This article examines the educational function of the North American wind band program. Issues such as band education's methodological control, perceived lack of self-reflection or inquiry, its insecurity concerning program legitimacy, and the systemic fear that seems to permeate its history provide the framework for this exploration. With a philosophical eye toward the future of school-based instrumental music education each author brings perspective to the task of critiquing an institution that has taken on the seemingly sacrosanct and inviolable trappings of (...) tradition and ritual. (shrink)

Music education has historically had a tense relationship with social justice. One the one hand, educators concerned with music practices have long preoccupied themselves with ideas of open participation and the potentially transformative capacity that musical interaction fosters. On the other hand, they have often done so while promoting and privileging a particular set of musical practices, traditions, and forms of musical knowledge, which has in turn alienated and even excluded many children from music education opportunities. The Oxford Handbook of (...) Social Justice in Music Education provides a comprehensive overview and scholarly analyses of the major themes and issues relating to social justice in musical and educational practice worldwide.The first section of the handbook conceptualizes social justice while framing its pursuit within broader contexts and concerns. Authors in the succeeding sections of the handbook fill out what social justice entails for music teaching and learning in the home, school, university, and wider community as they grapple with cycles of injustice that might be perpetuated by music pedagogy. The concluding section of the handbook offers specific practical examples of social justice in action through a variety of educational and social projects and pedagogical practices that will inspire and guide those wishing to confront and attempt to ameliorate musical or other inequity and injustice. Consisting of 42 chapters by authors from across the globe, the handbook will be of interest to anyone who wishes to better understand what social justice is and why its pursuit in and through music education matters.Music education has historically had a tense relationship with social justice. One the one hand, educators concerned with music practices have long preoccupied themselves with ideas of open participation and the potentially transformative capacity that musical interaction fosters. On the other hand, they have often done so while promoting and privileging a particular set of musical practices, traditions, and forms of musical knowledge, which has in turn alienated and even excluded many children from music education opportunities. The Oxford Handbook of Social Justice in Music Education provides a comprehensive overview and scholarly analyses of the major themes and issues relating to social justice in musical and educational practice worldwide.The first section of the handbook conceptualizes social justice while framing its pursuit within broader contexts and concerns. Authors in the succeeding sections of the handbook fill out what social justice entails for music teaching and learning in the home, school, university, and wider community as they grapple with cycles of injustice that might be perpetuated by music pedagogy. The concluding section of the handbook offers specific practical examples of social justice in action through a variety of educational and social projects and pedagogical practices that will inspire and guide those wishing to confront and attempt to ameliorate musical or other inequity and injustice. Consisting of 42 chapters by authors from across the globe, the handbook will be of interest to anyone who wishes to better understand what social justice is and why its pursuit in and through music education matters. (shrink)

This paper explores the ways in which music educators have allowed others outside of music education to name who and how they are in the world. Often comfortable with voicing advocacy and purpose from the status of second class citizen, music educators are complicit in the very processes of reproduction they wish to challenge. Seeking to address what could be a privileged positioning of marginalized status, this paper also speaks to the spaces that are created that could afford possibilities of (...) transformation. Thus, rather than to allow the perceived netherworld of marginalized status to name who we are and can be, we can name our own reality as we challenge the ways in which our own thoughts, beliefs, and actions are acquired and reproduced. (shrink)

With the use of Bruner’s concept of story, broad generalizations from the US, and political philosophy, this article suggests that comparisons between music programs throughout the world are meaningless unless we acknowledge how pervasive, insidious, and menacing is the rhetoric of the global market economy. Political philosophy is one process of inquiry that can provide a way of reflecting upon educative constructs that affect all educators. One way to begin thinking about the process of comparison is to examine educational statements (...) from government websites throughout the world. While in many cases these statements are not referred to as manifestos, the rhetoric in use on these government sanctioned websites not only boldly states the goal of education in terms of global markets and competition but also does so by co-opting discourse that was originally intended to speak for oppressed populations. (shrink)

Abstract:The pedagogical strategy of students choosing their own friends with whom to work in classroom contexts (under the guise of democratic participation) because this is how popular musicians learn, has mostly gone uninterrogated in the literature. Approaching the question of how to create a common world through a critical examination of the unexamined assumptions that underpin emerging celebratory discourses on friendship, I consider the ways in which the words friends and friendship are indiscriminately used without acknowledging that the soundness of (...) this pedagogical choice is based on data collected from people (‘real life’ popular musicians) who are in, more often than not, instrumental relations of utility. In doing so I call for a rereading of friendship groups in order to resist the neoliberal injunction of self-interest, a survival-of-the-fittest ethos, and unchecked individualism. To that end I question the ways in which friendship groups in popular music groupings have become sites for developing and perfecting the neoliberal self. (shrink)

In this article the role of comparative studies of music education within the globalized world is discussed by looking at a particular initiative in the general education field called “Didaktik and/or curriculum.” By drawing on the characteristics and issues of this particular initiative, as well as on some critical perspectives that those characteristics and issues entail, the potential of comparative studies in the field of music education is addressed. In the course of drawing on those connections, the challenges of comparative (...) studies that arise from globalization and “glocalization” are discussed, along with three levels of such studies that emerge when regarding them as meeting places for ideas, experiences, and competences. This discussion will suggest some possible benefits of future comparative studies of music education. (shrink)