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V Colloquium: June 12 - 14, 1998, Dallas, TX
"Critiques: David Elliott's Theories of Music Education"

Critiques: David Elliott's theories of music education papers published in
Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, no144 - Spring 2000
Copies available from CRME [$5.00USD]

The MayDay Group convened in Dallas, Texas from June 12-14. The program featured critiques and group discussions of David Elliott's theories of music education, an overview of which follows. It is anticipated that they will be published soon.

Paul Woodford's paper outlined the function of reason in resolving important issues, issues that unify as well as divide the profession. He urged a more moderate approach to rationalizing music education than what he and others deem is a false conflict between praxialism and aesthetic education. Woodford noted also that modernist institutions such as schools rationalize their actions on intellectual constructs such as aesthetic theory, but that we are in a post-modern age. Robert Cutietta grounded the weekend in the social history of our profession. He pointed out that aesthetic and praxial paradigms for music education were situated in different socio-historical eras within the last 40 years, eras that differ both in terms of their musical and professional assumptions. He found social and historical reasons for praxial music education's emergence. Stephen Paul questioned the sociological roots of Elliott's praxialism. He developed evidence, supporting the prior two papers, of a shift from personally-oriented to socially-oriented accounts of musical value systems and wondered where these were treated in praxialist theories of music education. Patricia O'Toole pointed out that some important post-modern social issues are largely silent in praxial theories of music and music education. Gender, personal identity, sexuality, age, class and race are important determinants of individual differences in musical behavior and should be accounted for in such theories.

Wayne Bowman argued that the accounts of music cognition in praxialism need to accommodate explicitly the facts of music's bodily and social embeddedness, in addition to accommodating the mental or intellectual issues. Music matters, he urged, not just because it is cognitively substantive, but also because it is an inextricable part of who we are, individually and collectively. Bowman argues for what he calls "corporeal cognition," and in Dallas he urged a processural theory of music education that does not rely on segmenting music and humans into parts. Thomas Regelski explored musical intentionality and critiqued the role of production, especially traditional music performance, in the praxial development of musicianship. Finally, Pentti Maattanen critiqued praxial views of the mind-brain issue from a classical-pragmatist perspective. On the following day, David Elliott responded to the prior day's critiques and summarized his thinking since Music Matters was published. He recommended changes in teacher education programs, since that is where better theorizing must begin if we are to create a more critically-aware profession.

David Elliott outlined five important questions that emerged from the Dallas meeting, and from his thinking since Music Matters was published -- next questions for music education philosophical researchers to engage:

(1) What is musical consciousness and flow experience in musical performance, and can these further illuminate the ambiguous general relationship of intellect to affect?

(2) In what respect is musical listening a part of one's life narrative, rather than normative or content-oriented -- personal and idiosyncratic rather than social and quasi-scientific?

(3) What is a better universal standard of musicianship? How can all the human processes used in musicianship be integrated, for example to account for all the varied memory systems involved in music making?

(4) How will music education programs change and be changed by post-modern life, including the deconstruction of large ensembles as the primary modernist musical performance system?

(5) How can theorists account better for the relationship between musical practices and the situatedness of peoples' evaluations of qualitative experiences?


J Terry Gates - Critiques of David Elliott's Music Matters: The Dallas Papers of the MayDay Group (1-2).

Marie McCarthy - Music Matters: A Philosophical Foundation for a Sociology of Music Education (3-10).

Stephen J Paul - The Sociological Foundation of David Elliott's "Music Matters" Philosophy (11-20).

Robert A Cutietta - David Elliott's Philosophy of Music Education: Good Theory, Bad Timing or Bad Theory, Good Timing? (21-27).

Patricia O'Toole - Music Matters: Why I Don't Feel Included in These Musics or Matters (28-39).

Pentti Määttänen - Elliott on Mind Matters (40-44).

Wayne Bowman - A Somatic, "Here and Now" Semantic: Music, Body, and Self (45-60).

Thomas A Regelski - Accounting for all Praxis: An Essay Critique of David Elliott's Music Matters (61-88).