Transforming Music Education

3. Transforming Education

3 Transforming Education Successive waves of educational reform in the United States during the past century have met with mixed success, in part because they have addressed symptoms rather than underlying causes of systemic societal and educational problems and because the reforms have not been critically thought through or pursued over the long term.1 Something more than tinkering on the margins of education seems to be called for, but what? Proposing transformation as a way of conceptualizing these changes raises important philosophical issues. It is ambiguous in the sense that it not only occurs naturally as one generation replaces another but it also can be planned and deliberate, especially when educational aims and means that are unclear or have grown stale become clear, fresh, and relevant to altered circumstances. It also evokes an array of images that depict its character and work. I prefer to think of this transformation in the philosophically hard sense, technically rather than intuitively, and to sketch what does not fully count as transformation before unpacking the notion of what I think it is and how it works in educational practice. In taking this tack, I follow Langer, Howard, Nelson Goodman, and others who have employed a similar philosophical strategy with regard to the arts and education.2 My interest is primarily in how transformation functions practically, because education is ultimately a social and concrete enterprise. I sketch nine images of transformation, each of which does not suffice when taken alone. I then tease out how these images function dialectically,3 and I outline some of the implications for educational practice. Nine Images Modification Transformation may be thought of as modification, the reorganization of some elements or properties short of changing a thing’s central condition or function . After the change, the thing remains essentially the same; it is merely PX017A_03_48-76 17/10/02 15:43 Page 48 Transforming Education 49 reshaped in certain respects to enable it to survive better in its environment. For example, school—referring literally to the place where general education is conducted—may take a number of specific forms and still retain its traditional function whereby knowledge is passed on from one generation to the next. It may therefore be modified in one respect or another without challenging its traditional role as the means for transmitting knowledge or socializing the young. The changes suggested by certain late-twentieth-century writers do not necessitate a fundamental rethinking of the nature and place of schools in contemporary society but merely suggest modifying traditional aspects of school organization, be it curriculum, instruction, administration, teaching, or learning.4 Likewise, late-twentieth-century educational reform movements such as Goals 2000 or the national standards and testing movements do not fundamentally challenge the notion of schools and schooling; rather, they work within institutions that remain more or less the same after the reforms have taken place.5 While it offers a way of negotiating change to accommodate to particular situations without fundamentally altering the tradition itself, modification contributes to continuity and societal stability by making it unnecessary to continually reinvent the wheel and rethink an entire institution every time environmental circumstances change. However, when the situation changes dramatically, modification may also disguise the appearance of change when more fundamental change is called for. It may excuse unwillingness or inability to invest resources in discovering whether or not the institution has outlived its usefulness or needs to be fundamentally changed or reinvented. History is ripe with the evidence of civilizations that ceased to be because they could not or would not reinvent education when circumstances necessitated .6 Nor is its definition as clear-cut as some might believe, and its edges are fuzzier than may be apparent at first glance. One might envisage modification continuing to a point over time where a thing’s identity is lost and the original object is no longer recognizable—for example, when fact and fiction are blurred, or the cat is modified until it becomes a crow. Accommodation Another prospect is accommodation, in which one thing conforms to another. Just as the chameleon changes to fit its environment, so social systems adapt to their environments.7 If they are unwilling to change, they may eventually become incapable of change and fossilized—literally set in stone. Accommodation suggests a willingness to compromise, to let go of things that are regarded as nonessential, and even to change those things regarded as distinctive or fundamental in order to ensure the survival of the...