The commitment to all things democratic in educational spheres has inspired and generated much contemporary conversation in music education scholarship. Aside from demonstrating the possible discrepancies between what democratic ideals in education pledge to do and how they are materialized in learning situations, at least on the theoretical…

This paper presents an argument that social theory has valuable roles to play in music education research and philosophy. I first discuss how theory can enhance and strengthen empirical work--and provide insights and connections that abstracted empiricism alone cannot. Then, I argue that social theory--developed, extended, and advanced through…

Participation in competition festivals--where students and ensembles compete against each other for high scores and accolades--is a widespread practice in North American formal music education. In this article, I use Marx's theories of labor, value, and phantasmagoria to suggest a capitalist logic that structures these competitions. Marx's…

This paper is an invited response to a one published by David Elliott in The Music Educator in 2012 in which music teachers were enjoined to encourage children to use music's expressive power as a political tool in pursuit of social justice. While in agreement with him that this can be an appropriate use of music, there is a curious avoidance…

In this essay I explore problems of pedagogy related to Hans Krása's "Brundibár" by drawing heavily upon the thinking of two divergent theoretical perspectives regarding Holocaust testimony as advanced by Giorgio Agamben (2002) and Shoshana Felman (1992). I theorize that lodged within a space of difficult knowledge coalesced through…

This essay examines Alfred North Whitehead's claim that education should be construed as religious, and by extension, that music education should be religious. The analysis of questions relating to Whitehead's understanding of the notion of "religious," the defensibility of his claim, and its implications for notions of spirituality and…

In the final installment of her two-part essay, Julia Eklund Koza analyzes prevalent control and management discourse in education, specifically, music education. Arguing that dominant understandings are hierarchical, gendered, illusory, and integrally related to projects and practices largely unrelated to schooling, she invites teachers and…

This essay offers a critique of the dominant music education paradigm by challenging the myth of the musician as the locus of music making. Exploring the concept of the "musician" through three different ways of conceptualizing the arts, the essay offers a strategy for recasting the fundamental assumptions that underlie music education as a…

This essay examines control discourse in and out of educational settings, arguing that illusions of control are among the means by which governance is accomplished in domains far from schools. The tactical productivity of such illusions in non-school settings "necessitates" and explicates their prevalence in education. The first installment of…

This essay considers the music curriculum from a philosophical perspective, focusing on the tension between freedom (personal autonomy) and discipline (moral and ethical principles). The approach could be characterized as hermeneutical: the aim is to deepen our understanding through discussing the basic arguments for justifying the inclusion of…

This paper explores the ways in which music educators have allowed others outside of music education to name who and how they are in the world. Often comfortable with voicing advocacy and purpose from the status of second class citizen, music educators are complicit in the very processes of reproduction they wish to challenge. Seeking to address…

In this paper Kirsten Fink-Jensen suggests how a phenomenological-hermeneutic perspective can contribute to the knowledge of learning and teaching processes in music education in school. The philosophical frame is Danish philosophy of life, represented by Knud Ejler Logstrup, and Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of body, both pointing to the wholeness…

Oivind Varkoy discusses instrumentalism as a trend in educational politics and pedagogical thinking. Instrumentalism implies looking upon both school subjects and humans as instruments, as tools or means for reaching another goal or end. The discussion is related to philosophy of music education by focusing on aspects of philosophies of humankind,…

Oivind Varkoy challenges music educators who start their educational work from well-defined learning outcomes and who then test and assess whether students have achieved these predefined ends. He argues that "ends-means-thinking," "assessment-thinking," and "some sort of market-philosophy" all relate to "instrumentalism" in which learners are…

Kirsten Fink-Jensen offers music educators new insights on lesson planning and engagement with students through careful observation and reflective interpretation of active student involvement in music. She suggests that the phenomenon of musical attunement, including facial expressions, gestures, language, and movements that are articulated…