Whose problem is it anyway?

As a democratic institution, pragmatists have conceptualized the school not as a site where students are prepared for society, but as a microcosm of society itself (Allsup & Westerlund, 2012; Westerlund, 2002). In this sense, it has been argued that schools should not only mirror the world outside of classroom doors, but should also actively engage with, and encourage the development of ‘the sorts of habits that will optimise the chances of a flourishing democratic life’ (Boisvert, 1998). Although popular musics have been introduced to schools as democratizing practices, researchers have recently raised questions regarding the all-inclusivity, and by implication, participatory potentials of popular musics in school settings.

In addition to the concerns raised by Georgii-Hemming and Westvall (2010) and Lindgren and Ericsson (2010) mentioned earlier, popular music’s democratic potentials have been critically investigated with regards to gendered practices in music education (Björck, 2011), multiculturalism (Karlsen & Westerlund, 2010), and the recontextualization of popular musics when ‘transformed into a school task’ (Stålhammar, 2003). As observed by Petter Dyndahl and Siw Graabræk Nielsen (2014), although the pluralist welcoming of popular musics to school classrooms has neutralized discussions of value, seeing all musics as equally valid, ‘there are still hierarchical distinctions, yet along new dividing lines. Even now there is music being marginalised and excluded from education’ (p. 106). The questions raised now are which – or rather whose – musics are excluded, and why? How is the content of music lessons decided upon, if classrooms are conceptualized as fully participatory spaces?

As part of her considerable contribution in legitimizing the place of popular music in school classrooms, Lucy Green (1999) has proposed that students may have celebratory, ambiguous or alienating experiences of school repertoires. Her (1999) analysis rests on a distinction between intra- and extra- musical meanings, which she refers to as inherent, or inter-sonic, and delineated musical meanings. The inherent/inter-sonic meanings refer to the ‘interrelationships of musical materials’ (Green, 1999, p. 161). Delineated meanings occur simultaneously, as Green suggests that music is mediated ‘as a cultural artefact within a social and historical context’ (p. 162). Green claims that when a student is familiar with the style of music or particular piece, secure in understanding the intersonic meanings and musical syntax (a response Green terms, affirmation), and also feels positively towards the music’s delineated meanings, they will have a celebratory experience (p. 164). In contrast, and of particular interest to this research project, when ‘aggravation by inherent meanings is accompanied by negativity towards delineations’ (Green, 1999, p. 164), Green proposes that students experience alienation from music. In other words, when students ‘do not understand the music’ and do not feel it has any relation to their identity, social class, position in society, or other characteristic of the self, they will have an alienating experience. The task for the school music teacher is thus twofold. Green suggests that the easier task is for the teacher to explain the inherent meanings of music in a way that the students may understand it. More challenging is to consider and question the social constructions of musical meanings, for instance what makes a style

feminine, or masculine, or ethnic. In this way, Green’s work aligns with the calls of

critical pedagogy to ask ‘how our everyday common-sense understandings – our social constructions or ¨subjectivities¨ – get produced and lived out’ (McLaren, 2003, p. 196) as part of the teaching and learning in schools.

Green (2002) points to the potential ideological challenges involved in addressing the delineated meanings of popular musics in school settings. With the anti-educational sentiments of Pink Floyd’s 1979 song Another Brick in

the Wall, Pt. 2 as illustration, she argues that ‘[s]ome lyrics, visual associations

or other connotations of popular music are often unsuitable for classrooms’ (p. 160), without explaining what exactly is meant by unsuitable, or what is unique about the classroom context that makes it so. Green (2008) gives little guidance to teachers or students in selecting popular musics for the classroom, referring to ‘critical musicality’ in purely positive terms (p. 80). For Green (2008), critical musicality entails a more attentive and knowledgeable approach to musical

listening (p. 91), resting on instances of ‘musical celebration’ (p. 80).

Eva Georgii-Hemming and Victor Kvarnhall (forthcoming) extend Green’s (2008) restriction of critical musicality to positive musical engagements, arguing that a critical approach to teaching and learning music in the classroom is essential in moving beyond the taken for granted meanings and associations we often ‘load music with’. In particular, it is important to attend to the meanings that may inhibit equality and social justice such as gender, class or ethnicity (n.p.). They suggest that in order to enhance equality and social justice in schools, music listening tasks may be directed by the teacher in such a way that ‘connects listeners own perceptions with that of other people – namely argumentation and critical analysis’ (n.p.). This approach demands a lot from the teacher, who ‘must be clearly aware of and consider equality issues’ (n.p.), requiring them to possess certain skills and insights, not only relating to recognizing what constitutes an equality issue, how to raise it pedagogically or reflect upon it critically, but also with regards to the contents of, and meanings associated with, the musics selected for study. This appears to be a return to conceptualizations of the teacher as expert, though not so much in terms of transmitting content knowledge (as argued for instance by Hirsch, 1988 as discussed in section 2.1), but in terms of teaching students how to think, and what to think about, standing in apparent contrast with the calls of informal learning for the teacher to relinquish control and discover music together with students (Green, 2008; Rodriguez, 2009). The teacher’s expertise lies in critical liberatory practices, raising questions as to whether this expertise welcomes dissenting voices and diversity, or works to produce ‘a new citizenry with a shared set of values’ (Miller 1998, p. 14). Whilst relocating the teacher back to the role of expert may be clear when discussing issues relating to race, or gender, where the moral high ground has long been established in the Nordic countries (though is undoubtedly an ongoing project), this role is perhaps more problematic when value questions of what is right, for whom, and when, are less stable or certain. The risk of such an approach lies in teachers adhering to ‘classroom narratives of

conversion and redemption’ (Miller, 1998, p. 26) with teachers ‘filled with the very false consciousness that they’re determined to eradicate in others’ (p. 15).

Music education researchers Randall Allsup and Heidi Westerlund (2012) offer some suggestions on how the teacher may navigate a plurality of musical, social, and moral values in the classroom. In reconceptualizing the teacher as ethical agent informed by certain ideals and values, they suggest that teachers work towards ‘ends-in-view’ (p. 134), referring to a Deweyan view of teaching as a deliberation of situational ethics,

at least there is a possibility, a chance that there are a lot of discrepant forces, not just one contradiction, a number of forces and contradictions that are pulling in different directions, and therefore we are obliged to consider a number of possibilities regarding the method in which these conflicts of forces and conditions will work out. (Dewey LW17: 444). Allsup and Westerlund (2012) claim that when music education is seen as a pursuit of ‘a priori goods, the ethical action and moral imagination that is required in teaching… are curtailed’ (p. 125). However, they provide the example of

death metal to illustrate a music that may be ‘inappropriate’ to perform in music classrooms, and also identify a number of more general problematic aspects of popular musics (the performance of religious or nationalistic musics, music that promotes sexual promiscuity, homophobia or misogyny) for school contexts. Similarly to Georgii-Hemming and Kvarnhall (forthcoming), Allsup and Westerlund (2012) imply that such musics may be included, but not in a manner that permits students to freely explore, experiment, perform and ‘¨celebrate¨ certain preferences or values’ (p. 134). Although on the face of it these suggestions are socially responsible, even if ‘at odds with student rights’ (Allsup & Westerlund, 2012, p. 134), there are a number of assumptions that warrant problematization.

Identifying any music as unambiguously problematic and relegating it to critical discussion rather than performance, may assume a consensus on morality in classroom contexts. The danger in this lies in including problem musics only in a form that either pasteurizes popular musics from their socio-historical context and meanings (e.g., as what Ericsson, Lindgren and Nilsson 2011 refer to as ‘safe simulation’, p. 113), or reappropriating these musics in a way that leads students to a narrow vision of what constitutes the right and the good. This perhaps downplays the inherent conflicts that exist regarding the social censure and stigmatization of such musics as deviant or problematic, the complexity with which adolescents understand and engage with such musics, and risks education policy and practice assuming a consensus of who students (and indeed teachers) are, and who they

ought to be (Mantie & Tucker, 2012). In other words, welcoming diversity and

difference in a manner that further confirms a singular vision of the ‘we’ (or who ‘we’ should be) may be seen to exist at odds with ideas of thick democracy. Dewey comments on the uncertainty of such moral decision-making,

The more conscientious the agent is and the more care he expends on the moral quality of his acts, the more he is aware of the problem of discovering what is good; he hesitates among ends, all of which are good in some measure, among duties, which obligate him for some reason. (MW5: 415). This highlights an important contradiction: that of viewing diversity and

difference as a resource, within a cohesive classroom community bound together by the overarching values of the school as institution. If the values of the school are assumed, rather than the diversity and difference that are contained within it, ideas of which musics are appropriate and which are problematic may remain unquestioned. This potentially results in a view that ‘it is obvious that certain explicit themes just do not fit within school curricula’, limiting students’ (and teachers’) opportunities to ‘construct their own social attitudes and develop a critical consciousness of contemporary culture’ (Väkevä, 2006, p. 128, emphasis added).

The project of democratizing school music lessons places the questions: who is excluded, how, when, why? at the core of practices striving towards equity and social justice. If repertoire selection is a process of deciding what, or whose, knowledge ‘counts as legitimate knowledge’ (Apple, 2004, p. 181), the complexities, conflicts and exclusions of music education cannot be overlooked when enacting and justifying inclusive, democratic policies and practices.