Resisting Elephants Lurking in the Music Education Classroom

Abstract

Music education has many ‘elephants’ in its classrooms: obvious major problems that go unmentioned and suffered silently. Two of the larger, more problematic ‘elephants’ are identified, analyzed, and critiqued: (1) the hegemony of university schools of music on school music and the resulting focus in school music on “presentational” music (i.e., concert performance), with a corresponding lack of “participatory” music in schools; and (2) an increasingly problematic ‘anything goes’ anarchy of teaching methods (methodolatry)—this condition being worsened by the absence of shared curricular ideals for guiding the field towards the status of a true helping profession. The ethical premises such professionalism are explored (duty ethics, consequentialism, and virtue ethics) and a professional ethic for teaching music is proposed.