- What are we doing when we
advance advocacy arguments for music?
- What are music’s values?
- To what educational ends
are music’s meanings and values suited?
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.”