22: The Danger of Music Education Advocacy (by Bennett Reimer)

Bennett Reimer

Emeritus Professor, School of Music, Northwestern University, Chicago

To advocate is “to plead in favor of; support or urge by use of argument.” Given the widespread enjoyment, even fulfillment, music provides to people all over the world and has provided throughout history, it would seem that there would be little if any need for advocacy for it, especially now when it is so easily available to all who choose to be engaged with it in whatever ways they prefer. Yet those whose profession it is to teach music in schools have always had to plead in favor of it, to offer whatever arguments they could imagine to gain support for their endeavors. Why would something so widely regarded as a valuable component of human life, particularly among youngsters of school age, need such intense, ongoing efforts to plead its cause as being a worthy school subject?

One answer to that question is that music is often regarded to be essentially different from those subjects requiring the development of the intellect—of intelligence. The “core” or “basic” or “serious” subjects, like mathematics, sciences, languages, history, and social studies, require ongoing, focused tuition. Music, on the other hand, in this view, is a matter of talent rather than intellect, of expression rather than intelligence. And everyone can enjoy it just by “doing what comes naturally,” without the same need for systematic study the basic subjects require. So why would people want to use up precious school time for music unless strong advocacy arguments for it were offered? We may call this answer to the question of why we need advocacy the “intellect versus talent” answer.

Another answer to the why-the-need-for-advocacy question, related to the first, is that very few students have the talent to do something with music that requires serious, long-term study, such as make a living from performing. Talent for performing likely falls on a normal curve. Those few with a high level of talent cannot expect schools to provide for such a very special need, except, perhaps, as an elective after the core subjects have been attended to. And even that is very expensive to provide, in teacher salaries, special equipment and facilities, and student time away from the basics. Let those who want and deserve such service find it outside the schools, from the many available and eager musicians/teachers in the community. Strong advocacy, music educators argue, is necessary to counteract this issue of “why in the schools?”

Still another reason often given for the need to plead the cause of music in the schools is that the deeper values of music, including but going beyond easily obtained entertainment, are poorly understood by many. Philosophers and others in history and in the present have clarified that music is so basic to the human condition, so foundational for a life well lived, so humanizing in its powers to deepen and widen what all people can experience, as to be not only worthy of inclusion as a basic school subject but essential if all people, including youngsters, are to realize the potentials their humanity affords. Not to make music study available to all in the schools, as seriously provided as every other important subject, is to abrogate a fundamental responsibility of education—to enable lives to be as full as they can possibly be. This argument about the deep values of music is difficult to elucidate, especially to lay people. Professional expertise is needed in order to convince people that music is as important to support as everything now considered basic in education, perhaps even more important in that it balances attention to intellectual pursuits by attention to the inner life. The need for such arguments to be made may be identified as “getting to the depths.”

Each of these arguments (and others) for the need to advocate for school music is valid, I believe. I have no quarrel with the music education profession doing all it can to offer reasons that might persuade those not already devoted to music education to come around and offer their much desired support.

But lurking beneath each of these needs for advocacy, and all the other arguments that have been and continue to be made in answer to the questions about why music should be taught in schools, is a danger seldom if ever identified as connected to—perhaps even to some extent the result of—all the many, intense, even frantic efforts we in music education make in support of our cause. The danger stems from the prevalent belief among music educators, seldom if ever doubted, that what we actually offer in the schools 1. does in fact develop musical intelligences, 2. does in fact serve the needs of the great majority of students who do not have or do not choose to cultivate musical performance talent, and 3. does in fact help students gain the deepest satisfactions music can offer. We do not examine our unswerving belief that our actual music programs are in all these respects entirely adequate if not exemplary, and that doing what we do is entirely sufficient to obtain the benefits we so vociferously and often eloquently advertise. That is, we advocate for what we do when the question begging to be asked is whether what we do is validly and optimally connected to what we claim.

The dangerous side of this situation is the tendency to blame our plight, of insecurity, lack of full respect, misunderstandings of our value, the ever-present threat of being dropped, on forces outside rather than inside our professional actions. Advocacy efforts have a way of replacing self-examination. We spend a great deal of time and effort thinking up ways to persuade people to accept our status quo, based on our very special values and traditions, rather than on how we can more realistically and effectively serve the musical needs of our culture as being our guiding aim. We tend to protect and defend and proselytize when we more fruitfully need to critically examine who we are and what we offer. We need to look inward rather than outward for the causes of our uncertain status in education.

This is not to argue that we do not offer a great deal of value to our cultures. Of course we do. But the gap between what we do and what our cultures want and need from us is often perilously wide. We need to examine everything we teach, both in general music education settings and electives, as to whether it is a viable way to be involved with music outside the schools and when schooling ends, or whether it exists only as “school music,” separate and distinct from the realities of our musical cultures. Some of our present teachings are likely to be valid, while many are likely to be irrelevant, thereby making us irrelevant. To put it directly, there is a positive relation between the efforts we have to expend on advocacy and the level of irrelevancy of what we offer.

Parents, students, non-music professionals in education, our wider communities, all have the right and responsibility to ask hard questions about whether and how we fulfill the often grandiose arguments we offer as advocacy. We have the obligation to bring our programs fully in line with our cultures' desires from us, using our expertise in music and in education to satisfy those desires while also enlarging and deepening them. We need to do less persuading by claiming all sorts of wonders for music learning when we still don't offer—don't know how to offer—their magnificent beneficences. We need to look clearly at who we are and who we need to become, at what we've done and what we haven't yet done. The better we do this the less need there will be for advocacy, for needing to persuade people to buy what we are selling rather than to make what we are selling so valuable and pertinent to their musical lives that they are delighted to get as much of it as they can. The degree of our success in fulfilling our communities' musical needs will, to that degree, relieve us, and them, of the necessity to advocate. We will have gotten closer to the maturity, in our principles and programs, that music, students in schools, and each culture in which we exist, should reasonably expect from us. And that we should expect from ourselves.

14: Why Does Our Profession Need Advocacy? (by Michael L. Mark)

Michael L. Mark

Emeritus Professor of Music, Towson University

The most eloquent statement I have seen about advocacy for education was made by former United States Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "Knowledge is a form of capital, much of it formed by government investment in education. . . . Politics has become a process that deliberately seeks to effect such outcomes as who thinks, who feels how." Senator Moynihan has pinpointed the reason that the music education profession needs to advocate on its own behalf.

Why is it important that music education advocates serve as a voice of the profession to civic officials? Why do we need anybody to advocate for us? The answer is simple: we cannot expect policy makers, at least not all of them, to understand why the work that we do as music educators is important to our students, our communities, our nations, and to civilization. We music educators are musicians as well as teachers. We know inherently the importance and value of music. We feel it deeply and we believe it. If policy makers who have the authority to control education do not know these things, then we must not only tell them, but persuade them as well.

It is the responsibility of advocates to ensure that those responsible for formulating public policy do so on the basis of accurate knowledge and informed judgment.

Music education speaks to people in many ways. The most obvious voice is that of music itself. People value music and recognize the need for children to be musically educated. Students are another voice of music education. When they demonstrate their musical learning and accomplishments, they are the voice of music education as it speaks to parents and communities in a convincing manner. Another voice of music education is that spoken by advocates. Advocacy is the voice of the music education profession as it speaks to members of boards of education and legislators, and government administrators.

Most music educators are uncomfortable in the role of advocate. We have spent years preparing ourselves to become musicians and teachers of music. Our backgrounds and experiences have not prepared us to approach politicians and administration officials to explain why what we do is so important to them. We would like to think that they already know this, but we also know that just isn’t so. And so we need people to advocate for us.

I have heard music educators disparage advocacy because they feel that advocates sometimes misrepresent what we do in our professional lives. They might or might not be right, but we have to recognize that there are two aspects of advocacy: how we advocate, and what it is that we advocate. These are separate issues. If advocates do not represent our interests accurately, then we must correct them. The issue being addressed in this paper, however, is not what is advocated, but the fundamental need for advocates to represent us to policy makers.

Advocacy is a form of lobbying. Virtually every professional and vocational interest, whether the arts, business, industry, or labor, needs to be represented to policy makers. Otherwise, policy makers neither know why our work must be supported, or what we need to continue serving the public interest effectively. And we need a lot. We need recognition by governing officials that music education exists for important reasons. When we persuade them that we serve important needs of the greater community, then they can perceive the relationships between public policy and music education and can make decisions that are critical to our profession. Should portions of funding for school programs be designated for arts education? Should education laws recognize that curricular decisions must include music education? Should those laws support industrial issues that affect musical instrument manufacturers, music publishers, uniform makers, retailers, and other interests? Should our education laws dictate that every child must have a musical education in the interest of equal educational opportunity? As we analyze the myriad issues that connect music education to public policy, it becomes apparent that we need to be represented by advocates who are knowledgeable about our professional needs and who are capable in matters of public policy.

The Music Educators National Conference provides a model of effective professional advocacy at the national level in the United States. Over the years, MENC has developed its advocacy capabilities by identifying issues that need to be brought to the attention of policy makers. It has also coalesced with other education associations to increase the numbers of people represented by arts education advocates. This is especially important because our clout increases as the numbers of people who are represented increases. Although the United States government recognizes music education as a discrete discipline, much legislation has been in the name of arts education–music, visual art, theatre, and dance. MENC has also established strong ties with the music industry, which multiplies the number of people and professional interests that are represented several fold, and equally important, relates our profession directly to the national economy. Obviously, policy makers will consider our needs more readily as we establish our ties to business and industry as well as to schools.

Undoubtedly there are different models for national advocacy in other countries. I hope that music educators from other countries will share their advocacy strategies and techniques through this web site.

If we truly believe in the value of our work, then we owe it to ourselves, our students, our colleagues, and our communities to be sure that education policy makers are informed and supportive of us.

5: Music Education and Advocacy (by David J. Elliott)

David J. Elliott

Professor, New York University

My father was an amateur jazz pianist who played every night at home after his daily work and at sing-along parties with our neighbors on Saturday nights. He also composed songs for his own satisfaction and for the delight of his friends. I loved the sounds he played, improvised and composed. The joy that swirled around his music making at our musical get-togethers was infectious and transforming. I wanted to be like him; I wanted to be able to do what he did. So, after starting me out with informal jazz piano lessons, he sent me to study with a professional jazz pianist who taught at a local community music school. I was six-years-old. Soon I began to play at our musical gatherings, surrounded by supportive adults who sang and played along.

Although my elementary school did not offer a music program, I was often called upon to "provide the music" at many school and community functions, which gave me a strong identity among my peers and teachers as "the musician." During my middle and secondary school years I was taught by two excellent artist-teachers who worked diligently to involve my peers and I in all forms of music making and listening. Because of them, I became involved in band and jazz band groups as a performer, arranger, composer, conductor, and a novice teacher of my peers. These varied experiences allowed me to take leadership roles in my school music programs and in many community music groups, including my own professional dance band. And so it was that I began my tertiary music studies with a rich and joyful foundation of musical experiences and a deep commitment to music and music education.

Advocacy in Context

My point in relating my personal story is to suggest that, although verbal statements about the values of music education are necessary and fundamental forms of advocacy, the most powerful means of making our case are the processes and social settings of musical particip-action that yield deep satisfactions for participants of all ages and ability levels. For example, a parent engaged in joyful music making and listening usually means a child engaged in music making and listening. A school principal, politician, or CEO involved in joyful singing, playing, or composing tends to work hard to support school music education. So, in addition to teaching our students, I believe we need to find more and various ways to provide satisfying musical experiences for our students' parents, their friends, other teachers in our schools, and policymakers in our communities. Alternatively, we need to consider ways to help establish community music groups and school-community partnerships that provide opportunities for parents, colleagues, educational leaders, and corporate bosses to engage in joyful music making and listening and to witness our teaching expertise in action.

That said, it is imperative to consider scholarly views about the values of music and music education as a basis for evaluating advocacy statements and, perhaps, as material for advocacy statements. Our ISME Advocacy project it an excellent example. Still, we must always keep in mind that advocacy and scholarship are fundamentally different. Sometimes advocacy statements line up with scholarly research, but very often they do not. This is because advocacy is about marketing and selling music education to obtain various kinds of support. Philosophy (for example) is about critical thinking and rigorous foundation building, which advocates often dismiss impatiently as boring or long-winded because "advocating" is about the "short, fast sell." In fact, advocacy statements often "dumb down" our values and aims by means of simplistic "sound bites" or t-shirt slogans tailored to fit the latest educational or societal crisis. These "pop" forms of advocacy have the potential to mislead and/or disappoint parents, colleagues, and potential supporters, and to demoralize excellent music teachers. In short, without a clear sense of our professional values, we run the risk of misrepresenting our profession and/or skewing our curricula to match short-term goals dictated by questionable research, or the latest government edicts.

This is why it's so important to approach advocacy cautiously and critically, and to teach future music educators to do the same. How? We employ music education philosophy, psychology, sociology (and so forth) to help us critically examine and formulate our professional aims, goals, objectives, curriculum content, teaching strategies, and assessment procedures. Because these fields pivot on rigorous thinking, we should go to them to develop valid and reliable statements about the nature and value of music education.

With these thoughts in mind, I offer the following perspectives on several (but not all) values of music education, which I then connect to education in general.

Several Values of Music Education

On one hand, what music educators do is similar to what all teachers do because thinking and knowing lie at the heart of all educational efforts. Teachers in every subject area focus on the outcomes of student thinking in relation to domain-specific standards of accuracy, appropriateness and originality. At the same time, what music educators do is unique because developing musicianship and listenership is a matter of teaching multidimensional forms of artistic-cultural-bodily thinking that engage all aspects of our being in relation to auditory-social events.

Developing our students' musicianship and listenership through performing, improvising, composing, arranging, conducting, moving and listening gives our students the skills and understandings they need to participate in creating musical-cultural expressions of emotions, musical representations of people, places and things, and musical expressions of cultural and personal values. This range of opportunities for self-expression and creativity offers our students numerous ways of giving artistic-cultural form to their powers of feeling, thinking, knowing, valuing, evaluating, and believing, which in turn engage other listeners' emotions, interests, and understandings.

Of course, each different musical style-community (or practice) is also significant because the musical works produced by its music makers and listeners play important roles as unifying social artifacts. That is, cherished musical works are crucial to establishing, defining, delineating, and preserving a sense of community and self-identity for individuals and their social groups. Musical works and musical practices constitute and are constituted by their social contexts.

It follows from this that teaching and learning a variety of musics comprehensively (as music cultures) is an important form of inter-cultural education. When we initiate, induct, and guide our students in unfamiliar musics through active music making, students can engage in self-reflections and personal reconstructions of their relationships, assumptions and preferences about other people, cultures and other ways of thinking and valuing. In these ways, inducting learners into unfamiliar musical styles links the central values of music education to the broader goals of humanistic education. Since schools today are concerned with preparing students for life in pluralistic societies, and since schools in most countries are more culturally diverse than ever, it stands to reason that schools should support the rich and enjoyable inter-cultural learning experiences that school music programs can provide.

By engaging in these forms of musical particip-action under the guidance of a professional music educator, music students (of all ages) can experience the most profound values of music and music education: self-growth, self-knowledge, self-esteem, and the emotional experiences of enjoyment or "flow" that accompany these forms of growth, empowerment and transformation. How do these forms of self-growth and optimal experience occur? Stated plainly, as music teachers develop (a) students' musicianship-listenership in matching balance with (b) the challenges and meanings presented by a musical work, students achieve self-knowledge, enjoyment and self-esteem. Musical forms of self-growth and enjoyment are unique because music making and music listening involve musical "products" (works, or challenges) and auditory-cognitive-social processes that are distinct from those required for any other endeavor. Musical flow experiences are unique because artistically-and-culturally produced and processed sound is the sine qua non of music. In other words, the conditions of musical flow experiences are specific to musicing and music listening. Accordingly, the conscious contents of musical experiences -- their cognitive and affective qualities, the way they feel while they last, their short- and long-term effects -- differ from other forms of experience, including other kinds of artistic experience.

Music Education and General Education

How do the values of music education connect with education and advocacy in general? The most essential, long-term task facing our profession involves enrolling parents, colleagues, administrators, policy makers, and politicians in the quest to make our schools more educational. By more educational I mean that our schools should aim to develop students as people, not just job-fillers for today's marketplace mindset. As many scholars have insisted in different words, education is for life: education ought to be conceived for life as a whole, not just for one aspect of life, such as work. Put another way, much more is involved in the full and beneficial "development" of a child than the acquisition of literacy in the simple sense of job skills and academic knowledge, or the so-called basics. What more? Worldwide, human cultures past and present pursue a common set of "life goals" or "life values" including happiness, enjoyment, self-growth, self-knowledge, freedom, fellowship, and self-esteem, for oneself and for others. These life goals are so basic to human beings that people seldom ask, "Why do you want happiness, enjoyment, self-growth, wisdom, freedom, fellowship, and self-esteem?"

Schooling should enable learners to achieve life goals in school and beyond school, in working life, family life and social life. If so, then music education should have a secure place in the school curriculum from kindergarten through secondary school because musicianship-listenership is achievable by all students and because musical skills and understandings can be developed early in life, thereby giving most children early access to the life goals of self-growth, self-knowledge, enjoyment, flow, and the happiness that arises from being involved with others in musical ways of life.

In summary, music education is a unique and major source of many fundamental life goals. By actively supporting the aims of music education, school systems increase the likelihood that students will learn to make a life as well as a living both inside and outside school.

Advocacy Revisited

Why is advocacy a necessary part of our professional work? A major reason is the huge difference between education and schooling. On one hand, most Western nations make strong rhetorical commitments to providing a balanced curriculum for the whole child, which they state in official educational policy documents and curriculum guides. In reality, however, public school systems in most countries are becoming more and more focused on "testing" students in a narrow range of "academic" subjects using mechanistic measurement devices. Why? Many scholars suggest that this movement (sometimes called "Educational Reform") is part of a global effort by corporations and "marketplace educators" to shape and "manage" schools according to the needs and values of "marketplace capitalism." (This is an old story tracing back to the industrial model of the "school-as-factory" that exists to produce future factory workers). Educators have always been under pressure from the business world to devote more time and resources to the production of students-as-job-fillers by means of academic-vocational studies alone. This pressure has become more intense in the last fifteen years with the advance of globalization, which requires "standardization" in all realms of life, including schooling. Clearly, however, corporate leaders and marketplace educators are not concerned (at all) with enabling our students to make a life as well as a living.

Broadly speaking, then, we need to advocate on behalf of music education and arts education because what we do professionally is deeply connected with the need to protect and sustain the right of children to receive a balanced and comprehensive education, which means a school curriculum that makes a central place for the life values we can provide through systematic music teaching and learning.

And so, to conclude, I return to a major theme. Long before I studied advocacy statements or scholarly discussions about the nature and value of music, I experienced the powers of music through music making and music listening in my childhood and adolescent years. I believe this holds true for many people, including most music educators. If so, then our concept of "advocacy" must include but go beyond words. I think we must employ our skills and understandings as musicians, teachers and community leaders to empower our students, colleagues, supervisors, politicians, and communities with the musical skills and understanding they need to experience the potency of musical experiences and to "make a life in music" to the extent they desire. Our future strength and security depends on our ability to combine our best words about music education with our best actions aimed at wider and more varied approaches to extending music instruction inside and outside schools. We must engage more and more people of all ages, in all walks of life, in the joys of musical particip-action.

2: Brief Comments on Music Education Advocacy (by Wayne Bowman)

Wayne Bowman

Professor, Brandon University, Brandon, Manitoba Canada

What are we doing when we advance advocacy arguments for music?

1. We need to remember that advocacy is a political undertaking, not a philosophical one. That means, among other things, that answers to questions about music's nature and value may not necessarily serve the ends of advocacy: it is entirely possible, in fact, for philosophical truths to undermine what advocacy seeks to achieve. The advocate has clear ends in mind and is primarily concerned to persuade others to his/her point of view. These ends thus restrict and proscribe at the outset the means to be deployed and the range of conclusions deemed admissible. They rule out from the beginning questions, procedures, and observations that may be at odds with the advocate's purposes. In advocacy, what counts is persuasion. In philosophical endeavours, on the other hand, the point is validity or truth, quite apart from any preordained end. A potential danger with the anything-goes strategies of advocacy is that we make promises on which we cannot deliver. Another is that we commit ourselves to things on which we may be able to deliver but should not. These dangers are all the more worrisome if we turn over responsibility to professional persuaders, whose interest in the aims of our instructional efforts is subsidiary to their interest in winning resources, time, recognition, or whatever else is perceived to be at stake.

2. Claims to musical value are not claims to educational value. Therefore, establishing that music is important or valued is at most half the argument that is required when attempting to justify its place in school curricula. Establishing that music is a ubiquitous phenomenon, and involved in all manner of human endeavours only states the obvious. It is music education, not music, that faces a legitimation crisis.

3. Every single one of our claims to music's educational value is contingent. Music's capacity to achieve educational ends, indeed music's power itself, always depends: upon (a) how, (b) by whom, (c) for whom, and (d) under what circumstances we engage in the processes of (e) musicking and (f) teaching. All our ambitious claims for music depend upon extenuating circumstances and contextual variables, circumstances and variables our bold claims must acknowledge because they are things over which we often have relatively little control. Music education may, under certain circumstances, indeed affect desirable educational ends. In the wrong hands, or under the different circumstances, its power might affect precisely the opposite. In short, neither music nor music instruction is unconditionally good. It all depends.

4. The need to advocate strenuously for music education it is frequently due to musical or educational failings. Conversely, where the power and value of music and of educational endeavours are evident to people, it is seldom necessary to mount advocacy campaigns. Music's meaning and potency in people's lives is what drives support for educational endeavours, not noble sounding promises.

5. Advocacy is typically conservative, in that it takes as its object the defense or justification of "what is." Put differently, advocacy efforts generally focus on convincing people of the need to support (or support more adequately) the status quo. Where change is needed, this is not necessarily a desirable state of affairs.

What are music's values?

6. Music's values are radically diverse and multiple, perhaps innumerable. They cannot be ranked hierarchically except with regard to that for which they are valuable. Nor can they be separated into categories "musical" and "extra-musical," good and bad, except in relation to human ends. Meaning and value are functions of use, which is to say they are always constituted by and relative to use. The value question, then, is a question about how music works in the human world, and how those potential "workings" relate to ends desired by people concerned. This means that such issues are always socio-political, always potentially contested.

7. To say music's value is intrinsic or inherent is to claim it is self evident: that it somehow exists without any connections to anything else. But all value is human value, and human value is value-for something. The appeal to a musical value that JUST IS, is a kind of sleight of hand – an attempt to pre-empt other kinds of value claims by establishing a value that precedes human use. Music has no value unless we confer it, just as is true of all other values. This observation need not compromise music advocacy, but it does indeed ground it in human action and in the uses to which music lends itself.

8. The preceding two claims follow from the fact that music, and therefore its meaning and value, is constructed anew by each musicking person. It follows that these are inextricably grounded in and emergent from experience. Such experience, furthermore, is always socioculturally situated – which is to say it is socially constructed. These facts both suggest important qualifications upon any claim we might wish to mount on music's behalf and point to a range of significant claims that are often neglected.

9. To say musical experience, meaning, and value are socially constructed is not, please note, to say these are socially determined. The relationship between the individual and culture is dialectical and reflexive in nature.

10. To say musical experience, meaning, and value are socially constructed is not to deny that these do not have a biological basis as well. But human bodies are minded bodies, and embodied minds are always also sociocultural phenomena.

11. These preceding observations surely point toward understandings of music as a phenomenon that is unique and uniquely important, in virtue of its location at the nexus of mind and body, individual and social, action and understanding. Music's status as intelligent action and our richest potential source of participatory consciousness (Keil, 1994) should comprise the core of efforts to explain and justify music's presence in the context of education.

To what educational ends are music's meanings and values suited?

12. Again, that depends: upon one's understanding of "education" and the kind of ends it properly implicates; upon the music in question; upon the range of sociocultural values it potentially invokes; and so on. In no way does this negate the process of advocacy. However, it does alter and qualify in important ways what we understand advocacy to be and how we go about it.

13. Among the educational ends we might wish to consider are the following: transmission of cultural heritage; the creation and maintenance of cultural vitality; enabling access to experiences and understandings that are not commonly accessible through informal means; imparting critical awareness that gives people more power and control over their lives; imparting appreciation for embodied and emergent cognition, and the severe limitations of disembodied knowledge; creating personal and collective identities; the development of tolerance, cooperation, and ethical frames for action; rendering the familiar unfamiliar; developing expertise and fluency in valued realms of human endeavour; and so on. This list, it should be clear, is potentially endless: if music's values are radically diverse and multiple, the aims of education are no less so.

14. The point to be borne in mind is that each such educational claim carries with it a broad range of personal and professional obligations: for none of these things happen necessarily or automatically, just because students have been involved in activities we regard as musical and educational. Deciding what courses of action are appropriate in light of local circumstances, present needs and resources, and the unpredictability of educational outcomes lies at the heart of what it means to be a professional music educator.

15. Because of all that has been said here, the best source of valid and reliable advocacy arguments is the qualified professional whose charge it is to deliver "the goods."

20: The Nature of Music

20: The Nature of Music

Isabelle Peretz

University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada

We sense that music is much more than a pleasure technology or mere entertainment. Yet, the idea that our responses to music might be instinctual has only gained credence in recent years.

Developmental psychologists have convincingly shown that before the age of one year, infants display a remarkable and rather subtle sensitivity to music. These perceptual abilities are similar, in many respects, to those displayed by adults. Humans appear to be born with processing predispositions for music. These musical abilities develop spontaneously, by simple exposure to music. The initial trigger appears to lie in maternal vocal singing. All mothers sing to their infants, in all known cultures. Basic musical skills are not only precociously acquired and universal, they are also old in evolutionary terms. Archaeological finds show a continuous record of musical activities in all human settlements, dating back at least 50,000 years. Thus, music seems to correspond to an evolutionary adaptation.

Neuropsychologists have accumulated evidence that shows that the human brain is specialized for processing music. Findings reveal that the human brain is equipped with neural circuitries that deal exclusively with music. Such circuitry is not only independent of language processing, but also of the melody of language (intonation). Thus, the functioning of the musical brain is relatively autonomous. Given such independence, it is possible that a person may lack music competence, through either some form of congenital or developmental disorder, while having all other faculties intact; or, on the other hand, retain the music faculty in the presence of other mental dysfunction. This explains why you may find brilliant and remarkable individuals – like Che Guevara—who experienced a life-long inability to recognize music. Conversely, you may be impressed by the musical virtuosity of some autistic individuals, who are otherwise severely handicapped.

Music is unique. Musical abilities flourish independently, without much assistance from other cognitive and affective systems. One sequaela of having a highly specialized musical brain is that a slight neural deviation may compromise its functioning from birth. Individuals that experience such a deviation, like Che Guevara, are commonly called tone-deaf. And for a long time it was thought that lack of effort or musical practice was responsible for their condition. Now, we know that this view is incorrect. These individuals suffer from a genuine musical impairment. The existence of a few "deviants" is probably the price to pay for having a sophisticated machinery underlying musical sensitivity.

But why is our species so musical? Two main evolutionary explanations have been offered. The initial account was provided by Darwin himself (1871) who proposed that music serves to attract sexual partners. However, the dominant view lies at the group-level rather than at the individual-level, with music helping to promote group cohesion. This bonding effect of music may well be initialized in the mother-infant interactive pattern created through maternal singing. The individual- and group-level roles attributed to music do not need to be mutually exclusive. Individuals taking the lead in gatherings by virtue of their musical and dance prowess can achieve leadership status in the group, a factor that contributes to reproductive success.

Thus, the universal appeal of music, which used to be considered as a social construct that varies from culture to culture, might be better conceived as an adaptive response of the organism. It seems that emotional responses to music can be aroused similarly in every proper functioning human as reflexes, by being the product of dedicated neural structures. Indeed, musical emotions occur with rapid onset, through automatic appraisal, and with involuntary changes in physiological and behavioural responses. This conception fits with the fact that we often experience emotions as happening to us, not as chosen by us. And this is exactly what should be expected from the operation of a musical instinct.

19: A Music Pedagody Credo

19: A Music Pedagody Credo

Bengt Olsson

Professor i musikpedagogik, Musikhögskolan, Göteborg, Sweden

"We are living in the best of musical worlds". Never in history have so many people experienced and performed music. This new technology has made it possible to both create and distribute music all over the world. In media – newspapers, magazines, radio, TV and by Internet – the music and the artists are acknowledged, but very seldom music education is put forward. The role of music education in this marvellous expansion is often neglected although its importance is huge.

What is the essence of music education? Through our language we have words and concepts like "education", "teach", "learn", "school" etc, but they don't tell us what is really going on. A research-based definition speaks of "intentions to teach" and "intentions to learn" as two basic premises for education. Consequently, the conscious purposes to teach other people as well as the conscious purpose of people's learning are the core values of music education.

Such a definition embraces all kind of music education. The most obvious feature is traditional music education in schools, community music schools and within higher music education. But music education is much more. Community music involves, for example active participation in music making of all kinds (performing, improvising and creating). The kinds of music employed encompass a wide range and diversity of music. Music may occur with cultural events, folkways and other arts. The music may reflect the cultural life of a geographical community, recreated community, or imagined community.

Musical communities take many forms. While music making groups may crystallize into unique structures, there are certain characteristics that facilitate positive group dynamics. Procedures and structures don't seem to be fixed determinants. There may be a conductor, people may take turns leading and following, or there may be a collective.

One core issue is what are the unique aspects of music education? First of all music education leads to a spirit of community. It is through the musical performances as well as experiences of music that the social dimensions of music education are strengthened. However, the forces of music education on the individual strengthen his/her e abilities to distinguish another core issue. What is good and what is bad music? This s not only a matter of skills to decide what is good and bad music for the individual, but a matter of being able to take part of the deeper aspects of music. It is here that music education can play a role in human development.

18: The Experience of Music

18: The Experience of Music

George Odam

Emeritus Professor of Music Education, Bath Spa University College

Research Fellow at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London, England

Music is an essential life-experience and in our increasingly secular Western European society, it provides an important source of spiritual experience for the majority of children in our schools. Such musical feeding of the spirit remains an important part of my own early memories. That transcendent sense of well-being and connection with something beyond the day-by-day experience of the world could be sensed in the humblest musical activities: in nursery rhymes and singing games, in hymns and songs and in listening to music of all kinds through mechanical reproduction. I had a familial and environmental disposition towards music and was lucky enough to experience music at first-hand as well as in audience. As a youth I felt impelled to study music even though I had little formal teaching and less hope of success.

Can anything helpful be learned from that I wonder? I cannot demonstrate how much musical experience, in the home and outside, helped my studies overall but I am sure it did. I know it was my solace when things went wrong for me and that it helped me to learn to co-ordinate and develop my thinking and feeling processes, but I cannot prove it. I believe that youthful musical experience develops the brain, and there is increasing scientific evidence of positive effect, such as the evidence on brain development in musicians published in 1995 by Schlaug et al. and in 1998 by Pantev et al. in Nature.

What I think my story does underline is the importance of real musical experience in early life. It was hearing a busker on a street corner playing a popular song on the violin that first inspired me to want to try to play a musical instrument. At that age everything in music seemed equally wonderful and important to me. I loved hearing brass bands, choirs and organs, salon music, popular songs (there was no 'pop' music as such), dance and big bands, folk songs, Gilbert and Sullivan, Victorian sentimental ballads, live concerts of Britten's music (I came from the same region as he did), orchestras and jazz bands.

Formal school music education did not figure much in my early life and neither did I have many individual instrumental lessons. Most of what little I received I rejected as boring and irrelevant. Perhaps I was motivated to teach because I felt deprived of being taught well. But it has also made me healthily sceptical of the intentional effect that any individual teacher can have. Music doesn't fit easily into the timetabled security of school-life. It is an art and arts are uncomfortable, anarchic things. Arts demand time and attention and encourage individual expression. Good music teachers respond to this by finding ways to provide captivating musical experiences in spite of the mechanisms of schools. They understand the power of music and the need for it to be able to speak for itself rather than be explained. However much they plan carefully, they expect the unexpected and allow the music to work its own magic. They note the fundamental experience of music that comes through the human voice and how this underlies common musical practice in all cultures and at all time. They don't give up on this and diligently search for new vocal materials that will engage, thrill and motivate young people.

Helping pupils to find themselves through learning to play an instrument is a vital part of providing a musical environment in which pupils can learn. In some countries this can be done in school time, in others it may be through local music schools. Good teachers remain keenly aware of their individual pupils' instrumental and vocal progress and capabilities and make endless opportunities for their skills to be nurtured and developed within the school. Another way of experiencing music is by composing music of your own. Good teachers encourage inventiveness in their pupils and help them to approach musical experience with the invitation to try creating it for themselves. They provide rich opportunities for pupils to hear and experience the effect of their own compositions when it communicates with others in performance. The question "what if….? " is fundamental to all good music teaching both in the classroom and in the music studio. Good teachers keep their ears and eyes open and are always ready to test out new musical experiences to find the value in them. They share their sense of discovery and enjoyment with their pupils and make certain that their own enthusiasms and knowledge are conveyed to their pupils through making music with them whenever possible but encouraging all of them to take responsibility for their own learning.

Music is one of our earliest sensory experiences. It can be identified by babies even before birth. It can sustain us through life, providing relaxation or stimulation when needed. As we grow older, so our musical needs and tastes change. Music can be a lifeline. For all of us, well or ill, in physical or psychological pain, young or old, it provides a way of understanding ourselves and our world and of knowing about and experiencing things that otherwise cannot be fully expressed in words. Music making engages thinking, feeling and doing in a way that is unique and highly fulfilling. Above all it can provide a strong sense of well-being and a feeling of connection with things, well beyond our daily experience, that help to give meaning to our lives. Dr Colwyn Trevarthen, of the Department of Psychology at Edinburgh University recently described that power by saying that it attunes to the essential efforts that the mind makes to regulate the body. I believe that we are becoming increasingly aware of how important that internal tuning process is to our physical and mental good health and that music is a precious commodity that we must nurture and develop in ourselves and others as well as we can for the common good.