, all divided by 2a”? For maths exams I had to derive that from first principles every time, because I couldn’t remember it.