I always have feelings reading/listening to commentary where people wring their hands about "how much/should you teach Wagner?" And responses always end up including: "But he is so important! How could you have a class without Wagner? If students don't know Wagner, it's a crime!

I have feelings because it betrays an unexamined subject position. Important to whom? Not to me. How could you have a class without Wagner? Easily. It's a crime for students not to know Wagner? But I note they don't feel the same way about Ofra Haza, Scott Joplin, or Madonna.

So many of the people making these comments have internalized classical music supremacy to such a degree it doesn't even occur to them that some lot of people have rich musical lives and do not care about Wagner, Beethoven, et al at all.