A Brief Introduction to A Philosophy of Music and Music Education as Social Praxis

Thomas A. Regelski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138921245
• eBook ISBN: 9781317415305
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Music and Music Education as Social Praxis is a brief introduction to a praxial theory of music education, defined by author. It is grounded in an interdisciplinary approach, for undergraduate and graduate students in music education. Drawing upon scholarship from a range of disciplines, including philosophy and sociology, the book emphasizes and highlights thinking of music as an active social practice and offers an alternative to existing approaches to music education. This text advocates for an alternative approach to teaching music, rooted in the social practice of music, and will supplement Foundations or Methods courses in the Music Education curriculum.

Part One

Ideology Critique

Introduction

Although philosophy does have its own unique areas of enquiry, one of its most distinctive features is not so much what you study as how you study it—and it is this what makes the experience of studying philosophy quite different from that of any other subject. In philosophy, we learn to identify, and think carefully about, our most basic ideas and theories—those that support all the questing for knowledge we do in other subject areas… . We look behind our everyday concerns to examine the systems and structures which support our thinking (and which ordinarily we take for granted), and to test their soundness.

C. Saunders, D. Mossley, G. MacDonald Ross, and D. Lamb*

Some readers may have concluded that a philosophy of music education (or a philosophy of anything) is an academic, intellectual endeavor doomed to misadventure, wasting time, and frustration. Furthermore, they may believe that philosophy is the domain of philosophers whose preoccupations have little to do with ‘real life’ and—as with the debates between medieval scholastic philosophers about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin—that its concerns are “merely academic.” Yet this view of philosophy and its relevance to life and teaching music is misleadingly mistaken.*

First of all, people hold many philosophies that are tacit. These philosophical beliefs are expressed not in words but through people’s actions and thus are often taken for granted. Nonetheless, such tacit philosophies* govern people’s many actions, often without any rational support that can be defended according to philosophical criteria. Take for example the tacit beliefs behind racism. Often, the holders of such philosophical beliefs (e.g., racists) resent when the actions promoted by their tacit philosophies are called into question (as Part One of this study may do for some readers already under the tacit influence of the aesthetic ideology).

Hence, “philosophy” is often held at two levels: what has been called philosophy with a small “p” and philosophy with a capital “P.” Small “p” philosophy is given to various pronouncements and stances—tacit or not—that are not usually recognized by the holder as philosophy, but they are beliefs held in a weak sense of small “p” philosophy. For example, such beliefs as “my philosophy is spare the rod and spoil the child,” or that “evolution should be taught only as a theory” (many “shoulds” are small “p”), or that “the place of a woman should be in the home,” or that “government is the problem, not the solution to the problem”—these examples all qualify as small “p” philosophy for lacking substance (evidence) and cogent and consistent arguments. Most people have a host of such small “p” convictions that guide their actions and values. They just don’t realize that they do, so they take their philosophical beliefs to be logically sound and beyond dispute—until they are questioned. Then they often reply defensively (and sometimes angrily). These are often not rationale moments and are best avoided. (“Try to reason with a fool and you are called foolish,” the saying goes.)

Arguments about “love,” for example, often break down on differences of small “p,” tacit philosophies. For such philosophies, “love” is a psychological state of mind into which you “fall” (as though into an uncovered manhole), after which you deal (or not) with the conditions into which you have “fallen.” Or, too often, when those conditions prove to be no longer agreeable or productive—and depending on how ‘deep’ the ‘manhole’ is into which you have “fallen”—you have considerable difficulty getting out of the ‘hole’ in to which you have fallen, Or, you wonder about whether coping is worth it, as opposed to getting out and seeking to “fall” again, more successfully elsewhere.

This Western philosophy of “romantic love” is totally in contrast to the traditional Eastern philosophy, which prescribes arranged marriages based on social compatibility and other criteria. As a result, the couple, over time—that is, after marriage—develop a working and “loving” relationship (although “love marriages” based on Western models are becoming more common in the East). In either the Western or Eastern sense, however, philosophically, “love” is best seen in a “loving” (shared, positive social) relationship over time, not as an emotional or cognitive state of mutual attraction (especially physical) that precedes and leads to marriage. (Later the “love of music” described in terms of ‘music appreciation’ will be considered.)† Clearly, divorce rates prove the small “p” philosophy of “romantic love” to be problematic. Obviously, a lot of people “fall out of” love on this philosophical premise.* (And many students ‘fall’ out of love with music—or, more precisely, with school music—and quit lessons or ensembles and mentally ‘drop out’ in classes.)

Capital “P” philosophies seek, instead, to reach reasoned conclusions as to what is “true, good, and beautiful” (as the cliché) goes. They are philosophies that attempt to warrant, through systematic ‘argument’ with those of other philosophical persuasions, rationales, and traditional conclusions, ideas that might benefit those who are thus convinced. Or, following Emmanuel Kant (i.e., his ‘critical’ platform for philosophy), they systematically challenge and thus clarify philosophies whose ‘arguments’ are deficient or of the small “p” variety. (The current monograph is an attempt in the spirit of this critical platform to challenge various aesthetic theories that rely mistakenly on Kant’s theory of “free beauty” as a theory of art.)†

There are, of course, capital “P” philosophies whose arguments are obscure and of interest mainly to other philosophers. But the most powerful of these, over time, usually elicit the kind and degree of dialogue that brings about commentary and response from others that progressively clarify basic philosophical issues of philosophical consequence and importance to life. Philosophical newcomers don’t at first know or care about such issues. But, in what follows here, the hope is that the many issues surrounding the philosophy of music and music education do make an important difference to what, how, and why music is taught in schools.

Music teachers, of course, have all kinds of beliefs about music, students, and education that are rooted in small “p” philosophies about human nature, children’s development, learning, and what “music” is—too often held in the face of scholarship and capital “P” philosophies to the contrary. For example, they may believe that a child’s mind is a “blank slate” (tabula rasa) waiting to be ‘written on’ by education; that music is a collection of ‘works’; that punishment is an effective teaching approach to student motivation for learning and good behavior; that competition sorts the ‘wheat from the chaff’ and that the musically select few thus rise to the top; that the learning process is the same for students regardless of their stage of development and level of schooling; that childhood is basically an ‘animalistic’ stage on the way to adulthood and that children thus need to be ‘trained’ in civilized ways; or that learning is a matter of individual attainment (Piaget), not a result of social conditions in life or in the classroom (Vygotsky). And typical small “p” philosophies of music assume, as is too often said, that “music is the language of emotions” (ignoring the differences between ‘real’ emotions and ‘aesthetic emotions’ that the philosophy of music is concerned with) or that “music is organized sound” (without questioning why or how it is organized and the meaning of different sounds and different organizations of sounds).†

In music education, then, several small “p” philosophical themes are forever current. One involves beliefs about musical ‘talent’: the (small “p”) philosophy that some students ‘have it’ and others just don’t. Thus, correspondingly, efforts on behalf of those who don’t ‘have it’ are wasted because “you can’t get blood from a stone.” Another is the philosophy behind “no pain, no gain” pedagogies—the philosophical assumption that music is a “discipline” and therefore requires rigor and sacrifice (and woe be unto those who don’t submit). Those who fall by the wayside (i.e., quit ensembles or music lessons) are thus seen by holders of this philosophy as thereby allowing a teacher to devote the time saved from efforts in behalf of the ‘untalented’ many to the ‘talented’ few. This just encourages an elitism that contradicts the usual agenda of school music’s ideology as contributing to the general education of allstudents—an elitism that is properly opposed by social critics in and outside music education.†

This elitist philosophy takes for granted the premise that school music properly functions as a kind pre-conservatory training, despite the fact that even the most able and motivated students most often do not want to make a career of music. What percentage of graduating students seeks musical careers? And, of those few, how many succeed? And how were the musical lives of rest of the graduates benefited musically by their years in school music ensembles?

Consider, for example, that premises about ‘talent’ can be compared to the doctor who complains that all the patients in the waiting room are sick! However, in the helping professions (e.g., medicine, therapy, clergy, law, nursing, teaching), the governing action ideal† of “help” implies conditions and symptoms that need assistance and support. Correspondingly, a helping profession is ethically engaged in problem-solving that is focused on the difficulties facing people (e.g., patients, students), not on the preferences, pleasures, and profits of the practitioner.

Other small “p” philosophical beliefs center on inherited notions about what “education” is and what schooling (the verb form) is ‘good for’. Given the diverse historical and philosophical roots of the word “education,” should it be a philosophy based on (a) ēducāre, putting knowledge into otherwise passive and empty minds? Or should it be on (b) ēdūcere, ‘drawing out’ (educing) and developing knowledge from a naturally receptive mind? The first philosophy (a) leads to lecture teaching, enforced skill-drill, memorization, filling minds with information, and paper-and-pencil testing (and usually student boredom and resistance). The second philosophy (b) leads to learning by doing, active involvement, and acknowledging and following the natural interests of learners. In the case of music, this second philosophy means building school music curricula† on the many attractions that students have to music—beginning in early childhood before school—and ‘drawing out’ whatever musical capacities they are capable of or interested in developing.

The choice should be clear for music teachers. These are not inconsequential philosophical differences. Only a moment’s recollection probably brings to the reader’s mind the memory of teachers—in music or other subjects—who were examples of each—and their problems and benefits.

Music education philosophy therefore shares in the tensions arising from this contradiction between philosophies. The question at stake, then, is whether (a) music education should be a matter of ‘programming’ the brain to be aesthetically receptive to music and ‘converting’ students from ‘popular’ musics to ‘good’ music. Or (b) is it instead a matter of encouraging and developing a latent and natural musical potential in all people for musicking?

With the former philosophy (a), music will be ‘imposed’ on the blank minds (tabula rasa) of students in order to ‘cultivate’ their aesthetic responsiveness, as premised by aesthetic philosophy. In the praxial philosophy (b), instead, all students will be seen as innately imbued with some capacity for music that can enhance their lives. Importantly, then, an assumption of philosophy (a), that students who have no musical ‘talent’ can be shunted aside and ignored in school music, is decisively rejected by supporters of (b) and praxialists. In support of (b), cultural anthropology instead privileges the view that humans have a natural capacity for and inclination “to music” (as the verb form: what, hereafter, will be called musicking (also spelled musicing)—‘doing’ music in some form).† In this scientific view, humans are as naturally inclined to music and art (consider early cave painting, for example) as they are to language.*

What follows in this study is a philosophy of music and music education social praxis based on the evidence from the social sciences: that music and art are a natural part of the endowment of human nature and, thus, are natural expressions of being human. Furthermore, it is premised on the view, again from the scientific researches of anthropology and sociology, that humans are naturally social beings: that a major trait of human nature is a strong inborn disposition for engaging in various forms of sociality. And, the social sciences (especially cultural studies) are agreed on the view that culture and society involve and are the results of social praxis (of all kinds). Moreover, among the most important examples of social praxis are art and music. Together, they help create society and account for some its fullest and finest flowering.*

However, the prevailing philosophy of music education in the past half-century (not to be confused with the philosophy of music) has been based on the philosophical premise of ēducāre: that music is not a ‘natural’ human interest, ability, or trait. In consequence, the cultural expression of music needs to be ‘disciplined’ into people (especially students) in order for music’s ‘cultural heritage’ to be properly fulfilled and perpetuated. In particular, then, the aesthetic theory of art* uncritically assumes the philosophical thesis that “culture” (and civilization) is a human development that arises (in some generic form) in history and thereafter needs concentrated discipline, study, and ‘cultivation’ to be maintained. The difference, then, is over whether culture creates music and art or whether music and art are natural human expressions that (like language) create culture and society to begin with. Argued here, with support from the sociology of music, ethnomusicology, cultural studies, and cultural anthropology, is a capital “P” philosophy based on praxis that supports the second alternative.

In the spirit of “critical philosophy,” then (e.g., as indicated in the Chapter Overview epigram for this book), the “confused” and co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Chapter Overview
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part one Ideology Critique
• Part two Theory into Praxis and Praxis Informed by Theory
• Index