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

In 1796, Jean Baptiste Leclerc presented an impassioned polemic to the French National Convention on the importance of music for the moral and social development of the populace. The paper was redundant for practical purposes at the time, since the convention had already approved the institution of national music under the direction of Bernard Sarette the previous year; it remains, however, a fascinating document of beliefs about both music and politics at a particular historical moment. It is possible that musicologists two hundred years from now will be making similar statements about Paul G. Woodford's Democracy and Music Education.

The book aims to develop a vision of music education inspired by the ideas of John Dewey. This would 'reclaim a democratic purpose for music education by contributing to wider intellectual and political conversations about the nature and significance of music in our lives' (p. xi). Accordingly, Woodford starts by outlining Dewey's philosophy of education, and then broadens his argument into a more general defence of the Enlightenment ideals of liberalism and abstract reason. He then focuses more specifically on music education, developing a manifesto for what he believes it should be contributing to the public good.

Dewey's philosophy sees democracy not merely as a system of government, but as a culture of civic engagement. A healthy society would be one in which all individuals participated in the public negotiation of social values; hence, moral maturity is inherently linked with intellectual autonomy and integrity. The school is key in developing such a society, since it inculcates tomorrow's citizens into their role. Hence, Dewey developed a concept of education that was about nurturing the ability to question ideas and to develop new knowledge rather than the passing on of existing knowledge and its social assumptions intact. Woodford's outline of this vision in the opening chapter is engaging, and presents a stirring and idealistic mission for educators.

The book's concomitant aim of showing how today's music education is generally failing to live up to this ideal works less well. This is largely due to a style of discourse that remains very general. There are many sweeping statements about what happens in schools and in the training of teachers, with few concrete examples adduced as evidence. Many of the references Woodford produces to support his points are themselves generalizations, quoted from the summary sections of other studies or other opinion pieces. As a result, the effectiveness of the argument relies on how well the reader's experience matches the writer's. As a reader based in the higher education sector in the UK, I found intermittent resonances in my experience with the picture of the problems Woodford was painting, but also much whose validity I would contest, or simply could not judge. American readers may recognize the picture he paints more readily.

The second factor that undermines Woodford's critique is that many of its points seem dated. His complaint about the lack of engagement with anything other than classical music in the classroom seems more appropriate to 1985 than 2005. Indeed, his reference to Norton York's 2001 study of British music teachers' discomfort in teaching popular and world musics is presented as evidence of the narrowness of classically trained teachers, whereas it is equally indicative of the breadth of the curriculum (p. 23). His contention that 'contemporary composers have simply and deliberately abandoned the public sphere altogether, self-indulgently composing esoteric works organized mathematically with minimal public appeal' (p. 26) is even more woefully out of date, and is supported by a reference to a book from 1978. Likewise, the claim that there is little 'real criticism' of music in the popular media (p. 82) suggests that the author limited his purview to print: the growth of weblogs and wikis as means to construct and negotiate knowledge would appear to be...