Philosophy of Music Education Review

June Boyce-Tillman's "Towards an Ecology of Music Education" challenges the foundations of music education philosophy and its application to practice. Beginning with the identification and clarification of what are described as "subjugated ways of knowing," she advocates the restoration and application of these approaches to instruction. She completes the description and definition of the interlocking [End Page 188] areas of musical experience by providing an actual project that exemplifies these tenets. I offer my humble appreciation of the attention she gives to the exploration of alternate approaches to music instruction and to the need for a clearer connection between community and individual and between culture and music education.

"Toward an Ecology of Music Education" is about values. Values may well be the defining word of this era in Western education and society. Changes in demographics, belief systems, and political dogma have de-stabilized the foundations of social and political frameworks, regardless of their efficacy. So, I would like to elaborate on the values represented in this paper, discussing them in relation to teaching, democracy, and diversity in music education.

Values and Teaching

Each of us carries our worldview into our work and we cannot deny our philosophical identity. However, the degree to which we allow our worldview to affect our teaching should be limited by the priorities of our instruction. Consider music education as having three broad perspectives: (a) purpose in society, (b) purpose for the individual, and (c) aesthetics (inherent value). The position of the three is not hierarchical and each can be considered apart from the others. We give evidence of our real motivation in music education by the emphasis we place upon each of these three. The aesthetically inclined find appeal in teaching for the inherent value in music. Those who strongly maintain a social agenda may be attracted by the possibilities of improving society as a whole through music education. Plato's view of music education was oriented almost exclusively toward his purposes for society. In his writing, any consideration of effect on the individual was only incidental to his primary concern of its effect on society.

The true teacher, however, will always gravitate toward the purpose for the individual. A person is the source of his ideas, and does not the creator stand above his creation? Do music teachers teach music? No, they teach students about music. Though we cannot separate ourselves from our love of beauty of form and expression in music nor can we forget our personal commitments toward improving the world around us, yet we must remember that it is the individual student who is the focus of music instruction. If this is true, we can draw some conclusions about our right to bring about change.

Do we have the right to proselytize individual students so that they might become adherents of our worldview? As an evangelical Christian, perhaps even a fundamentalist, I admit that I have observed changes in society over my lifetime with some sadness. It is difficult to see the country I love, which was founded upon Judeo-Christian principles, gradually losing touch with those principles. How will departure from those principles affect the direction and stability of the [End Page 189] nation founded upon them? As a teacher, however, I understand that it is my responsibility to teach students about music and that I have a responsibility to parents, who in a democratic society, hold responsibility not only for the spiritual, moral, and social education of their children, but also for the spiritual, moral, and social direction of a nation. Teachers are obliged to live as moral examples to students and to demonstrate values in their actions, but to consider the wishes of parents when it comes to the advancement of personal agendas. We do not have the right to encroach upon the mentoring relationship between parents and children. We must also be careful lest we...