  .

MUSIC’S PLACE IN
EDUCATION

Wayne Bowman

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 sec-
ond 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.

1. 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 educa-
tional 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 assump-
tions 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

vraag: moet muziekeducatie in formele educatie worden gebruikt?

 22 the oxford handbook of music education

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 circum-
stances 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 ques-
tion 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
moet het in de not synonymous and since much that goes on within the context of formal school-
formele setting zijn? ing 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 dis-
advantaged, 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 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 infor-
mally—through processes of enculturation and socialization. Since almost all chil-
dren 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 teach-
ing 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
music’s place in education 23

of formal compulsory instruction, the case for universally required music educa-
tion 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 infor-
mal processes of socialization. Or perhaps we might say that in societies where
musical participation is not a ubiquitous expectation, we ask formal schooling argumenten voor
to play something of a compensatory role. In any case, the argument for making muzikale instructies
music a part of the education of every child appears to rest on the twin assump-
tions 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 unas-
sisted, 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 unas-
sisted, casually, informally, or through processes of socialization. What are those
skills and capacities, and in what ways might they be considered properly educa-
tional? 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 students to be full par-
ticipants 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
 24 the oxford handbook of music education

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 instruc-
tion that is educational in nature: instruction that imparts to students the capac-
ity 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, unpredict-
able 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, funda-
mentally 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
educatie:
suggest the term “training.” In short, teaching that seeks to develop habits, atti-
een proces dat
tudes, and dispositions that support the open-ended process of growth is educa- mensen voorbereid
tional in nature; teaching directed to concrete aims and objectives is training. op een
It may be objected that this makes of education a very fuzzy concept. To that onvoorspelbare
I can only respond that such “fuzziness” appears to be crucial to endeavors that toekomst
are creative or educational, and seeking criteria that are utterly clear risks reduc-
ing 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 citi-
zens 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 com-
plementary 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 defini-
tion educational. There is an etymological basis for this unfortunate conflation of
Educare = training
education with training, as Craft (1984) and others have pointed out. The English
Educere = educationword “education” actually has two different Latin roots: educare, to train or to
mold; educere, to lead out or draw out. Educare involves the preservation of knowl-
edge 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 differ-
ent kinds of learning outcome. As Bass and Good (2004) point out—and although
they refer to schooling in general, their comments apply with remarkable preci-
sion to school-based music education—“education that ignores educare dooms its
students to starting over each generation. Omitting educere produces citizens who
 music’s place in education 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 chil-
dren 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.

mensen die in vraag stellen of het moet betrokken worden in het onderwijs, stellen eigenlijk het verschil
tussen training en education in vraag. en er moeten kwalitatieve instructies zijn -> dus niet alleen beperken tot training.
antwoord op vraag 1, moet het deel zijn van de educatie van alle kinderen. de vraag is niet of het moet maar
op welke manier2. Reconsidering the Question
Those who believe the point in posing questions like this is to generate ironclad
vraag: moet
answers for purposes of advocacy will likely find my philosophical approach eva-
muziekeducatie
sive and frustrating. From the advocate’s perspective it is a foregone conclusion verplicht zijn voor
that music should be part of every child’s education, and what is urgently needed alle leerlingen?
are irrefutable arguments to support that conviction. I believe, however, that this
question is more fruitfully approached seeking carefully considered answers that sluit
offer to refine and modify instructional practice in light of changing sociocul- muziekonderwijs
aan bij de brede
tural realities. Political persuasion will be more effective if it follows such inquiry,
doelen van het
acknowledging the various and complex ways musical instruction may relate to the
onderwijs?
aims and purposes of music education. Philosophical inquiry is essential, I submit,
to keeping music education vital and relevant to a rapidly changing world; and it is muziek enkel
indispensable if we are to create conditions within which music instruction war- verplicht als het
rants a place of prominence in the education of all. helpt bij de
Instead of responding to this why-question in way apparently intended, I pro- educatieve doelen
pose 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 vb om aan
be part of the education of all children.3 Perhaps the fact that it is not currently te geven dat
a part of every child’s education stems at least in part from valid perceptions of `we kritisch
what music instruction all too typically entails, and from justified suspicions that, moeten zijn

muziek niet essentieel in onze maatschappij, maar eerder om gelukkiger te zijn.

 26 the oxford handbook of music education

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 par-
ticularly 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 quali-
fied “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 mis-
taken, 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 het is een recht
bear with me I hope to show you why. I believe that musical instruction of cer- van elk kind. maar
tain kinds, musical instruction that meets carefully considered musical and educa- instructies
tional ends, is something to which every child indeed has a right, something that voorzien wil niet
zeggen dat het
comprises a vital part of any education worthy of the name. However, the provision
noodzakelijk is
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 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 demon-
strating the delivery of the expected educational goods, showing (not just assert-
ing) that it makes educationally desirable and durable differences in people’s lives.
het moet verplicht worden in onderwijs om dat get wel verschil maakt in een samenleving waar mensen zich in bevinden.
music’s place in education 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 educa-
tion 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 mul-
tiple requirements of a future that is knowable only in retrospect.8 All three of
these—indoctrinating, training, educating—are instructional potentials: none fol-
lows 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 pretty sure it is not. Music specialists may be rea-
sonably expert in transmitting the kinds of skills required of people like them-
selves, 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 educa-
tion 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.
28 the oxford handbook of music education

If there is one unequivocal conclusion to which all this complicated why talk
and 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 assump-
tions and practices that are highly various and complex. It is therefore impera-
tive, 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 experi-
ence 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 mat-
ter, 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 enkel als muziek
“other arts”) will do. Only if we can show that musical instruction contributes bijdraagt tot
educatieve doelen
substantially and distinctively to desired educational ends, and how (and under
moet het deel zijn
what circumstances), can the case be sustained that music should be a required van de educatie
part of every child’s education. That involves close attention to issues like the one van elk kind
to which we turn next.

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
music’s place in education 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. action is
Accordingly, to know the meaning or value of anything requires that we attend to belangrijker dan
what people do with it, how people use it; we need to determine the “differences it kennis
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 domi-
nate 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 circum-
stances 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 unfore-
seeable. 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 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?
30 the oxford handbook of music education

The case for music’s people- and world-making power has been obscured by
the (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 con-
nections 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 remark-
able power to engage the unified human body-mind; its power to create collectivity
and intersubjectivity through what Keil (Keil & Feld, 1994) calls participatory con-
sciousness; 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 per-
sonally 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 dis-
cern 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—respon-
sibly, 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 success-
ful engagement in the practice at hand. Practical know-how asks how “rightness” is
best understood in circumstances that are action-embedded, and whose full mean-
ing, 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
waardevol om op
another in many complex ways. Musical engagements in which such features are educatie in te gaan
salient develop the kind of habits and character capable of thriving in uncertain en dat is
circumstances. These are, I submit, tremendously valuable educational assets. waardevoller dan
To become musically educated, on this view, is to develop capacities for the alleen training
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 can-
not be dispensed in prescribed ways, yet is essential to navigating the ever-shifting
 music’s place in education 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 instruc-
tion 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 con-
siderable. 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 soci-
eties we create through musical action. CONCLUSIE: de kracht van muziek is om bij te dragen aan
persoonlijke intwikkeling en vaardigheden nodig voor de
maatschappij, dat kan door verder te gaan dan training
-> naar muziekeducatie
3. 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 educat-
ing-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 substanti-
ating 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
Educare = education in music = training
Educere = education trough music = education
32 the oxford handbook of music education

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 tech- legt training uit
nicians, 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 spe-
cific 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 legt education uit
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.
training
Therefore, we can focus primarily on developing and refining capacities of a par-
ticular, 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 appropri-
ate 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 educat-
ing 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 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 educa- belangrijk dat
tors understand music education to mean, and how it differs from instruction muziekpedagogen
het verschil tussen
devoted to training. It is a distinction, in other words, with practical consequences.
training en
For instance, we sometimes characterize the preparation of future music teach-
education kennen
ers as music teacher training; and training is indisputably an important compo-
nent 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 immedi-
ate skill/training focus. Effective training requires delimitation, specificity, and
music’s place in education 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 instruction-
ally 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 ques-
tions like when-to, whether-to, to-whom-to, or to-what-extent-to. If music is to be
a required feature in everyone’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 cul-
turally 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 based. Musical training is not synonymous with musi-
cal education, nor is it an acceptable substitute for musical instruction devoted to
broadly educational aims.
Verschil training en education + waar de kracht van muziekeducatie zit

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 edu-
cation 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 educa-
tion. However, it is equally clear that these goals may align if we take seriously the
Herhaling vorig stukken
 34 the oxford handbook of music education

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 contempo-
rary 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 discern-
ment, independent thought, and creative dispositions rightly expected of educa-
tion. 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 inap-
propriate 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 compro-
mised: 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.
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 con-
victions 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 contribu-
tion must still be recognizably educational.
A secure place for music in formal schooling thus depends on an intricate bal-
ance 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 genuinely educational ends in ways only it can. A widespread traditional
zien hoe muziekeducatie educatieve doelen kan verzinnen op een manier dat alleen muziekeducatie dat kan.
music’s place in education 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 particu-
larly compelling. And where such arguments are seen to support musical instruc-
tion 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.

samen: 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 educa-
tors, 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 musical instruction and curricula are poor fits to the aims of gen-
eral 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 instruc-
tional 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
 36 the oxford handbook of music education

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 exam-
ining and revising instructional practices, working to assure their alignment with
educational goals, and rather than investing in the revision or renewal of educa-
tional goals, advocacy resorts to political persuasion: efforts to convince skeptical
others, by any means possible, to support existing instructional 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 undertaking to
show others the error of their ways—we must accept that people’s perceptions of
er moet een music education and their reluctance to support it often stem from shortcomings
meerwaarde zijn 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 others in ways they understand”
requires that we accept responsibility for modifying our own actions and under-
standings 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 understand-
ings of our own, understandings that acknowledge the evolving musical and edu-
cational needs of a twenty-first-century 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 cus-
tomary practices.
The challenge, in other words, is not so much to make others understand and
support us as to achieve mutual understandings and to ensure that our instructional
music’s place in education 37

practices continue to evolve in ways that make more fully evident the educational
benefits of musical instruction and engagements. The educational ends of teach-
ing 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.

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
38 the oxford handbook of music education

analytically useful. And third, asking them in this particular way helps 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
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
music’s place in education 39

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?

REFERENCES

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