XV Colloquium: June 10 - 12, 2004:
The University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA
"Music for Life: Re-visioning Music Education as a Part of General/Comprehensive Schooling"

Blessed Be the Pedagogy that Binds: Negotiating Meaning in the Margin
Cathy Benedict

This paper examines the ways in which a common pedagogy can facilitate learning environments so that music education becomes part of the fabric of general education. In examining this issue I look at the notion of missed moments, space, margins, cultural reproduction, communicative competence and even eventually, future scenarios that could be.

The paper first addresses the limits of considering future scenarios for music education in a music education vacuum and suggests that if we are interested in constructing what "could be" scenarios instead of what has "always been" then we must have conversations with disciplines outside of music education. The embedded and assumed goal in this Colloquium theme is a call to challenge and transform the current general education climate for the inclusion of music education. If this is our goal then simply addressing transformation from the discrete view point of music education doesn't get at systemic issues of patterns of reproduction, nor does it allow us to "consider how possibly unforeseen historical forces might collide with each scenario if it came to be realized" [MayDay website].

The challenge is to address inclusion and transformation in such a way that doesn't pit an "us" against "them," because in creating and perpetuating this false dichotomy we set up an erroneous sense of marginality so that we are unable to see that our marginalization is also self-imposed. Consequently, we are incapable of viewing this marginality as a place of empowerment. Therefore, in order to envision educative scenarios that "transcend the usual," the larger and imperative goal is to address the purpose of Education. This paper suggests that in order to address inclusion and transformation we need to address the mainstream educative processes and the ways in which education has served to reinforce patterns of cultural reproduction, to reproduce relationships of dominance, and all forms of oppression, not just our own. Because status and exclusion are tied up into forms of complicit oppression examining the inclusion of music education without addressing the entire educative system will do little or nothing to effect change.

And finally, as we begin to imagine what "could be" by bringing to bear questions that will address taken-for-grated beliefs in every aspect of our work, we must also concern ourselves with the spaces of public schools, classrooms, and our engagements in those spaces and realize the need for addressing the ways in which the space of public schooling, i.e. the scheduled day, the perceived "use" of music and music education, the "need" for performances, etc., are all reified constructs and as such need to be questioned and challenged.