Abstract
ABSTRACT This study presents an analysis of hidden elitism in music education through the free choice argument – that individuals are fundamentally free to choose to study music – as a meritocratic power structure. Qualitative Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) is applied to understand music education as a social system with a special structure in which its purpose regulates its functions and makes them meaningful in a given social setting through discourse. The study shows how free choice can appear both as a democratic principle and a legitimising discursive mechanism restricting the enactment of equality. Through a case, the study then demonstrates, first, how the relationship between the meritocratic discourse of free choice and hidden elitism can be identified by using SSM in the context of Finnish music education system, and second, how professionals can bridge social systems and transgress hidden elitist structures.
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