Metaphors for a Change: A Conversation about Images of Music Education and Social Change

Two premises guide this paper: first, music education, like all educational enterprises, is shaped by the grounding metaphors that affect its aims, pedagogies, curriculum, and administration. Second, music education, like all educational endeavors, is increasingly encouraged to address issues of social justice and contribute in real ways to the benefit of the community through positive social change. In this conversation, the authors, each of whom has written about metaphors and social change, build on these premises to explore ways of bringing together the two lines of inquiry in search of metaphors that would guide an education for social change. In their dialogue, they propose four metaphors but acknowledge that these alone do not address the full array of meanings a metaphor for social change would need to capture.