Editorial

Abstract

Editorial Estelle R. Jorgensen Among the areas of particular concern to music education philosophers are matters having to do with what music teachers should do in their classrooms, studios, rehearsal spaces, and all the other places in which they teach. Their instruction-where theory meets practice, the desirable meets the possible, and teacher meets student-comprises the kernel of music education. Instructional meeting places and times frame the ways in which received wisdom and practices from the past can be transmitted and transformed and where teachers and their students can actively engage the subject matter, relate with one another, and together undergo the process of music teaching and learning. Sometimes, learning is less directed and more informal so that music instruction occurs as a byproduct of other activities or ancillary to them. Whether formally planned or informally generated, all the situations in which musical instruction takes place are of special interest to policy makers in music education since it is here that ideas are actualized and the work of music education is carried on. Planning what is to be learned, organizing and engaging in this instruction, whether vocal or instrumental, solo or ensemble, in various places around the world, requires careful and critical reflection. Practical decisions flow from, illustrate, and express assumptions about what the aims and methods of formal education ought to be. Plans and programs are necessarily situated in particular contexts. By interrogating them, it is possible to see how they also instance wider underlying social and cultural presuppositions. And examining these plans and programs allows one to ask whether "what is" ought to be. Some may regard the practical things that teachers do as of lesser value than formulating or engaging with abstract ideas. They may see these practical issues [End Page 99] as somehow less worthy of the philosopher's notice, a species of applied philosophy rather than philosophy itself. This bias is regrettable. Rather, in attending to issues related to musical and music educational practice, our writers dignify the importance of practical matters concerning music curriculum and instruction. By bringing to bear various philosophical perspectives on these issues, they offer ways to integrate theory and practice and illustrate the benefits that can flow from a philosophical focus on the practical things music teachers do. Such a focus affords the opportunity to critically unpack not only the activities themselves but the assumptions in which they are grounded. Philosophers are also in a position to suggest alternative ways of thinking about practical matters that open different avenues for thinking and doing and guiding practice into the future. June Boyce-Tillman's essay leads off this issue with an ecological view of music education that offers a broad perspective on musical experience and its interconnectedness with other aspects of life and ways of thinking and doing. In criticizing what she sees as the "subjugation" of certain forms of knowledge in the West, she offers a broad, pluralistic, and holistic perspective on music education that is more interconnected with other subjects in the school curriculum and humane in its undertaking than traditional approaches to music instruction. Anthony Palmer points to the many shared aspects of consciousness and humanity, examines the present global context of today's music education, and takes stock of the responsibilities that devolve on those who prepare teachers and the importance of music in general education. He suggests the sorts of education that might broaden the outlook of teachers and proposes ways in which music in general education can be fostered. Masafumi Ogawa reflects critically on the situation of music teacher education in Japan, several crucial problems and the fundamental issues that generate them, and offers a restatement of the rationale for school music education that could remedy these problems and offer a better alternative for future practice. As such, his essay offers a case of how critical thinking about music education might be carried on in other places in the world. In focusing on musical "know how," Stephen Davies reflects on to the nature of the musician's knowledge, the challenges of verbal and analytical explanations of performances, the practical seepage from telling to showing how to perform, and the centrality of making music rather...