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"

Music Education, Social Studies, and the Benefits of Opposing Forces
J Scott Goble

Viewed through the lens of CS Peirce's pragmatic philosophy, the diverse forms of musical activity manifested in different world societies appear as a diverse cluster of community-specific behaviors or practices involving sound, many of which serve those who meaningfully participate in them as vital means of psychological and social balancing relative to the "imaginative universe" or worldview the members of those communities collectively embody. Historically speaking, the community-specific balancing and socially unifying effects of different forms of musical activity were obvious to persons living in traditional societies and in culturally pluralistic state societies, but they have been obscured for many in the modern era owing to the widespread institution of democratic governance in numerous nations, the rise of recording and broadcast technologies, and the widespread promotion of music as "entertainment," among other things.

Music teachers in traditional and state societies historically worked to socialize young people into musical traditions consistent with the worldviews embodied by the leaders of those societies, whereas music educators in democratic societies have included the music of different cultural groups in their curricula under the headings of "art," "the aesthetic," or other such ostensibly inclusive, neutral, and neutralizing terms. Notably, some "multicultural music educators" in democratic societies have challenged art- and aesthetics-based curricula in recent years, asserting that music teachers must do more to address the culture-specific origins and meanings of the music they include in their classes.

Social studies or "civics" classes, which originated in the democratic United States in 1916 and are now evident in the schools of other modern nations, were introduced into school curricula as "education for citizenship" on the belief that knowledge of history is a precondition of political intelligence. The originators of social studies education in the US held that the best hope for sustained democracy would reside with an educated citizenry. At present, however, students in social studies classes in the US and other democratic nations rarely learn about the ways in which music and music education have been used historically in culturally pluralistic state societies to advance the purposes of the state.

Presently, changes in US media ownership laws are allowing an ever-smaller group of large corporations to own more radio stations and promote nationally a selected pool of musical artists for their own financial gain, thereby diminishing other musicians' opportunities for radio broadcast, effectively narrowing the cultural diversity of the music heard via the nation's radio waves, and advancing a worldview that is uncharacteristic of and may be contrary to the principles of democratic society. These corporations also have growing interests in the media of other democratic nations. It may thus be the responsibility of music educators to teach their students not only how to perform and engage musically with others, in order that they may experience, understand, and enjoy the community-specific balancing and socially unifying effects of musical engagement, but also to help them understand its attendant, wider societal effects. While implementing an integrated music-social studies curriculum might seem inadvisable and unattractive owing to the evidently opposing purposes of musical engagement and civics education, finding ways to draw connections between what students experience in their music classes and what they learn about the sustenance of democracy in their social studies classes may be necessary for the future maintenance of healthy democratic societies.