Democracy and Music Education: Liberalism, Ethics, and the Politics of Practice

4. Music Education and the Culture Wars

Music Education and the Culture Wars 4 Previously, I discussed the nature and value of a liberal music education and how the future health of the profession depends on music teachers becoming more intellectually and politically involved in the profession and its problems and in the wider public sphere. I also addressed the nature of abstract reason and intellectual conversations as means of helping resolve debilitating professional problems while contributing to a sense of community and common purpose. If music educators are to be politically successful and effective within the public sphere—if they are to function as public intellectuals and shapers of informed public opinion with respect to musical and educational matters—they will have to develop a social vision and explicit political purpose. That behooves me to say something now about the current political climate of the public sphere. If music educators are to become more involved in the public sphere, they require a basic familiarity with some of the larger political movements, issues, and agendas shaping public education throughout the West. They require political perspective in order to understand what has been happening to public education of late and, possibly, their own culpability in the societal devaluing of music education. The devaluing of music education is essentially a political problem requiring a political solution.1 Music educators know that they have a serious problem with respect to low levels of governmental and public support.2 What they lack, as suggested by the dearth of professional literature and discussion on the topic, is an understanding of the political nature of the problem. On the Profession’s Retreat from the Public Sphere Regrettably, music teachers long ago abandoned, or were abandoned by, the public sphere, retreating into the relative isolation of their profession while losing touch with the wider political ideals and movements that once inspired them. During the 1950s and 1960s, and especially with the rise of the civil rights and aesthetic education movements in the United States, music teachers passionately believed in, and publicly voiced, the importance of music education for all children.3 This rallying cry for music teachers was explicitly linked to the democratic principles of equality, universal suffrage, and participation.4 Where many music educators erred was in assuming that 58 Democracy and Music Education all children everywhere should aspire to and attempt to uniformly replicate “definitive” expert performances of the western “masterworks.” Further, and while motivated by democratic intentions and ideals, music teachers failed to develop the philosophical understandings, teaching models, and pedagogical strategies that would help them accomplish their democratic goals.5 Instead, they reverted to traditional performance-based models, repertories, and pedagogies divorced from the real musical world and its social problems.6 Today’s music teachers are for the most part no longer, or at least not adequately , represented in public conversations about the nature, value, and purpose of music and music education in democratic society.7 Sadly, the coupling of democracy with musical culture and education is viewed with deep suspicion and distrust.8 Some music critics contend that democracy has no place in music or music education. Democracy is just a political process that “has little or nothing to say either about how we should live or about how we should die; still less does democracy provide us, outside the world of political process, with a ‘way of life.’”9 This is a gross misconception, as democratic states are far from anarchical while the concept of democracy implies much more than just a political process. As Dewey reminds us, democracy is no more just a political process or form of government than is a home or a church just a building constructed of bricks and mortar.10 It is an ethical ideal about a certain way of life, of “moral and spiritual association,” of which the political process and public goods such as health care and education are important expressions. They all ought to be viewed as means to that end; of maximizing public participation in the shaping of communal values while contributing to the improvement of the quality of life for all, not just for the rich or elite. I hope that this book will help to clear up some of the conceptual confusion among music teachers and others about the nature of democracy and its relevance to professional practice. As was explained to some extent in chapter 2, democracy implies a loving concern for others and their welfare. If nothing else, the pursuit of a...