Difference and Division in Music Education

Alexis Anja Kallio

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000227260
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Difference and Division in Music Education enriches existing diversity and social justice discourses by considering the responsibility of music education to respond to rising social discord and tensions. Although 'hate' is by no means a new concern for policymakers, educators, or musicians, the climate of fast communications, divisive politics, and intensified encounters with 'difference' has framed expressions of hate as a rising social problem to which we cannot afford complacency. This edited volume of ten contributed essays approaches 'hate' not as a monstrous aberration, but as a product of late modernity entangled within the complex power-relations that frame both governance and agency at the policy, institutional, and interpersonal levels.

Schools, universities, and community organisations have been positioned on the front lines of addressing 'hate' and cultivating a healthy society. In recognising that music education is always both inclusive and exclusive, this volume interrogates the social norms and values that comprise the 'common good' and simultaneously cast certain musics, expressions, individuals, or social groups as different, divisive, hateful, or hated. Difference and Division in Music Education highlights the ethical and political dimensions of teaching and learning music across a number of geographical, cultural, and educational contexts and through a rich variety of perspectives.

Part 1

Examining the Boundaries of Inclusion

1

Ingratitude and the Politics of Obligation

The Problem of (Un)Mutual Recognition in Music Education

Nasim Niknafs

Grateful. There was that word again. Here I began to notice the pattern. This word had already come up a lot in my childhood, but in her mouth it lost its goodness. It hinted and threatened. Afraid for my future, I decided that everyone was right: if I failed to stir up in myself enough gratefulness, or if I failed to properly display it, I would lose all that I had gained, this western freedom, the promise of secular schools and uncensored books.

Dina Nayeri, 2017, para 10

‘We can’t help it. We are all migrants through time’ (p. 209), poetically observed Hamid (2017) on being human. It is difficult to reflect upon these remarks without relating its acute relevance to, and legitimate place in, the field of music education, where music teachers are often cast as undesired or second-class travellers. Work time is often confined to short intervals and professionals are required to relocate institution or even location often, hindering their abilities to develop long-term goals (Karlsen, 2019). Music educators are often reliant on their host institutions to recognise their value and hard labour to afford them the necessary means to conduct their work, such as convenient scheduling, classroom space, funding, and reducing occupational precarity to experiment with and eventually thrive in their practices. In this vein, music educators can be categorised into three groups in relation to their host institutions and the policies that structure their existence (Bauman, 2000/2012): (1) integrated citizens at best, (2) guest workers – passively hostile – but still a tolerable scenario, or (3) outright enemies at worst. The same categorisation can also be applied to the many students present and involved in music teaching and learning environments. It is perhaps easy, as teachers, policymakers, and administrators, to forget that students are not temporary visitors to the classroom space; that educational environments do not bestow upon them anything in particular; and that they do not owe anyone gratitude for the learning environment that should be provided for them.

A vast body of contemporary music education scholarship is devoted to understanding, analysing, and implementing the many ways students engage with music within and beyond the boundaries of school (Allsup, 2008; Folkestad, 2006; Green, 2002, 2008; Jones, 2015; Söderman & Folkestad, 2004). Although fruitful, it seems that these efforts have not led to any significant change with regards to the actual content and pedagogy of what is being taught at schools and higher education institutions, particularly in the North American context (Allsup & Benedict, 2008; Hess, 2015; Jorgensen, 2010; Kratus, 2007; Shuler, 2011; Williams, 2011). The Eurocentric canon of music with its corresponding pedagogy and sociological understandings is still prominent among higher education institutions offering music education degrees, while other genres of music, at times labelled world music, popular music (still Eurocentric) (Allsup, 2008; Georgii-Hemming & Westvall, 2010), music technology, and subsumed under other terms, are offered as additives to the already established curriculum (Hess, 2015). Even more so, the gatekeepers of these institutions are most often socialised into the Western music norms, and degree application criteria are designed to select students who can perpetuate these standards par excellence. Grateful, young high school graduates audition for competitive places in music education degree programmes after years of tuition through expensive private studios. Acceptance is dependent on their abilities to successfully pass tests in musical literacy and competency, or demonstrate a high degree of proficiency in performing a Western classical instrument. Those who pass the auditions (gratefully) are required to take courses deeply socialising them into the Western classical canon and large ensemble model of music education. On graduation, these ‘well-educated’ pre-service music teachers enter the workforce looking for teaching positions. Those who can lead and sustain a steady ensemble are preferred over the more eclectic graduates who run diverse music programmes that do not always include large ensembles (Colley, 2008, 2009). All of these music teachers need to compete over minimal resources dedicated to arts programmes and even more meagre offerings allocated to music programmes. What is left of these programmes then becomes a modicum where both music teachers and students should feel content, fulfilled, and flourish in their careers and lives more broadly.

Accordingly, a psychosis emerges in the field that no one is immune to the demand or expression of gratitude: gratitude for being granted permission to enter the field in the first place; gratitude for access to such majestic content and pedagogy; gratitude for winning a professional position in music education; and gratitude for having the luxury to provide such a rich educational environment for the next generation of music teachers to learn their craft. The result of such abundant gratitude is rewarded through being recognised as a legitimate member of this exclusive club. Recognition assumes the form of self- and other-worth; one’s dignity has been acknowledged, and one’s respect has been earned (Taylor, 1992). If any individual is not able to fit their personal, musical, teaching, and learning desires, abilities, and potentials into this predetermined framework, they are not recognised as legitimate members (Kallio, 2015) of the educational community.

In what Zygmunt Bauman has termed Liquid Modernity (2000/2012), the global moving and networked market has rendered individuals abandoned and left them with global problems devoid of local solutions. Individuals are left to their own devices to deal with issues beyond their capacity, fuelling feelings of incompetence, powerlessness, and failure. It is in this climate that a simulated and counterfeit cause of failure such as foreignness – and I do not mean an economically robust, sophisticated, and highly networked foreigner – can stoke a sense of hate and self-righteousness that follows the architectures of hierarchical lines of oppression and privilege, imposing a certain kind of obliged appreciation upon individuals who are positioned as immigrants.

In this chapter, I interrogate practices in music education that dehumanise and exclude such travellers, migrants, or immigrants ‘from the category of legitimate human rights-holders and leads, with dire consequences’ (Bauman, 2016, p. 86). The processes of symbolic hate entrenched in educational milieu function to recognise immigrants as existing outside of a ‘moral responsibility’ (Bauman, 2016, p. 84) whilst obligating them to these very same hateful processes. I argue that hate here is not manifest as physical, literal, or outright rage, but emerges within an implicit and amoral hostility which renders both music educators and students redundant (Bauman, 2016, p. 3), obligating some individuals to ‘adopt a pose of ceaseless gratitude’ (Cobb, 2017, para 3) in relation to the opportunities afforded to them through oppressive hierarchies. In this climate, according to Väkevä (2016), ‘recognition takes place, but only partially; most of the energy fed into the pedagogical system serves the authority of the disciplinary rule’ (p. 48). If these individuals disobey and do not express gratitude for the limited opportunities, kindness, and prospects provided for them, they are shamed for their incongruous aspirations and desires. I end the chapter with a provocation for music education practice to challenge this redundancy and to create meaningful spaces wherein everyone can justly thrive, regardless of their legal, social, ethnic, class, gender, and differing status.

An Ethical Quagmire of the Best Intentions

A number of critical music education scholars have responded to the exclusionary processes embedded in music education policy and practice, through the lenses of cultural studies, postcolonial studies, indigenous studies, critical race theory, spirituality, disability studies, queer theory, care ethics, and social justice (e.g. Allsup, 2015; Bell, 2017; Bowman, 2007; Boyce-Tillman, 2012; Bradley, 2017; Gould, 2013; Hess, 2015; Horsley, 2009, 2014; Kallio, 2017; Laes, 2017; Locke & Prentice, 2016; Matsunobu, 2009; Niknafs, 2017; Rosabal-Coto, 2014; Silverman, 2012; Tan, 2014). Many scholars consider music education to be an emancipatory vehicle for materialising individuals’ agencies, and consequently acknowledge critical pedagogy to be an important perspective through which students’ needs and desires can be repositioned at the forefront of teaching and learning experiences (Abrahams, 2005; Allsup, 2003; Benedict, 2007; Kaschub, 2009; Roy, 2009; Schmidt, 2005). While such critical work is timely and worthwhile, I would like to express my shared concern with regards to just how emancipatory these practices and scholarship can be (Apple, 2013; Hess, 2017; Kallio, 2020), and re-examine the goodwill and good intentions of music educators (myself included) and policymakers who have sought to represent and include students in their teaching, classrooms, and programmes.

My scepticism towards such benevolence should not come as a surprise, when in the present music education climate there seems to be a hegemonic understanding of emancipation and liberatory practices that at times originates from without (Niknafs, 2018). Certainly, having students feel welcome and part of the community, and perhaps protected against the demanding and competitive nature of music education programmes, has become an important goal for many teachers. But this self-congratulatory sense of being a good and generous host (Higgins, 2007) brings two issues to the fore: First, the complexities of students’ musical and inter/intrapersonal needs are often oversimplified, and consequently a deeper and more intimate knowledge of their musical and existential desires is neglected. Second, such perspectives risk obscuring an sense of superiority, whereby previously excluded or oppressed students are required to express their gratitude and appreciation for the new opportunities bestowed upon them – a dilemma not necessarily arising wholly within the field of music education but partially originating from larger Global-North-Centric emancipatory projects. The gratitude in this situation assumes multiple shapes and forms. One may demonstrate it by overwork and by overperforming (Bauman, 2016) as a form of compensation for claiming or taking up space. Conversely, one may demonstrate a sense of rebellion, or ingratitude, intentionally sabotaging one’s own growth by not fulfilling the tasks demanded of them. Feelings of lethargy and apathy are hallmarks of such occasion.

Critical of an unquestioning approach to emancipatory projects or activism in music education, Alexandra Kertz-Welzel (2016) cautions music education scholars to avoid an ‘unquestioned belief in basic truth’ (p. 120). While acknowledging a need for ‘immediate emotional and psychological comfort’ in times of trouble, she reminds us that a blind and extreme enthusiasm for educational practices, described by Roland Reichenbach (in Kertz-Welzel, 2016, p. 121) as ‘the denial of the complexity and hardship of the learning process’, deflects a critical and careful examination of musical practices. I here extend this idea to suggest that such fervour in the name of good work neglects the complexities inherent in individuals’ musical knowledge and students’ musical and inter/intrapersonal needs. This results in the misrepresentation of all the involved parties in any learning situation. The problem, nonetheless, is more pervasive than the day-to-day interactions between teachers and students. It is a deeper challenge that pervades the market-oriented system of the academy, whereby education is framed as a commodity within a system that positions each of us as provider or consumer (Karlsen, 2019; Väkevä, 2016; Winton & Pollock, 2016).

Struggling for Recognition: Struggling in Vain?

In his seminal (1992) work, Multiculturalism and ‘The Politics of Recognition’, Charles Taylor considers recognition as a significant human need rather than mere politeness granted or requested from one another. Maintaining the notion that individuals’ identities rely heavily on the ways in which they are recognised, if at all, Taylor argues that modernism demands more than the mere need for recognition and outlines some situations in which th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction: Difference and Division in Music Education
• Part 1 Examining the Boundaries of Inclusion
• Part 2 Assigning, Controlling, and Contesting Musical Meaning
• Part 3 Beyond Good Intentions, Towards Ethical Encounters
• Contributors
• Index