Music education is a social act oriented around interactions between people in public spaces. These spaces provide opportunities for what Hannah Arendt calls natality, which we interpret as new and unexpected actions that arise in a shared space. Drawing from a range of ideas and experiences of Arendt, bell hooks, Joan Baez, Martha Nussbaum, and…

The pedagogical aim of liberation, as drawn from critical pedagogy, poses significant philosophical problems. In this paper, I argue that the fundamental right to direct the education of children rests with the family situated within a particular local community. This authority is then delegated to the state through the institution of the school…

In the twenty-first century, many music education scholars seek to reconceptualize music education toward social justice. Critical pedagogy is at the forefront of this shift. However, as teachers aim toward equity through employing critical pedagogy, some undesired effects of using this teaching approach may arise. In this paper, I consider the…

This paper suggests a framework for re-thinking the relationships between power and knowledge in music education. Informed by Jacques Rancière's notion of equality it explores how a dialectic between knowledge/mastery and ignorance/equality effects a rupture in the canonical relationships between knowledge and authority. Further, and based on a…

This paper considers the issue of computer-assisted composition in formal music education settings from the perspective of critical theory. The author examines the case of MIDI-based software applications and suggests that the greatest danger from the standpoint of ideology critique is not the potential for circumventing a traditional…