Music's Place in Education

Oxford Handbooks Online

Music's Place in Education  
Wayne Bowman
The Oxford Handbook of Music Education, Volume 1 (1 ed.)
Edited by Gary E. McPherson and Graham F. Welch

Print Publication Date: Aug 2012 Subject: Music, Music Education

Online Publication Date: Nov 2012 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199730810.013.0003

Abstract and Keywords

This article examines four questions that address the issue of music's perceived role in
the process of education. These questions are: Why should music be part of the education
of all children? What is the role of music in personal/educational development? How do
the goals of music education align with those of general education? How can we justify
the role of music in education in ways others understand? The article first considers the
two assumptions underlying the argument for making music part of child education: that
music contributes something unique and essential to human life, and this “something”
cannot be achieved without formal instruction. It then explores the distinctions between
education and training, the difference between educating in and educating through
music, and whether formal schooling is itself educational. It also discusses advocacy as a
strategy used by music educators to persuade others of the importance and integrity of
current practices and argues that music education must be as concerned with changing
itself as it is with winning the support of others.

Keywords: music, education, personal development, music education, child education, formal instruction, training,
formal schooling, advocacy, music educators

This chapter examines four questions, each concerned with a different facet of the issue
of music's perceived role in the process of education.1 The first seeks a basis for the claim
that music should be a universal component of education. The second asks about music's
special contributions to personal development. The third inquires about the distinction
between educating “in” and “through” music. And the fourth asks how music educators
can help others understand the need for music education. I hope to approach these rather
familiar questions and concerns in ways that may help us frame them somewhat
differently and thus to pursue answers that may diverge from those to which we are
accustomed.

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Music's Place in Education

Why Should Music be Part of the Education of

all Children?
This is, for many, “the” big question in music education—a burning issue in need of an
answer that establishes a compelling place for music at the heart of all educational
processes. I shall begin consideration of this question in the time-honored philosophical
tradition of questioning the question and the assumptions on which it appears to be
based. I do this in order to tease out other questions and assumptions that may ultimately
be more useful and informative.

Although it is not uncommon to see the question posed this way, note that it tends to
narrow rather significantly the range of appropriate answers: what is (p. 22) anticipated
or desired are responses that are unequivocal and definitive— “knock-them-dead”
accounts that are irrefutable, universal, and largely unqualified. The question takes as
given that music should be a part of the education of all children, and seeks help in
defending that position. Because it does not ask whether music should be a part of the
education of all children or under what circumstances, it precludes answers that are
negative or provisional or contingent: answers to the effect that perhaps music shouldn't
be a part, or that it should be a part only if certain conditions are met. Since qualified
answers like these are the kind I favor (for reasons I will explain shortly), I suggest that a
more useful way of posing the question might be to ask something more along the lines of
“Under what circumstances might music warrant a place in the education of all
children?” In other words, When should it be a universal part of education? Or perhaps,
more directly and simply still, Should music be part of the education of all children? This
question invites philosophical inquiry rather than advocacy, an important distinction that
I will address in due course.

Another troubling feature of the question posed is its unelaborated reference to

education. It is probably a safe to assume that “education” here is intended to mean
something like “formal, compulsory schooling.” However, since the two are not
synonymous and since much that goes on within the context of formal schooling is not
particularly “educational” in the sense I understand that term, I am a little uncomfortable
with the apparent implication that music should invariably and necessarily be a part of it.
Formal schooling is generally reserved for things that are deemed essential to becoming
full participants in a culture or society, or to things that we have good reason to believe
will enable people to live their lives to the fullest. We turn to formal and required
instruction, in other words, when there is reason to think that without such instruction
people will be seriously disadvantaged, or their human potentials will be stunted in ways
we as societies are not prepared to accept. To argue the importance of music education is
not quite the same as arguing that musical instruction be a required part of schooling.

It is also rather important to note that the question posed is not asking why (or, as I have
suggested, how or if) musical experience is humanly important or valuable. Instead, it is
asking us to indicate how music's value rises to the level of something that must be

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Music's Place in Education

addressed through compulsory instruction. The question is not why we love music, then,
or why we think music is important. There are many, many things that are crucial to
human life and living that are not taken up in formal compulsory schooling, either
because of the difficulty of teaching them effectively in such settings or because they are
learned quite effectively informally—through processes of enculturation and socialization.
Since almost all children learn to speak their mother tongue by being immersed in a
culture where it is spoken, for instance, schools do not typically devote precious
resources to teaching children to speak and converse. The question about music, then, is
this: of the many, many things that make it an important and potent force in individual
and social life, which of these require formal instruction in order to flourish? If people
can be shown to develop passable or functional musical abilities without benefit (p. 23) of
formal compulsory instruction, the case for universally required music education is
weakened considerably. This isn't to say that learning music is unimportant, obviously:
just that there may be reasons to believe it does adequately what we need it to do without
resorting to formal intervention. There exist societies in which this is arguably the case—
in which growing up as a normal, functioning member of that society involves the
development of relatively sophisticated musical abilities, without necessary recourse to
formal instruction.

The argument for making music part of the education of every child, then, applies
primarily to aspects of musical learning that cannot be entrusted to informal processes of
socialization. Or perhaps we might say that in societies where musical participation is not
a ubiquitous expectation, we ask formal schooling to play something of a compensatory
role. In any case, the argument for making music a part of the education of every child
appears to rest on the twin assumptions that (1) music contributes something unique and
essential to human life, and (2) this “something” cannot be achieved without formal
instruction. Again, this is an argument about the provision of musical instruction (and, it
might be added, musical instruction of certain kinds), not simply about exposure to or
experience of “music.” If music were somehow capable of delivering its putative benefits
unassisted, mere exposure might suffice. But the argument does not appear to be just
that music should be part of education: it is, rather, an argument in favor of musical
instruction devoted to developing skills and capacities that do not take root unassisted,
casually, informally, or through processes of socialization. What are those skills and
capacities, and in what ways might they be considered properly educational? These are
questions that warrant careful attention.

Before we address the question about “education,” however, let us consider a related
matter. If formal compulsory instruction is reserved for those areas deemed essential to
becoming full participants in society—or, perhaps more concretely, active participants in
musical culture—what might that mean? In which or whose musical cultures do we aspire
to make our educational charges full participants? And indeed, given the rapidity and
ubiquity of social change, what will the future of these musical cultures or societies— the
fields in which we hope to prepare our students to engage—look like? Things like culture,
society, and music are fluid phenomena whose futures will, there is every reason to
believe, differ strikingly from their present states. What kind of instruction prepares
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Music's Place in Education

students to be full participants in cultures whose future identities are unknowable and
unforeseeable? Instruction, I submit, that is specifically and avowedly educational.

This last claim involves a distinctive understanding of “education” that requires careful
explanation if I am to make myself understood in the remainder of this chapter. I have
suggested that education is not a synonym for schooling; nor is it a synonym for
instruction. Schooling and instruction are but means, and whether the ends they serve
are ultimately educational depends on how they are pursued or enacted. Instruction may
or may not (and indeed, often it does not) serve ends that are educational. I want to
reserve “education” for processes of teaching and learning that prepare people for
futures that are, strictly speaking, unknowable. If (p. 24) music is to be taught in ways
that prepare students to be full participants in musical cultures that are still in the
process of being created, we very much need instruction that is educational in nature:
instruction that imparts to students the capacity to reshape themselves, to create for
themselves modes of musical engagement that may bear little resemblance to those that
typify present and past practices. Education is, in short, a process that prepares people
for unknowable, unpredictable futures. The chief goal of education, as John Dewey (1983,
p. 402) insisted, is “to protect, sustain, and direct growth”: and growth is, by its very
nature, fundamentally unpredictable.

If education has this distinctive meaning and seeks to fulfill this particular role, what
shall we call instructional processes that are devoted to developing highly specific,
predictable outcomes—the familiar kind of music teaching whose means are specifically
designed to enable success in existing musical practices? I suggest the term “training.” In
short, teaching that seeks to develop habits, attitudes, and dispositions that support the
open-ended process of growth is educational in nature; teaching directed to concrete
aims and objectives is training.

It may be objected that this makes of education a very fuzzy concept. To that I can only
respond that such “fuzziness” appears to be crucial to endeavors that are creative or
educational, and seeking criteria that are utterly clear risks reducing education to
training. Designating criteria for growth, as Richard Rorty (1989) once argued, “cut[s]
the future down to the size of the present” (p. 201). It's not unlike, he continued “asking a
dinosaur to specify what would make for a good mammal or asking a fourth-century
Athenian to propose forms of life for the citizens of a twentieth-century industrial
democracy.”

My intent is not to declare “education” the sole legitimate aim of musical instruction, or
to suggest that training is utterly antithetical to (and invariably inferior to) education.
Both are essential, if for different reasons; they serve complementary ends, neither of
which is dispensable. Difficulties arise, however, when we neglect the distinction I am
trying to draw here and wrongly assume that all music teaching is cut from the same
cloth—that all music teaching is by definition educational. There is an etymological basis
for this unfortunate conflation of education with training, as Craft (1984) and others have
pointed out. The English word “education” actually has two different Latin roots: educare,

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Music's Place in Education

to train or to mold; educere, to lead out or draw out. Educare involves the preservation of
knowledge and tradition, prepares the young to fit into existing circumstances, and sees
learners as recipients or consumers of knowledge. Educere involves preparing new
generations for the inevitability of change, prepares the young to create solutions to
problems yet unknown, and sees learners as creators or producers of knowledge.2 Thus
we find associated in a single term two remarkably divergent understandings of
“education” that involve two very different kinds of teaching and two very different kinds
of learning outcome. As Bass and Good (2004) point out—and although they refer to
schooling in general, their comments apply with remarkable precision to school-based
music education—“education that ignores educare dooms its students to starting over
each generation. Omitting educere produces citizens who (p. 25) are incapable of solving
new problems. Thus, any system of education that supplies its students with only one of
these has failed miserably” (p. 4).

In proposing that we call one of these functions “education” and the other “training,” I
am simply urging that we keep the two distinct in our minds and our practices, and that
we avoid the misguided assumption that all acts and instances of teaching music are
inherently educational—that all music teaching is music education. Applied to the
question we began to explore earlier, this distinction enables us to say that whether
music should be part of the education of all children depends in fundamental ways on
what we understand education to involve. Assuring that music is part of children's school
experience does not assure that educational ends will be pursued or nurtured or attained.
The provision of musical instruction does not necessarily assure educational outcomes.
Before we dismiss those who are reluctant to endorse musical instruction as a required
part of formal schooling—assuming that they simply fail to grasp what we find convenient
to call music's inherent value—we might do well to consider at least the possibility that
their reservations may be grounded in accurate perceptions of the kinds of musical
instruction that are currently prevalent, and in reasonable assumptions about the broader
aims of education.

Reconsidering the Question

Those who believe the point in posing questions like this is to generate ironclad answers
for purposes of advocacy will likely find my philosophical approach evasive and
frustrating. From the advocate's perspective it is a foregone conclusion that music should
be part of every child's education, and what is urgently needed are irrefutable arguments
to support that conviction. I believe, however, that this question is more fruitfully
approached seeking carefully considered answers that offer to refine and modify
instructional practice in light of changing sociocultural realities. Political persuasion will
be more effective if it follows such inquiry, acknowledging the various and complex ways
musical instruction may relate to the aims and purposes of music education. Philosophical
inquiry is essential, I submit, to keeping music education vital and relevant to a rapidly

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Music's Place in Education

changing world; and it is indispensable if we are to create conditions within which music
instruction warrants a place of prominence in the education of all.

Instead of responding to this why-question in way apparently intended, I propose we

consider a deliberately provocative and unsettling response, one that may jar us from our
complacency and force critical examination of some of the things we take for granted.
Perhaps musical instruction as currently practiced should not be part of the education of
all children.3 Perhaps the fact that it is not currently a part of every child's education
stems at least in part from valid perceptions of what music instruction all too typically
entails, and from justified suspicions that, (p. 26) despite its undeniable pleasures and
many desirable attributes, it just doesn't rise to the level of an educational necessity.
Perhaps what it currently seeks to deliver, despite its obvious pleasures and attractions, is
not really essential to becoming a fully functioning participant in modern social life.

Or perhaps music's exclusion from the so-called educational core stems at least in part
from legitimate perceptions that music taught as educare is not particularly compatible
with the broad aims of education—and that it is therefore not something everyone
requires, but rather an enjoyable option some may wish to pursue. Perhaps it is felt that
the technical training typical of middle and senior years instruction does not serve the
ambitious aims of education. Perhaps what we should be pursuing is not so much
universally required musical experience, then, as experience and instruction of a
particular kind—a kind more fully and more discernibly congruent with genuinely
educational ends.

Perhaps, then, the most defensible answer to this why-question is a qualified “That
depends.” The reasons music should be part of every child's education depend
fundamentally on one's understandings of education, of music, of the ways these come
together in “music education,” and how the success or failure of this union is to be
gauged. Before we can argue persuasively that musical instruction is something that
should be required of everyone, we must carefully address the nature and value of music,
of education, of music education, and of the kind of instruction congruent with such
fundamental considerations. Perhaps it is mistaken, then, to think that we can affect
large-scale changes in educational policy until we have examined more thoroughly and
critically what we are advocating.

Disturbing assertions like these will be greeted impatiently by those who believe that
music education's most urgent need is to “get on” with the formulation of “policy.”
However, I believe such lines of inquiry are responsible; and if you’ll bear with me I hope
to show you why. I believe that musical instruction of certain kinds, musical instruction
that meets carefully considered musical and educational ends, is something to which
every child indeed has a right, something that comprises a vital part of any education
worthy of the name. However, the provision of instruction in, exposure to, or experience
with music—regardless of the ends to which they demonstrably contribute—are not
educational necessities. Within the context of education, music and instruction are

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Music's Place in Education

vehicles: they are means to ends that may be helpful, constructive, educative, and
therefore highly desirable; but they may also be harmful, destructive, and miseducative.4

To suggest that music is a vehicle whose educational value is a function of its contribution
to certain ends is to call into question an article of faith among many musicians and
music educators: the comforting notion that music's value is “intrinsic” or “inherent.”
Music has no “inherent” value,5 I submit: no value of a kind that assures worthwhile
educational outcomes regardless of the ways it is taught or experienced or learned. Thus,
if music education seeks a secure and prominent place within general compulsory
education it must earn it by demonstrating the delivery of the expected educational
goods, showing (not just asserting) that it makes educationally desirable and durable
differences in people's lives. (p. 27) In other words, musical instruction should lead to the
development of habits that are lifelong and life-wide: habits that are demonstrably useful.

Children have a fundamental right to musical experience and instruction that is

educationally valuable—that demonstrably enhances their abilities to lead richer, more
meaningful lives, and that makes their worlds better places in which to live. But music
alone does not accomplish these ends; nor does all musical instruction. Music and
musical instruction that do not contribute discernibly to educational ends simply do not
warrant a universal presence in education. The realm of education is rightly reserved for
endeavors capable of delivering educational goods.

Musical instruction can enhance or trivialize the imagination; it can nurture creativity or
quash it; it can empower people or it can reinforce blind conformity; it can nurture
confidence and it can destroy it. Music is a power that can be used for good or ill—a
tremendously powerful tool that can be used in ways appropriate or inimical to
educational ends.6 The same is true of musical instruction: it is no more inherently good
or bad than music. Instruction may indoctrinate or coerce, imposing choices and
decisions on students;7 it may train, preparing students for preordained, clearly
prescribed roles and equipping them with skills tailored precisely to fulfilling them; it
may also educate, imparting and nurturing skills, understandings, and attitudes that are
pliable enough to meet the diverse and multiple requirements of a future that is knowable
only in retrospect.8 All three of these—indoctrinating, training, educating—are
instructional potentials: none follows automatically from the act of teaching music.

It follows, I think, that a sound, responsible answer to the why-question posed above
requires careful consideration of how-questions and to-what-ends questions. If music
instruction is to be deemed sufficiently educational to warrant requiring it of all children
regardless of background, disposition, or interest, then questions about what kind of
teaching (and by whom), what kind of music (or whose), and the ends these must serve
(and for what reasons)—are unavoidable.

Another pair of crucial questions follows directly from these: Who is a music educator?
What kinds of expertise are required to deliver the educational goods? It is often assumed
—indeed, it may be another of those fundamental articles of faith—that to be a music
educator is to be a music specialist. I am not convinced that is the case: in fact, I am
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Music's Place in Education

pretty sure it is not. Music specialists may be reasonably expert in transmitting the kinds
of skills required of people like themselves, but it remains to be shown that these skills
are educational in nature. A music educator, on the other hand, is one who is critically
conversant in both the means and the ends of musical instruction, and who recognizes
and responds to the plurality and diversity of students’ needs and those of an ever-
changing society. Specialized training for a “talented” few, which passes for music
education in many parts of the “developed” world, is hardly the kind of instruction that
benefits all—the general student, or society at large. Music specialists often have
considerable expertise in educare; but that, I have argued, is not all there is to education
—and in particular, to the kind of instruction societies are inclined to require of every
school-aged child.

If there is one unequivocal conclusion to which all this complicated why talk and
(p. 28)

how talk leads, I believe it is that valid claims to musical education must be equivocal.
They “depend” on circumstances and systems and values and assumptions and practices
that are highly various and complex. It is therefore imperative, I submit, that music
educators themselves be educated: technical training will not suffice, even if
supplemented by copious amounts of propositional knowledge (knowledge of facts,
history, and so-called music theory). A course of study devoted predominantly to educare
is insufficient for preparing music educators to design and deliver the kind of musical
instruction required of every child. Musical skill and knowledge are insufficient to
professional knowledge in music education, an assertion that calls into question still
another article of faith embraced by many who argue that music should be part of the
education of all children: the conviction that the best musicians invariably make the best
educators. Musicianship is clearly essential; but it is insufficient to instruction that
aspires to be educational.

Should music be a part of the education of all children, then? If this means simply that
music instruction of some sort be required of all, and that any sort will do, then probably
not: for neither musical instruction nor musical experience are automatically educational
in the sense I have sought to establish. Where their contribution extends no further than
the provision of pleasant diversions or necessary relief from the intellectual rigors of
formal instruction, any number of alternative, more affordable endeavors will do.9 And
where music is presumed to be just another “subject” for study, different from others only
in its subject matter, there is no particularly compelling reason it should be taught to and
learned by everyone. Again, any of a number of alternatives (including, note, any of the
“other arts”) will do. Only if we can show that musical instruction contributes
substantially and distinctively to desired educational ends, and how (and under what
circumstances), can the case be sustained that music should be a required part of every
child's education. That involves close attention to issues like the one to which we turn
next.

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Music's Place in Education

What Is Music's Role in Personal/Educational

Development?
Because neither music nor education are monolithic entities with single natures or
values, I doubt very much that a case can be made convincingly that music has a single
specifiable role, either in education or in personal development. However, that puts
negatively a point that is better stated positively: rich musical experience may contribute
to a broad range of important educational aims; it is replete with potentials for personal
development. It is sometimes argued that we should avoid claims like this because they
sound too desperate, or because other endeavors can be shown to address them more
effectively and reliably than (p. 29) music. Leaving aside the possibility that musical
engagement might address many diverse educational concerns at once,10 let us ask how
music contributes distinctively to personal development. How might expertly guided
musical engagements and experience contribute to personal and educational aims in
ways that are distinctly musical?

From ancient times wise people have observed that we are or become what we do
repeatedly. This idea becomes axiomatic in philosophical pragmatism, where it is
maintained that habits are constitutive both of human knowledge and identity—and that
actions, rather than ideas, are foundational in the human world. People are, in William
James's memorable words, walking bundles of habits (James 1899, p. 77). Human action
is the basis for all knowledge. Indeed, knowing is itself action. Accordingly, to know the
meaning or value of anything requires that we attend to what people do with it, how
people use it; we need to determine the “differences it makes,” its consequences for
human action. These powerful convictions suggest a distinctive understanding of and
approach to education, one that is more friendly to performative undertakings like music
than the idea-centric notions that dominate many (perhaps most?) schooling practices
and systems.

Where habitual action is our concern, an important educational aim is to help people
learn to act intentionally, with a view to the potential consequences of their actions,
thereby giving them fuller control over their lives. On this view, education empowers
people by developing capacities on which they can rely for choosing responsible courses
of action—for using habits that are appropriate to the circumstances at hand. However,
since we cannot possibly anticipate the full range of these circumstances, education must
be future-oriented and open-ended.

If action is our focus—what people are able and inclined to do as a result of instruction—
then conventional worries about music's precarious cognitive status should be replaced
by concern for the development of habits, dispositions, and capacities to act intelligently
and responsibly in circumstances foreseen and unforeseeable. Concern about what we
know can be replaced by concern about the kind of people we become by engaging in
musical action. The latter concerns are not new: they have roots that extend deeply into
ancient Greek and Chinese civilizations. However, contemporary fascination with

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Music's Place in Education

technical instructional systems—with “methods” whose worth is gauged by cognitively

circumscribed outcomes and by clearly delineated executive skills—diverts attention from
music's power to shape habits, personality, character, and in turn, social and cultural
orders.11

If we take action rather than knowledge or feeling12 as foundational, then the aims of
musical instruction shift in rather interesting ways, ways that are more friendly to music-
making. The question becomes not so much what we know or feel as result of instruction,
or what specific executive skills instruction may have imparted, but what kind of people
we become through engaging in musical action. These considerations require that we ask
about the kind of societies and world to which we want musically educational processes
to contribute. What unique roles might music play in the important work of habit-making,
people-making, and world-making?

The case for music's people- and world-making power has been obscured by the
(p. 30)

(largely Western) notion of music as an “autonomous” entity, music as a “thing” or

collection of things with value all its (their) own. On this view, music's connections with
things outside “itself”—things like people's habits, or dispositions, or inclinations to act—
are largely utilitarian, extramusical concerns. The focus of genuinely musical study, on
the autonomist view, is music “itself,” or music “alone,” and things like music's role in the
formation of personality and society are more appropriately addressed in disciplines like
psychology and sociology. However, this marginalizes what may be educationally most
distinctive about music: its remarkable power to engage the unified human body-mind; its
power to create collectivity and intersubjectivity through what Keil (Keil & Feld, 1994)
calls participatory consciousness; its capacity to develop action habits and character that
are personally and culturally beneficial.

Music's most promising educational contribution from the perspective I am proposing

here is not what we know or feel about it, and not the facility with which we are able to
execute particular musical tasks, but who we become (both personally and collectively)
through musical engagements. Making music together involves highly refined ethical
sensibilities—concern to act rightly, appropriately, and responsibly in circumstances that
are fluid, never wholly predictable, and ever subject to change. An important part of what
musical action offers to develop is the habit of changing habits when circumstances
warrant, and the ability to discern when and where such changes are necessary. These
crucial capacities are not so much things people know or possess as they are dispositions
to act—responsibly, responsively, in light of what John Dewey (1916, p. 373) called ends-
in-view. While these capacities do not consist of knowledge that is logically or technically
deployed, they are highly rational, highly valuable, and essential to living well in a human
world. They stem not from what one knows or feels so much as from the kind of person
one is.

This kind of know-how is practical in nature: not practical in the sense of being
“workable” or convenient or easily incorporated into endeavors in which one may be
engaged, but rather in its concern for the kinds of action that constitute successful

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Music's Place in Education

engagement in the practice at hand. Practical know-how asks how “rightness” is best
understood in circumstances that are action-embedded, and whose full meaning, because
it is ever emerging, can only be known retrospectively. Educationally oriented musical
engagement is deeply concerned with acting rightly in light of situational variables that
are intricately intertwined, variable, and related to one another in many complex ways.
Musical engagements in which such features are salient develop the kind of habits and
character capable of thriving in uncertain circumstances. These are, I submit,
tremendously valuable educational assets.

To become musically educated, on this view, is to develop capacities for the kind of
judgment that is deployed in vivo, on the fly, in response to the demands of uniquely
emerging circumstances. This is know-how that cannot be separated from one's
character, that cannot be encapsulated in a code or formula, that cannot be dispensed in
prescribed ways, yet is essential to navigating the ever-shifting (p. 31) waters of the
human social world. If we are what we do and do repeatedly—if we are the habits we
have acquired and refined—then educationally oriented instruction requires that
students’ habitual doings not be reduced to impersonal rule-following or painting-by-
numbers. Education is concerned to nurture and develop the habits of acting responsively
and responsibly in a human world that is complex and ever changing.

What then is music's role in personal development? Although again I caution that
“music’s” role is conditional—crucially dependent on things like the kind of music and the
way it is taught—its potential role in personal development is considerable. The
distinctive educational and developmental potential of music lies, I submit, in its dynamic,
bodily, and social natures, and in the distinctly ethical, responsive, and responsible kind
of know-how these afford. Practical knowledge is action-embedded knowledge, quite
distinct from theoretical knowledge and from technical know-how. It is the kind of
character-based sense of how best to proceed in situations where best courses of action
cannot be determined by previous ones. This ability to discern the right course of action
in novel, dynamic situations is precisely the kind of human asset required in today's
rapidly changing world. And musical engagements may, under the right circumstances,
nurture this capacity in ways unmatched by any other human endeavor.

The worth of music and of musical instruction and of musical experience are, in the view
we have been exploring here, functions of the consequences to which they lead: their
value lies in the differences they make (or, in the case of negative value, the differences
they fail to make) for human life and living. Such value arises not so much from what we
know about music or from the proficiency with which we learn to execute musical tasks
as from the kind of people and the kinds of societies we create through musical action.

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Music's Place in Education

Educating in Music and Educating Through

Music
There is a tremendous difference between educating in and educating through music, and
understanding this difference is crucial to our claim for a place of prominence in general
education—education for all students. Educating in music, or what I earlier called educare,
has become more or less the default setting for institutionalized musical instruction,
while educating through music, educere, is generally presumed to follow. However, there
is not much evidence that educating-through follows automatically as a result of having
educated-in, and there are sound reasons to doubt that it does. If it is granted that both
are essential to music education and that educating-through music is particularly critical
to substantiating a role for music in the general education, then our claims need to be
based on something more substantial than presumptions. To distinguish more clearly
(p. 32) between these two complementary functions, I suggest we call instruction within

music “training” and that we reserve the term “educating” for musical instruction's
broader and more essential life-serving functions.

In training, one develops and refines the skills and understandings necessary to achieve
clearly specified outcomes. We train fighter pilots, welders, X-ray technicians, and the
like. We may also train animals, but we do not tend to consider them educated as a result
of such processes. Training involves preparation for specific tasks, and because it lends
itself to systematicity and precise repetition we are generally very good at it. On the
other hand, educating—conceived as the kind of teaching and learning that have growth
as their ultimate aim—involve capacities that are less easily prescribed, dispensed, or
measured: capacities like creativity, and the ability to make appropriate choices in
unanticipated or novel circumstances.

What distinguishes training from education is not the intelligence or the sophistication of
the skills and knowledge involved. Rather, in training we know the way and the
circumstances in which the skills at hand will need to be deployed: the outcomes of
instruction and their use are predictable and relatively stable. Therefore, we can focus
primarily on developing and refining capacities of a particular, relatively standardized
kind. We need not worry inordinately about the consequences of training, because the
ends it exists to serve are “given.”

Training is a crucial instructional function: the process of developing appropriate action

habits. No one, I assume, would want to be operated on by an untrained surgeon. And
most of us prefer trained pets to wild ones. To suggest as I am that training differs in
fundamental ways from educating is not to argue that educating in music is simple,
mindless, or misguided. It is only to urge that it involves different kinds of instructional
assumptions, interventions, and strategies from educating through music, and that we
need to resist equating the two. Education and training are different processes serving
different purposes. The circumstances they require to thrive are quite distinct from one
another. Where the conditions optimal to training become our sole concern (as they

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Music's Place in Education

frequently do, for instance, in instructional “method”) we may inadvertently create

learning environments that threaten the processes and outcomes I have suggested we
call “educational.” Where musical skills and knowledge exhaust the range of instructional
concerns we explicitly pursue, we train rather than educate.

This is not a distinction without a difference. It matters what music educators understand
music education to mean, and how it differs from instruction devoted to training. It is a
distinction, in other words, with practical consequences. For instance, we sometimes
characterize the preparation of future music teachers as music teacher training; and
training is indisputably an important component in such preparation. However, trained
music teachers are not necessarily well prepared to engage in musical instruction that is
educational in nature. They are well prepared to deliver instruction of specified kinds to
students of certain kinds in particular situations, but they are less well prepared to
modify or adapt their strategies as circumstances warrant, or in ways that go beyond an
immediate skill/training focus. Effective training requires delimitation, specificity, and
(p. 33) systematicity—attributes that may be at odds with processes of growth and

change. Effective training works primarily by habituating; education seeks to instil the
capacity and inclination to change habits when circumstances warrant, as well as the
ability to recognize when such change is necessary: habits of a very different order.

Training is appropriate where the know-how we seek to transmit instructionally is

predominantly technical (how-to); in fact, these are the circumstances to which it is
ideally suited and in which it thrives. But the ethically oriented domain of education
(educere) extends well beyond technical concerns, implicating questions like when-to,
whether-to, to-whom-to, or to-what-extent-to. If music is to be a required feature in every-
one's education, its contribution to nontechnical abilities like these should be the basis
for its claim.

Childrearing is a useful example of the distinctions I have been trying to draw here.
Rearing children successfully clearly involves training them—whether to use the
bathroom or to respect the law or to engage with others in ways that are culturally
appropriate. But its ultimate success is determined by the child's eventual ability to make
discerning and appropriate decisions in circumstances that cannot be foreknown or
foretold—circumstances to which training is ill suited. Successful outcomes of
childrearing include the inclination and ability to modify, change, and even renounce the
habits instilled by training—if and when circumstances warrant.13 Similarly, the educated
person is one who is not a slave to habits, and who is adept at gauging their adequacy or
inadequacy to the demands of evolving and emerging circumstances. This concern for
acting rightly in circumstances that are always in some sense unique is a practical ability
to which musical experience guided by educationally oriented instruction is especially
well suited.

Musical training is obviously an essential instructional concern. However, the conditions

required by training may be inimical to our broader commitments to educate through
music, commitments on which our claim to a prominent role in general education must be

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Music's Place in Education

based. Musical training is not synonymous with musical education, nor is it an acceptable
substitute for musical instruction devoted to broadly educational aims.

How DO the Goals of Music Education Align

with Those of General Education?
In light of my comments about the distinctions between education and training, my
response to this question should come as no surprise. The goals of music education and
those of general education do not align automatically, necessarily, or invariably. Since the
phrase “music education” is so often equated with “musical instruction,” this should give
us pause: not all music instruction is educational; indeed, music instruction of certain
kinds may even subvert the aims of education. However, it is equally clear that these
goals may align if we take seriously the (p. 34) distinctions among teaching, training,
educating, and learning. It all depends, and there are no guarantees; but that, too, is the
nature of education.

A fuller response to this question about alignment involves attention to several additional
concerns, not least the question whether school-based music instruction should seek
alignment with the goals of general education as they are actualized in contemporary
schooling. At issue here is whether formal schooling as typically undertaken is itself
educational—a rather heretical notion, to be sure, but one that warrants consideration.
Many of the systems, priorities, and values of contemporary schooling are more
conducive to training than to education as I have urged it be understood. Many of the
instructional and curricular practices of schools are better suited to ends like conformity
and “fitting in” than to the ethical discernment, independent thought, and creative
dispositions rightly expected of education. It is all the more crucial, therefore, that music
educators distinguish between the goals of schooling and those of education. Where the
practices of schooling are at odds with the life-enhancing aims of education, music
education's role might better be conceived as compensatory or corrective than
supportive.14

In fact, music education's relationship to the goals of general education needs to be both
corrective (in the sense of remediating or countering educationally inappropriate
instructional assumptions and practices) and supportive (in the sense that it is seen to
contribute to the fundamental aims of education). Since the list of subjects claiming
curricular legitimacy far exceeds available time and resources, it is necessary to show
both that musical instruction is congruent with the aims of general education and that it
addresses them in ways that are distinctive. There are two sets of circumstances under
which music's role in general education is compromised: in one, music fails to contribute
to education's general aims distinctively—there is no compelling reason for music rather
than, for example, another of “the arts”; in the other, its contribution is so utterly distinct
that its commonality with other educational endeavors is not discernible.

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Music's Place in Education

There are valid grounds for claiming special status for music, but “special” must not be
taken to mean “utterly unique.” Claims to music's uniqueness and intrinsic value are
often accompanied by convictions that music is self-evidently or self-sufficiently
educational—“educational” in ways that “just are” and require no rationalization or
explanation. It is but a small additional step from such convictions to the kind of no-holds-
barred advocacy that promises anything and everything in an effort to generate
continued or increased support for musical instruction—and an equally small step to
anything-goes practice in which any and all instructional efforts involving music are
presumed worthwhile. Musical instruction must contribute distinctively to the aims of
education, but its contribution must still be recognizably educational.

A secure place for music in formal schooling thus depends on an intricate balance
between its “special” status or distinctness and its discernible contribution to educational
goals. Absolute difference is irrelevance. Thus, music's inclusion within the educational
domain requires a clear accounting of how music education fulfills genu-inely educational
ends in ways only it can. A widespread traditional (p. 35) strategy involves claiming for
music a distinctive kind of knowledge, experience, or awareness called “aesthetic.” This
strategy fails to articulate substantially with many people's understandings of education,
provides relatively little by way of clear instructional guidance, and is notoriously elusive
when it comes to evidence of having been attained—of having made discernible
differences in people's lives. When our claims to educational status are based on abstract
states of mind whose meaning and value are evident neither to our educational
colleagues nor to those we teach, the assertion that music is educationally important for
all is not particularly compelling. And where such arguments are seen to support musical
instruction of any and all sorts, the sincerity of our commitment to educational aims
appears dubious.

Because of the delicacy of the balance between music's claims to special status and its
need to be compatible with general educational aims, it is imperative that music
educators become more actively engaged with fellow-educators in efforts to clarify
shared understandings of the meaning and goals of education. Where education is
unthinkingly equated to formal instruction in school settings,15 the norms and practices
typical of such institutions will prevail; and where these are at odds with the goals and
potentials of musical practice, music's curricular status will remain marginal. We need
therefore to engage more actively and effectively in efforts to refine and define the
educational aims of schooling, while at the same time working to assure that musical
instruction becomes more fully congruent with that mission.

Advocacy: How Can we Justify Music's Role in

Education in Ways Others Understand?
When others are not responsive to or supportive of our aspirations as music educators,
we tend to blame them: to conclude that they do not understand, and to search for better,
more persuasive arguments. But the misunderstanding is at least partly our own. Where
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Music's Place in Education

musical instruction and curricula are poor fits to the aims of general education and the
institutional practices devoted to their pursuit, advocacy efforts will not improve our lot.
We need to work to make instructional practices in music more congruent with truly
educational aims. At the same time, we need to become more extensively engaged in
efforts to assure that the understandings of education on which schooling is based are
congruent with musical and instructional practices that take seriously their educational
commitments.

School-based educational practice has become ever more “technicized,” driven by

concerns for things like clarity, predictability, transparency, efficiency, and accountability.
As education has given way to training (as educare has replaced (p. 36) educere), music
instructional practices have followed suit: the life-enhancing skills and capacities a
musical education seeks to serve have been replaced by the rules, formulas, sequences,
and prescriptions of instructional method. In gravitating toward these music instruction
has unwittingly come to neglect the educational ends it is especially well suited to
address.

As the significance of music's contributions to general education have become less and
less apparent, music educators have found it increasingly necessary to resort to
advocacy: arguments designed to persuade others of the importance and integrity of
current practices. This strategy addresses symptoms rather than the cause of music
education's plight (Bowman 2005, 2010). Instead of critically examining and revising
instructional practices, working to assure their alignment with educational goals, and
rather than investing in the revision or renewal of educational goals, advocacy resorts to
political persuasion: efforts to convince skeptical others, by any means possible, to
support existing instructinoal habits.

However, secure and durable advances in music's educational status will be achieved only
by reaching common understandings of the aims and processes of education; the natures
and values of emerging musical practices; the intricate connections among all these; and
the conditions necessary for their realization. The process is far more complicated than
persuading others to accept our point of view, to support our values, or to endorse
without change our customary musical practices. We must accept the limitations and the
fallibility of our current habits, beliefs, and practices, and commit to making needed
changes. Instead of winning support for established practices, beliefs, and resources—
instead of undertakig to show others the error of their ways—we must accept that
people's perceptions of music education and their reluctance to support it often stem
from shortcomings of our own: from failures to change with changing times.

This is not to say there is no point to advocacy, but rather that advocacy efforts must be
carefully linked to the contingencies of practice, and committed as deeply to making
necessary adjustments as to winning greater resources and support. Advocacy claims that
take the form “Music does X” seldom stand up to critical scrutiny because “music
itself”—if it even exists—does nothing. Because people's responses to advocacy claims
are almost invariably shaped by implicit recognition of their contingency, “speaking to

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Music's Place in Education

others in ways they understad” requires that we accept responsibility for modifying our
own actions and understandings at the same time. To proceed as if “they just don't get it”
is a strategy eventually doomed to failure. People are not stupid. Speaking to them in
“ways they understand,” then, must be balanced by efforts to achieve better
understandings of our own, understandings that acknowledge the evolving musical and
educational needs of a twenty-first-cetury world. The missionary zeal of advocacy efforts
must be balanced by fuller awareness of the enormous responsibilities that attend such
claims, and must be matched by determination to modify customary practices.

The challenge, in other words, is not so much to make others understad and support us as
to achieve mutual understandings and to ensure that our instructional (p. 37) practices
continue to evolve in ways that make more fully evident the educational benefits of
musical instruction and engagements. The educational ends of teaching are not inherent,
automatic, or guaranteed irrespective of what we do and how we do it. The educational
value of music is a function of the ways it enriches and enhances life possibilities and
facilitates future growth. In a rapidly changing world this means that music education
must be as concerned with changing itself as it is with winning the support of others.

Reflective Questions
1. If schooling is not generally designed to provide instruction in things that are
effectively learned informally—through processes, for instance, of socialization and
enculturation—on what grounds might music education's recent endorsements of
“informal” music education be based?
2. It might be argued that in many instances the means of music education have
become its ends. Explain what this means, supporting your explanation with an
example. What does this suggest about the relationship between educational means
and ends?
3. Give several examples of current practices in music education that might (1)
unfairly require each student to start anew, and (2) produce students who are
incapable of addressing new problems. How do concerns like these translate into
“conservative” or “progressive” orientations to education?
4. How does educating through music depend on educating in music? Why, then,
would we not consider the latter more fundamental to music education?
5. Some would say the notion that music has “inherent” or “intrinsic” value is
educationally irresponsible because it generates relativism in which any and all
musical instruction is good, or “good enough.” Discuss.

References
Alperson, Philip. (1991). What should one expect from a philosophy of music education?
Journal of Aesthetic Education 25, pp. 215–42.

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Music's Place in Education

Bass, Randall V., & Good, J. W. (2004). Educare and educere: Is a balance possible in the
educational system? Educational Forum 68 (Winter), 161–68.

Bowman, W. (2002). Educating musically. In Richard Colwell & Carol Richardson (eds.),
The New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning (pp.63–84). New York:
Oxford University Press.

Bowman, W. (2005). To what question(s) is music advocacy the answer? International

Journal of Music Education 23(August), 125–29.

Bowman, W. (2005). Music education in nihilistic times. Educational Philosophy and

Theory (Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia). Special Issue. The
Philosophy of Music Education: Contemporary Perspectives, 37(1) (February), 29–46

. Reprinted in
David Lines (ed.), Music education for the new millennium: Theory and practice futures
for music teaching and learning. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005.

Bowman, W. (2010). Critical comments on music and music education advocacy. Music
Forum 16(April), 31–35.

Craft, M. (1984). Education for diversity. In M. Craft (ed.), Education and cultural
pluralism (pp. 5–26). London & Philadelphia: Falmer Press.

Dewey, J. (1916). Essays in experimental logic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Dewey, J. (1983). The middle works of John Dewey (1921–22). (Ed. Jo Ann Boydston)
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

James, W. (1899). Talks to teachers on psychology and to students on some of life's ideals.
Boston: George Ellis.

Keil, C., & Feld, S. (1994). Music grooves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Notes:

(1.) I have chosen to interpret and address these particular questions—originally

suggested as an organizational scheme by this volume's editors—rather literally here.
Although I might well have taken a different approach, modifying the questions to
address what one assumes was actually intended and thereby bypassing some of the
criticisms I advance here (for instance, “Why should music be a part of the education of
all children?” might reasonably have been taken as a shorthand version of “Should music
be a part of the education of all children and, if so, why?”), I have deliberately posed them
as they appear here, and for three reasons. First, I believe these ways of phrasing the
questions are common and representative. Second, posing them this way is revealing and
therefore analytically useful. And third, asking them in this particular way helps

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Music's Place in Education

demonstrate the philosophical importance of (1) choosing words carefully, and (2)
questioning questions.

(2.) Bass and Good (2004) point out that educere is in short supply in societies where
“school has been thought of as a system to prepare well-behaved citizens and good
workers” (p. 3). In such situations, students have few meaningful opportunities to
question and create: “A culture has been established that is remarkably resistant to
change. When new teachers or administrators enter this culture, they are pressured from
every side to conform to the cultural norm. If the culture cannot change them it attempts
to drive them out. Generally, it is successful in one of the other of those endeavors” (p. 4).

(3.) Although I have chosen not to pursue it here, one might well ask: why restrict the
question just to “children”? Why the apparent presumption that music (or education, for
that matter) are here for solely or primarily the young?

(4.) Surely this is among the reasons for the crucial distinction between “music specialist”
and “music education specialist” status. Being musical, or having been musically trained,
is not sufficient to professional status in music education. This presents, I know, a major
challenge to the way music education is conceived in many parts of the world, as well as
the way it is most often conceived by professionally prepared musicians in North
America. It is, however, a challenge that must be confronted if music is ever to reach its
potential as a full partner in education.

(5.) Nor, I hasten to add, does anything else. In other words, this claim is not specific to
music. The ideas of “intrinsic” or “inherent” value are, I submit, ideological ploys that
serve to privilege certain views by exempting them from criticism and debate—claiming,
in effect, that they are a priori rather than constructions.

(6.) An example of the latter, noneducative “use” of music—and there are many—is
musical instruction that inadvertently teaches students that music is something for which
they have no real talent. In such cases, music study compromises self-worth and curtails
continuing musical engagement.

(7.) Indeed, music instruction all too often consists of such imposition, proceeding on the
belief that since music's value is inherent, any kind of instruction will do, or is good
enough.

(8.) I explore these distinctions in Bowman (2002).

(9.) If the sole or primary measure of music's contribution to education is the pleasure it
affords, there is no pressing need for professionally qualified instruction.

(10.) One possible answer to this question appeals precisely to music's many valences—its
potential to educate on numerous different levels and in many various senses at once.
Perhaps, on this view, one might argue that expertly guided musical experience is a
multipurpose educational tool, by way of contrast to other areas of endeavor that are

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Music's Place in Education

more single-purpose. Although this argument has definite merit (and is potentially
distinctive to music), it is not a very useful guide for instructional or curricular choices.

(11.) Or perhaps more accurately, concerns like these have become the domain of
disciplines like sociology and therapy—to the detriment, I would argue, of the music
education profession's understanding of music's broadly educational potential.

(12.) This is not the place to pursue this issue in detail, but appeals to “feeling” are
among what Alperson (1991) aptly describes as attempted “enhancements” to “aesthetic
cognitivism.” Claims to “cognized feeling” or “feelingful cognition” as the basis for
music's deepest values trouble me for many reasons, not least their gravitation toward
receptive, “experiential” accounts of music's worth—in which the stance of the listener is
wrongly (in my view) advanced as the definitive orientation to music. Things like action,
participation, and productive engagements with music are, it seems to me, inadequately
represented by both “feeling” and “knowing” accounts. Furthermore, the distinction
between knowing and feeling on which many such accounts rest perpetuates a mind-body
dualism to which, I would like to believe, musical action offers a powerful antidote.

(13.) In the ever-apt words of Mark Twain: “Education consists mainly of what we have
unlearned.”

(14.) Again, Mark Twain's words resonate: “Don't let schooling interfere with your
education.”

(15.) Perhaps this is more aptly described as exposure than education?

Wayne Bowman

Wayne D. Bowman is professor of music and music education at Brandon University

in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada. He has held visiting professorships at University of
Toronto and New York University. His research explores a broad range of issues in
music and music education philosophy. He was Associate Editor of the journal Action,
Criticism, and Theory for Music Education from 2001 to 2006, and Editor from 2006
to 2011. His publications include Philosophical Perspectives on Music, The Oxford
Handbook of Philosophy in Music Education, numerous book chapters, and articles in
prominent scholarly journals. An accomplished trombonist, Dr. Bowman earned his
graduate degrees at University of Illinois, Urbana.

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