Music as paint-by-number is one of the worst failings of music education. The most robust and life-long music in the world is in cultures that actually use notation only as appropriate if at all and don't think of it as the music. Most of the world's music is not so notation-focused.
I don't think this is the fault of music notation. Prior to widespread availabity of recorded music, playing music from sheet music was a common activity in the West. If anything, I would say the death of lifelong musical performance is more the result of recording -- "this disc here is the music" rather than "this sheet music is the music" -- the sheet music still needs a performer.
I agree, but I think the amount of "paint by number" in mathematics should be minimized, and most of it (learning multiplication tables, isolating variables in simple equations) is already in the form of games. I'd be interested to hear of a topic in math that you would argue can't be turned into a non-superficial game.
