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Resisting Elephants Lurking in the Music Education Classroom

Article  in  Music Educators Journal · May 2014

DOI: 10.1177/0027432114531798

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 by Thomas A. Regelski

Resisting Elephants
Lurking in the Music
Education Classroom
Abstract: Music education has many ‘elephants’ in its classrooms: obvious major problems
that go unmentioned and suffered silently. Two of the larger, more problematic ‘elephants’
are identified, analyzed, and critiqued: (1) the hegemony of university schools of music on
school music and the resulting focus in school music on “presentational” music (i.e., concert
performance), with a corresponding lack of “participatory” music in schools; and (2) an
increasingly problematic ‘anything goes’ anarchy of teaching methods (methodolatry)—this
condition being worsened by the absence of shared curricular ideals for guiding the field
towards the status of a true helping profession. The ethical premises such professionalism
are explored (duty ethics, consequentialism, and virtue ethics) and a professional ethic for
teaching music is proposed.
Keywords: critical theory, helping professionals, methodology, participatory music, presentational An ethic of resistance
music, professional ethics, sociology of education,
is proposed by the
author to confront

“A
n elephant in the room” refers to
an obvious problem that remains
unmentioned and is suffered
silently. Music education has many such
‘elephants’ in its classrooms, and music
teacher educators often seem resigned to
working around them or worry about con-
fronting them. Others are in collusion with
these ‘elephants.’ Both the orthodoxies
of silent suffering and of complicity that
thwart professionalism can be challenged
by identifying two of the larger, more prob-
lematic ‘elephants’ affecting us. Following
critical social theory and critical peda-
gogy, 1 an ethic of resistance is needed to
confront elephantine obstacles that prevent
music education from being a true helping
profession.
Program Hegemony elephantine obstacles
Most readers know that music education that prevent music
programs are so dominated by coursework
focused on musical training that graduates education from
are underprepared in their teaching experi- being a true helping
ence and expertise. This problem stems from
the elephantine belief that a music educator profession.
must first and foremost be a good musician
and that such training is sufficient to being
a good teacher. Music professors themselves
teach under those self-serving assumptions.
Thus, too many students conclude that their
education courses are a waste of time—just
theory and words that distract from their
musical studies. And because faculty gov-
ernance is usually weighted against them,
music education faculty members have to

Copyright © 2014 National Association

Thomas A. Regelski holds the title of Distinguished Professor (Emeritus) of Music at the State University of New York (SUNY)
for Music Education
Fredonia. He is currently a docent at Finland’s Helsinki University; he also teaches and lectures at the Sibelius Academy in DOI: 10.1177/0027432114531798
Helsinki. He can be contacted at tom.regelski@helsinki.fi. http://mej.sagepub.com

www.nafme.org 1
make do with what little program room
they are allowed.
The problem arises from assump-
tions that rationalize the existence of
university departments and schools of
music. Among these is the usually sin-
gle-minded sacralization of ‘classical’
or ‘art’ music.2 Such programs purpose-
fully exclude other musics3 and extol the
pursuit of performance excellence as the
most worthwhile goal of any music edu-
cation. These conditions dominate key
aspects in preparing music teachers,
despite important differences between
(a) training elite music professionals and
(b) preparing teachers to promote music
in the general education of all students
in comprehensive schooling. Failure to
recognize these vast differences ignores
key philosophical, pedagogical, and cur-
ricular issues.
At any level, music teaching draws
on many skills, traits, and understand-
ings. In fact, many fine musicians who
have easily found their perch on the
performance pedestal have little idea of
what is needed to teach students who
don’t learn as easily, and they are not
necessarily the best teachers for such
students. Sometimes they’re the worst.4
This filtering down of university models
also runs afoul of sociological accounts
of schooling.
Sociology of Schooling
For example, functionalist theory—as
accepted by the public and politicians—
stresses that schools have the pragmatic
function of meeting agreed upon social,
cultural, and economic needs. In this
theory, schools are central agencies for
the transmission of accepted knowl-
edge and values and as essential to
the reproduction of the socioeconomic
status quo.5 What curriculum includes
has the endorsement of social accept-
ance, whereas what is excluded—the
“hidden curriculum”—tacitly signifies
lack of acceptance or value. But stu-
dents nonetheless notice when their
music (be that rock, rap, reggae, reli-
gious, etc.) is ignored or denigrated.6
This is especially a problem because
the music of school music too often has
2 Music Educators Journal  June 2014
little carryover to the music world out-
side of school. Such a lack of transfer
results in a lack of pragmatic impact on
students and society. This leads to the
legitimation crisis that necessitates ever-
more-political advocacy to protect the
continued existence of school music.
Conflict theories of schooling stress
that what is reproduced in schools are
the ideologies and vested interests of
dominant social groups and the result-
ing class hierarchy and conflicts that
ensue.7 For school music, the dominant
social group—the present ‘elephant’—
amounts to university music faculty and
other aesthetes whose ideology, 8 per-
sonal musical interests, and preferences
(namely, those of the ‘classical’ and ‘art
music’ world), are mainly transmitted
and reproduced in school music pro-
grams. Conflict theorists thus usefully
remind us of how schools reproduce a
long list of social and cultural inequali-
ties, especially those associated with
‘high culture’ and the resulting class
hierarchy status quo.
Critical theories of sociology seek,
instead, to reveal and deconstruct the
many hidden assumptions behind the
reproduction and transmission functions
of schools.
Critical pedagogy is concerned . . . with a
critique of the society, particularly around
issues of power, and . . . with develop-
ing students’ critical abilities in order to
work toward the transformation of soci-
ety. This pedagogy involves a ‘language
of critique’ as well as a ‘language of pos-
sibilities’. Teachers using this approach
engage students in critical questioning
of their own beliefs and assumptions,
as well as the assumptions in their text
materials. . . . The deconstruction of tex-
tual language is especially important for
critical pedagogy.9
Thus, instead of reproducing society as
is, critical pedagogues help students to
identify the contradictions that affect
their lives and thus to become aware
of forces that oppress them. With such
awareness, students can begin to trans-
form their lives and thus society.
Furthermore, instead of reproduc-
ing culture and society, schools and
universities are seen as sites for the
production of culture, places where stu-
dents learn to construct meaning10 rather
than to receive it as already formed and
approved. This is the problem faced by
freshman music education majors who
find themselves immersed in a world
of music that is first overwhelming, but
then is quickly accepted as being what
the “music” of “music education” should
be. In critical theory, this leads to what
is called a ‘false consciousness’—the
acceptance of the university status quo
as to what music ‘really’ is; why it exists,
and what it is ‘good for’ in life. This false
consciousness is resisted by students
who engage in alternative musics. Yet
even they too often fall in line like good
conscripts when it comes to teaching the
‘good music’ of academe.
We should no longer remain silent
and accepting of the hegemony this first
‘elephant’ has over our teacher educa-
tion programs and of its domination
of school music. In our politics, in our
research, and in our classrooms, we
need to confront its contradictions and
inequalities boldly with honesty and
vigor. This may take courage (and ten-
ure helps). For example, Julia Koza has
critiqued the classical music bias of the
audition criteria and policies of her own
institution.11
We ask at least need to bring such
equally critical perspectives to our
own classrooms. Critical pedagogy
asks, “Whose interests are served?” 12
Thus, future music teachers need to be
encouraged to question and challenge
the paradigms and power dynamics
affecting their lives as music majors and
future teachers if they are to promote a
similarly critical and empowering per-
spective for their own students. Whose
music is promoted in school? Why, who
benefits, to what end, and what about
the musics that are excluded? Why do
they exist at all, and why are the values
they came into being to serve denied
or denigrated? What is to be lost from
celebrating many musics—from musics
education?
We should also transform programs
by using points of leverage that arise
from external sources. For example,
the 1980 requirements for competency-
based certification (CBTE) in New York
State allowed making major changes
to graduation and certification require-
ments that expanded music education
studies. Various accreditation reviews
often present similar opportunities. In
their own departments, colleagues have
generated innovations, for example,
where secondary instrument require-
ments include instruments common to
various traditional and participatory
musics (see the following discussion).
Music education majors at the Sibel-
ius Academy in Finland 13 study guitar,
bass, drumming, and Latin percussion
as freshmen and as sophomores have
two semesters of a studio music class
assembled into groups of various genres
of their choice. Each term, they perform
their studio-composed pieces with each
student playing a different instrument
for each piece!
Moreover, if the musics addressed by
“music” education are to be more fully
representative of the wider world of
music, we need to resist the hegemony
of presentational performance promoted
by university music models. Accord-
ing to the ethnomusicologist Thomas
Turino, “Presentational performance . . .
refers to situations where one group, the
artists, prepare and provide [sic] music
for another group, the audience, who do
not participate in the music.”14 We sup-
port that paradigm when we go along
with the enormous time given to studio
lessons, recitals, ensemble requirements,
conducting classes, and concert attend-
ance requirements. In contrast, Turino
writes, “participatory performance is a
special type of artistic practice in which
there are no artist-audience distinctions,
only participants and potential partici-
pants performing different roles, and the
primary goal is to involve the maximum
number of people in some performance
role.” 15
Furthermore, for Turino the inclu-
sion of “people with a wide range of
musical investment and abilities within
the same performance creates a unique
dynamic [where] the success of a per-
formance is more importantly judged by
the degree and intensity of participation
www.nafme.org
than by some abstracted assessment
of the musical sound quality.” 16 Thus
“music making as social intercourse and
activity among face-to-face participants”
with “emphasis on the doing among
all present” characterizes participatory
musics. 17 Accordingly, participatory
musics prioritize sociality: “the music”
is thus not merely an accompaniment
to but, as Turino puts it, “at the center
of social life.” 18 Hence, these musics
are the most frequent means by which
ordinary citizens derive the musical and
social benefits of performing, and the
lack of such musics in schools ignores
their potential for the life well-lived in
part through music.
But Turino also reports that exclu-
sive curricular reliance on presenta-
tional performance in schools is actually
counterproductive:
[P]articipation in school music programs
falls off as students progress to higher
grades and as the pressure to reach a
specialist standard becomes more pro-
nounced. School music programs at all
levels are geared toward presentational
performances and do not involve collec-
tive music making among all ages as a
normal part of valued social occasions
a normal part of being social. With the
exception of singing in Church, many
middle-class North Americans stop mak-
ing music altogether as they approach
adulthood and it is common to hear
people in the United States say, “I don’t
know anything about music,” or “I am
not musical.” Such statements would be
surprising to people in societies where
participatory music is common. These
attitudes among North Americans are par-
ticularly self-fulfilling descriptions, since
they hinder musical participation and the
continuous musical learning that results.19
Thus, instead of slavishly emulating uni-
versity models (that slavishly emulate
professional models), it is in the best
interests of school music, its graduates,
and society to provide an alternative
range of participatory musics—particu-
larly those most available locally and
that can serve students not otherwise
attracted to, or who join in addition to,
presentational ensembles. Such results
would address functionalist criteria of
schooling and help overcome some of
the problems that concern conflict and
critical theorists.
To at least counterbalance the
hegemony of presentational perfor-
mance, time for participatory musics
needs to be found in university methods
classes. Various forms of participatory
musicing are described in my 2004 book
Teaching General Music in Grades 4–8:
A Musicianship Approach.20 But new
room in our programs can be created;
for example, ensemble participation
credits for participatory performance
(e.g., recorder ensemble, Celtic music,
traditional dance musics of Appalachia,
etc.). Given the natural appeal of partici-
patory performance, opportunities can
even be created outside formal require-
ments that music education majors (and
others) will avail themselves of freely—
which is in the best spirit of the genre.
Thus, the ‘elephant’ of presentational
performance of sacralized, esoteric
musics bequeathed by the university
paradigm, with all of its associated (and
often antiquated, museum-like) prac-
tices, would benefit at all levels by a bal-
ancing infusion of participatory, exoteric
musics. This advice is recommended by
the sociology of music and ethnomu-
sicology—disciplines ignored in music
education training and circles.
Alternativism and Relativism
The second ‘elephant’ in question—
there are many—may be far more con-
troversial: the state of inconsistency
bordering on anarchy that exists in
music education methods courses and
the dominating influence of this train-
ing on school music. This condition is
largely due to the uncritical acceptance
of ‘what works methods’ that I have
dubbed “methodolatry.”21 Methodolatry
amounts to conditions where the tech-
niques and strategies of one particular
‘method’ or ‘approach’ are the singular
and strict focus of attention, 22 with lit-
tle or no further regard for what is to
be built in the way of curricular out-
comes. Successful teaching is taken to
be well-planned and smoothly delivered
lessons, 23 but what the students can
3
actually do musically—newly, better,
more enthusiastically, or with long-term
carryover into life—too typically goes
unaddressed.
One reason for this condition is, as
mentioned earlier, that music educa-
tion resources, including specialist fac-
ulty, are often limited by economics or
politics. Thus, it is common that often
only one method (or for instrumental
music, one ‘methods series’) is taught
to the exclusion of all others—indeed,
sometimes with explicit criticism that
excluded methods are wrong! This
leads to a thoroughgoing relativism at
the university level that is magnified by
the even wider-ranging forms taken in
schools. The resulting chaos or anarchy
of approaches is due to the absence of
any semblance of a true professional
core of commonly agreed to pragmatic
outcomes for music education.24
As a result, music education functions
more as a field of activity than as a true
profession. Here, “field” is understood
as a “field of play” (as in sports) where
individuals and groups ‘contest’ for
dominant ‘positions.’25 Thus, the sheer
profusion of methods, the ‘what works’
and ‘how to’ methodolatry, the attention
anything labeled as new attracts, and the
assumption that teacher-proof ‘best prac-
tices’26 can be adopted anywhere—these
all contradict many criteria for the clas-
sical sociological traits of a profession.27
The ‘elephant,’ then, is the proliferation
of many ‘baby elephants,’ each compet-
ing for ‘position’—for respect, authority,
prestige, power, even money28—in our
“field” (the herd).
Rather than a fund of different prac-
tices that address common ideals and
shared purposes—as in the helping
professions—at stake is a plethora of
what amount to self-contained belief
systems and their derived habits and
paradigms. And many teacher educa-
tors and teachers feel comfortable, even
righteous, in following only one with a
single-minded, often dogmatic zeal. As a
result, university students become famil-
iar and comfortable with the only model
to which they are exposed in methods,
conducting, and theory classes, even stu-
dio pedagogy and ensembles, and they
4 Music Educators Journal  June 2014
pursue it as exclusively as do those who
adopt the one religion to which they are
exposed in the home. Some eventually
reach the Ivory Tower and preach their
preferred practice to the exclusion of all
others.29 Others undergo conversions
where they discover and rigorously fol-
low the tenets of a particular practice,
often as the result of attending a work-
shop where they came away feeling
revitalized by false promises of ‘what
works.’ Still others (often beginning
teachers) simply follow the lead of sig-
nificant others (usually their elders, and
cooperating teachers in student teach-
ing) and accept the local status quo as
‘the way things are done.’ Thus, they
are unaware, even unconcerned, that
such ‘things’ are often done otherwise
and to better effect elsewhere. Ecu-
menism between approaches is often
disparaged as eclecticism—a term that
usually infers choosing the best from
many sources. But ‘true believers’ in a
particular method—their own, or one
they share in name with others—instead
reject eclecticism as being inferior to
systematic uniformity and conformity to
a kind of fundamentalist methodologi-
cal purity.30
Conflict theory regards this prolifera-
tion of methods, and the ‘positioning’ of
each in the “field” of music education
for ascendancy, as matters of power and
repression, as a matter of the transmis-
sion and reproduction of one method
or approach that relegates others to
unacceptable status. Sometimes conflict
erupts, for example, when devotees of
one method refuse to cooperate with
followers of another or where teach-
ers impose their preference by voting
to adopt a uniform method, despite the
discomfort or pedagogical dissent of a
minority of colleagues.
Critical theory focuses on the socio-
political ‘positioning’ of special interest
groups of all kinds—including special
interest groups within a profession—
that advances their vested interests as
against others and that even advance
the professions themselves as special
interest groups,31 not just as specialized
occupations.32 In music education, such
special interest groups include not only
competing methods but also the special
(and sometimes conflicting) interests of
the “fields” of general music, chorus,
band, and orchestra (etc.). All claim to
serve music education but are often like
container ships passing in view of each
other while carrying different cargoes,
on different routes, to separate destina-
tions—sometimes colliding (e.g., ensem-
ble directors disputing over students
and schedules)—and where the teachers
are as often ‘contained’ by the autopilot
paradigms and default settings of their
specialties as are their students.
Critical pedagogy is concerned to
expose and deconstruct such self-
serving tendencies; for example, by
using the sociology of curriculum33 to
identify hierarchies of knowledge and
hidden curriculums, thus revealing the
power politics of socially dominant
groups and the social inequalities that
result. Such hierarchies exist in uni-
versity music departments (e.g., the
‘elephant’ discussed earlier), in music
education programs themselves (e.g.,
the ‘elephant’ of methodolatry), and
both are typically reflected in school
music. In fact, critical pedagogy goes
well beyond music education to the
most basic structures of formal school-
ing, such as teacher certification, unions,
grading, grouping policies, the politics
of curriculum, and far more.34
In speaking candidly about this sec-
ond ‘elephant’ some may worry that I
have opened a can of worms involving
irreconcilable differences. However,
the critical theory of Jürgen Habermas
stresses “communicative rationality”: the
use of reason to progressively promote
mutual understanding and to foster more
agreement; not the “strategic rationality”
of special interest groups ‘positioning’
themselves to their own advantage,
thereby worsening already dysfunc-
tional differences in the “field.”35 So,
while the sociological condition called
alternativism that I am critiquing—that
is, the ideology that promotes limitless
alternatives and ‘anything goes’ relativ-
ism—may seem uncomfortable to admit
to and difficult to rationalize away,
nonetheless, communicative rationality
can facilitate agreement about shared
curricular purposes. Thus, rather than
different practices strategically ‘posi-
tioning’ themselves against others, or
proceeding as though other methods
do not (or should not) exist or are not
of at least potentially equal value, the
different approaches in our field should
be regarded as different possible ‘tools’
by which the agreed to purposes of
music education can be accomplished.
The more such ‘tools’ teachers have, the
better the results can be.
However, we lack explicit agreement
on the kind of shared ideals and shared
functions that guide the other helping
professions. In other words, we lack
mutual agreement on what, in pragmatic
terms, school music promises to contrib-
ute pragmatically in the long term to the
musical lives of its graduates and to soci-
ety. Needed, then, are guiding or action
ideals to serve as the mutually agreed-
upon pragmatic purposes and results of
music education. To the degree we can
reach greater mutual agreement on such
results, our different ‘tool boxes’ can be
put to work in pursuit of these shared
visions of what music education should
be contributing to the general education
of students. This should be a goal of
NAfME, not ‘what works’ or ‘best prac-
tices’ (more follows in this).
Just as in carpentry, our ‘tools’ run
the range from traditional to modernized
versions to inventions totally unknown
generations ago. Sometimes traditional
‘tools’ may still be effective; sometimes
modernized or new ‘tools’ may pro-
duce results that are equally effective
but more efficient, or that meet new
contemporary needs. Of course, some
‘tools’ are better suited to certain out-
comes than others, while others have
limited usefulness. And whatever ‘tools’
are chosen must be used efficiently and
effectively in meeting our agreed upon
curricular action ideals.
Here, effectiveness also implies open,
transparent, acknowledgement of inef-
fective results. Only when weaknesses
are recognized and admitted can practi-
tioners reflectively improve their teach-
ing practice. Thus, “practice” has the
same connotation and role in teaching
music as it does in performing music:
www.nafme.org
overcoming mistakes and improving
results.
Neither is a matter of “practice makes
perfect,” however. Action ideals are not
utopian images of perfection, nor can
they be reached at any particular point
in time and then replicated.36 Perform-
ing artists seek ever-more ideal perfor-
mances, and successful teachers profit
from similar aspirations. Action ideals
are thus not idealistically impractical
goals; they are positive visions that guide
practical actions in desirable directions.
For example, “good health,” being a
“good parent,” “good friend,” and “good
(or ethical) person” are action ideals.
Each is conditioned by particular con-
straints and circumstances, and each is
governed by individually situated and
ever-shifting criteria. Because circum-
stances always change, nothing we do
in life or teaching, then, is ever ‘good
enough’. And just as being a good person
cannot be reduced to a stock of habitual
behaviors, good teaching is not a mat-
ter of habitually employing stock lesson
plans or materials, or one-size-fits-all
routinized methods that are defined as
‘good’ or ‘best practices’ in advance of
their use, and thus without regard for
solid evidence of their long-term prag-
matic musical benefits in particular
situations.
Music education does have an abun-
dance of teaching ‘tools,’ but it lacks
agreement about what practition-
ers should be endeavoring to ‘build.’
Thus, it lacks criteria for judging the
efficacy and efficiency of results. With
such agreed upon action ideals firmly
in mind, the use of different theories,
approaches, and ‘tools’ is not only pos-
sible but often desirable—just as it is in
the other helping professions.
As an example of an action ideal, ear-
lier I proposed the benefits of a strong
component of participatory musics.
Elsewhere I have argued for promot-
ing amateurism and small (chamber)
ensembles of various kinds and, thus, for
the independent musicianship that con-
tributes to lifelong relevance and that
promotes my models of “action learn-
ing”37 and praxialism.38 Working toward
agreement about such proposed action
ideals should be our primary action
ideal. The lack of shared ideals has
meant that pragmatic and lasting ben-
efits have not been promoted by school
music, thus putting it in an increasingly
weak ‘position’ in the larger “field” of
schooling that is more attentive to func-
tionalist criteria.
Instead, can we agree about whether
or not we should be teaching students to
read music and play by ear for the prag-
matic ‘functions’ of amateur39 and par-
ticipatory performance? In Japan, every
child learns to read music by studying
the recorder. If we were to agree to
this ideal, it can be realized in different
ways and to different degrees (e.g., in
general music classes versus in ensem-
bles). Teachers can then choose which
of the available ‘tools’ are best suited
to their circumstances. If we were to
reach agreement about the action ideals
of fostering amateurism and participa-
tory musics, to use another example, the
‘tools’ we choose would be governed
by differences in teaching specializa-
tions, schools and communities, and
within student populations, while still
fostering a greater degree and diversity
of music-making in society. That result
alone would progressively overcome the
need for political advocacy.
I urge that teachers deliberate
about—especially in particular schools,
but also professionwide—action ide-
als using communicative rationality to
foster more mutual agreement on the
curricular action ideals most likely to
make a pragmatic and lasting difference
in the musical lives of graduates. These
would be our “common core.” Foster-
ing such agreement should also be a
focus of research, and curriculum theory
should be revived in music education
to the role it has played in other school
subjects.
Toward a Helping Profession
Some time ago, I wrote a position
paper urging the professionaliza-
tion of music education.40 As argued
earlier, music education tends to be
sociologically more of a specialized
“field” or occupation than a profession.
5
By “professionalize,” then, I meant the
action ideal of aspiring to the conditions
of the helping professions (medicine,
therapy, ministry, etc.). An important
condition of a helping profession is the
ethics that guide practice and recognize
mal-practice. Thus, the action ideal of
professionalization requires agreement
about applied ethics—about the ethi-
cal criteria that should guide curricu-
lar choices, pedagogical and curricular
theorizing, decisions about methods,
and the reflective practices—as focused
on identifying mistakes and shortcom-
ings—by which we can progress in our
effectiveness, rather than just profess our
importance in never-ending advocacy
apologia.41
To begin with, overall I urge an
ethic of resistance to ‘elephants’—
default settings, paradigms, and taken
for granted traditions, assumptions,
and practices—of all kinds. We should
resist any strategic thinking that focuses
more on the social ‘positioning’ of indi-
viduals or special interest groups (i.e.,
methodolatrists) than on the long-term
musical welfare of students. And we
should resist the many social injustices
that are too often promoted by school
music.42 We should seek professional
empowerment that frees us from ideo-
logical hegemony, including not just of
the university performance model of
music education but also, for example,
of the music industry, teacher unions,
and associations that actually dimin-
ish professionalism by advancing what
sociologists of education have called the
“deskilling” of teaching—the promotion
of ‘what works,’ ‘teacher-proof’ methods
of ‘delivering’ instruction. 43 Therefore,
we also need to empower music edu-
cation majors to ‘critically’ understand
these dynamics and their ethical impli-
cations and to inspire and equip them
to someday also empower their own
students.
In pursuit of this agenda of an applied
ethic of resistance and empowerment
we should enlist criteria from the tradi-
tional ethical theories. From duty ethics
we gain guidance concerning the con-
cept of rights44—in our case, students’
rights to music education that is relevant
6 Music Educators Journal  June 2014
to their lives. Among such rights is the
right to fair, just, and equal treatment
and, most important, the right to a music
education that makes a lasting difference
in the musical lives of all graduates. To
the many concerns about justice in music
education discourse, then, I would add
that of distributive justice.45 This entails
that all students have equal access to a
music education. Thus, musics that can
interest and engage all of them need to
be included in local programs, not just
the usual presentational fare of school
music based on university models.
The preceding theme of “making a
difference”46 gains support from conse-
quentialist ethics. Consequentialism is
derived from utilitarianism and focuses
on the clearly useful consequences of
actions. It is a corrective to circumstances
where actions done dutifully nonethe-
less produce negative results. Conse-
quences are ‘good’ and ethical when, in
our case, they are musically useful and
beneficial to students. Instruction that
produces no consequential, useful, and
lasting musical benefits 47 for students
thus fails to qualify as either ethical or
as a helping profession.
Most important, the applied ethics of
all the helping professions draw from
virtue ethics, the Aristotelian tradition
that distinguishes praxis (ethical action)
from theoria, and techne (or technical
skill). Guided by virtue ethics, teaching
music is not a matter of habits, routines,
and practices undertaken as techne (in
other words, not a technical or ‘how
to’ matter of ‘methods’ and methodola-
try) but as an ethical praxis: “praxis,”
because students are not ‘things’ and
“ethical” because their welfare is always
at stake.48
Moreover, as Wayne Bowman
has stressed music itself is an ethical
encounter, a matter of “response-
ability.”49 And, where teaching music
is conducted as praxis, it is qualified by
the need to, first of all, be prudent and
care-full [sic] in diagnosing and meet-
ing students’ needs. It avoids dictat-
ing needs or imposing one-size-fits-all
methods, as though students’ needs are
uniform, thus treating them as thing-like
products on the factory-like assembly
lines of school music programs. Sec-
ondly, virtue ethics stresses an “ethic of
care”:50 caring for students more than
for protecting music from students, for
a teacher’s own needs, or those of the
program.51
However, for Aristotle, practical
virtue depends on theoretical virtue! In
other words, praxis is undertaken in
view of ‘goods’—the action ideals men-
tioned earlier—first decided on by rea-
son. Good teaching, then, is not simply
a matter of using ‘good methods’ but
of starting from ‘right reasons’ that pro-
vide a warranted philosophical vision of
‘good’ or ‘right results.’ ‘Right reasons’
are those that clearly advance and sus-
tain the ‘good life,’ in our case through
music.52 We start with such curricular
action ideals in mind as our ‘right rea-
sons,’ then methods and materials are
chosen and employed with care. Thus,
the criterion of ‘right results’ that vir-
tue ethics shares with consequentialism
determines the helping and ethical status
of instruction. Negative (or non-helpful)
results are symptoms of mal-praxis: Stu-
dents are in effect harmed by not hav-
ing their musical needs met. They have
not been musically helped in lasting
ways. Thus, avoiding and acknowledg-
ing mistakes and ineffective results is a
central criterion of virtue. “Virtue” for
Aristotle meant “excellence,”53 so where
all teaching is only ‘good enough’—as
with ‘anything goes’ alternativism and
relativism—there is no virtue and no
professionalism.
An applied ethics for music edu-
cation, then, should fully take into
account the many ‘elephants’ that influ-
ence teaching in negative directions.
And there are many more than can be
detailed here. Music educators should,
as critical pedagogues, start to identify
the many and virulent ‘elephants’ that
plague us Functionalist, conflict, and
critical theories help identify and con-
front such elephantine impediments to
helping meet students’ needs. Duty eth-
ics point out our basic responsibilities,
and consequentialist ethics focus on
promoting useful and significant results.
However, it remains to virtue ethics,
the mainstay of all helping professions,
to stress the virtuous character traits
needed to motivate actions for effective
praxis (for example, courage, patience,
and stamina) and the intellectual vir-
tues that promote the diagnostic and
pedagogical resourcefulness needed to
ensure that teaching actions are effec-
tive. Instead of ‘what works’ and ‘best
practices’ we should instead look to
clearly successful models and the profes-
sional virtue ethics that sustain them.54
Music education will approach the
conditions of the other helping profes-
sions to the degree, then, that we can act
in our diversely chosen ways according
to mutual agreement about ‘right rea-
sons’ and ‘right results’: in other words,
according to our agreed-upon profes-
sional action ideals, and by making a
consequential difference for students
and society through actually helping. In
particular, this requires regarding teach-
ing as praxis, not just as a technicism
of specialized methods and materials.
Thus it involves constant vigilance con-
cerning, and an ethic of resistance to
elephantine hegemonic forces that put
their interests before those of the stu-
dents we serve.
Notes
  1. See, for example, the writings of Paulo
Freire, Michael Apple, Henri Giroux,
Antonio Gramsci, and Ira Shor, just to
name several leading critical theorists.
For a summary, see Joe L. Kincheloe,
Critical Pedagogy, 2nd ed. (New York:
Peter Lang, 2009).
  2. Laurence S. Levine, Highbrow/
Middlebrow: The Emergence of Cultural
Hierarchy in America (Cambridge
MA: Harvard University Press, 1988),
85–168.
  3. Jazz being an exception since it now
seems to be increasingly regarded and
approached as ‘art’ music, often with the
same ‘distancing’ effect from much of
the musical public and especially from
its original roots.
  4. Consider the young student who
burst from her piano lesson crying,
“Mr. Blackman is more interested in
the notes than in music.” He owned the
local music store and was an aesthete
and an aesthetic bully.
www.nafme.org
  5. Kathleen Bennett de Marrais and
Margaret LeCompte, The Way Schools
Work (New York: Longman, 1998),
5–11.
  6. The hidden curriculum “consists of
implicit messages given to students
about socially legitimated or ‘proper’
behavior, differential power, social evalu-
ation, what kinds of knowledge exist,
which kinds are valued by whom and
how students are valued in their own
right. These messages are learned infor-
mally as students go about their daily life
in schools. . . . [T]he hidden curriculum
conveys messages both through the
‘form and content of school knowledge’
and through the ‘silences’ or what is left
out”; de Marrais and LeCompte, The
Way Schools Work, 242, quoting Henry
Giroux, source not cited.
  7. See de Marrais and LeCompte, The Way
Schools Work, 11–20.
  8. This ideology is accepted uncritically due
to its aura of sounding profound. But if
aesthetic theory were all that important
to musical success, why it is not required
in most programs that prepare musicians
for various musical professions, includ-
ing being music professors?
  9. From de Marrais and LeCompte, The
Way Schools Work, 249–50, emphasis
added. See also pages 27–34, and for
comparison to other leading sociological
theories of schooling, see pages 39–41.
See Kincheloe, Critical Pedagogy, for the
foundations of critical pedagogy and its
role in schooling, as a research theme or
focus, and in relation to a critical psy-
chology of cognition.
10. In keeping with constructivist/construc-
tionist psychology, students not only
‘construct’ knowledge (rather than ‘repro-
duce’ it as ‘handed’ down or ‘transmit-
ted’ by authority), but do so in terms that
are meaningful to them, thus insuring
that learning is useful and lasting.
11. Julia Eklund Koza, “Aesthetic Music
Education Revisited: Discourses of
Exclusion and Oppression,” Philosophy
of Music Education Review 2, no. 2 (Fall
1994): 75–91; and Julie Eklund Koza,
“Listening for Whiteness: Hearing Racial
Politics in Undergraduate School Music,”
in Music Education for Changing Times,
eds. T. Regelski and J. T. Gates (New
York: Springer, 2009), 85–96.
12. See de Marrais and LeCompte, The Way
School Works, 250.
13. Hardly a lightweight when it comes to its
credentials for music education.
14. Thomas Turino, Music as Social Life:
The Politics of Participation (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2008), 26,
italics in the original.
15. Ibid., 26, italics in the original.
16. Ibid., 30.
17. Ibid., 90, italics in the original.
18. Ibid., 35.
19. Ibid., 98.
20. Thomas A. Regelski, Teaching General
Music in Grades 4–8: A Musicianship
Approach (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2004), 190–234.
21. Thomas A. Regelski, “On ‘Methodology’
and Music Teaching as Critical and
Reflective Praxis,” Philosophy of Music
Education Review 10, no. 2 (2002):
102–24.
22. Asked about curriculum, the reply is
often “I teach the ‘X’ method.”
23. For the controversial “deliverology”
approach. See Pasi Sahlberg, Finnish
Lessons (New York: Teachers College
Press, 2010), 148n5 for chapter 5.
24. Such a central core is characteristic
of the major helping professions but
does not exist in music education, to
our discredit and disability as a helping
profession.
25. Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural
Production (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1993).
26. Boss: “We will be adopting best practices
. . . just like everybody else.” Worker: “If
everyone is doing it, best practices is the
same as mediocre.” Exasperated boss:
“STOP MAKING MEDIOCRITY SOUND
BAD!”; Dilbert [cartoon], International
Herald Tribune, September 3, 2008, 19.
‘Best practices’ is a loaded term bor-
rowed from “evidence-based medicine”
where clinical practice is premised on
the results of scientific studies. However,
such scientific rigor is lacking when ‘best
practices’ are identified by fiat in educa-
tion despite the absence of indisputable
scientific evidence, and “different groups
of experts can disagree significantly
about what is ‘best practice,’” even
in medicine; Jerome Groopman, and
Pamela Hartzband, Your Medical Mind
(New York: The Penguin Press, 2011),
62; see pages 61–66 for an extended
critique of the concept in medicine!
27. See de Marrais and LeCompte, The Way
School Works, 149–54.
28. For example, methodololtrists paid for
the many workshops offered to teachers
who are in search of ‘what works.’
7
29. Some music education professors who
also conduct ensembles engage in prac-
tices at the collegiate level that are not
always the best models for the different
purposes of public school conductor-
teachers, but that earn the approval of
other music faculty and that thus secure
their tenure and promotion.
30. Lois Choksy, Robert M. Abramson, Avon
E. Gillespie, and David Woods, Teaching
Music in the Twenty-First Century (New
York: Prentice Hall, 2000).
31. David Carr, in his book Professionalism
and Ethics in Teaching (New York:
Routledge, 2000), writes that “the so-
called professions are to be distinguished
from other occupations almost exclu-
sively in status seeking and self-serving
terms” (p. 22).
32. In sociology, a ‘classical’ trait of a pro-
fession is control over membership and,
thus, of decisions concerning malprac-
tice. However positive this may seem,
the ‘professionalizing’ of expertise is
all too susceptible to abuse. To date,
teacher unions and a profession-like
ethos in state education bureaucracies
keep noncertified teachers out of schools
(except when certified teachers are not
available). The earlier mentioned partici-
patory music, however, could well profit
from local musicians who are expertly
engaged in such musics and can teach
them in schools if certified teachers are
unqualified (or too busy).
33. Dave Hill, Peter L. McLaren, Mike
Cole, and Glenn Rikowski, eds.,
Postmodernism in Educational Theory:
Education and the Politics of Human
Resistance (London: The Tufnell Press,
1999).
34. For example, grading practices; attend-
ance policies, and the economics of
schooling; replication of social class
(ethnicity, cultural capital, socioeco-
nomic status, etc.); authority of teachers
granted by certification as opposed to
earned through the respect of students;
certification and tenure of unqualified
teachers; exclusion from teaching of peo-
ple who possess expert knowledge; dress
codes, single-sex classes or schools;
ability grouping and tracking (e.g., in
music education, select ensembles); sex
education (e.g., “just say no” mandated
programs)—any and all issues of author-
ity and power. A particular teacher com-
mitted to critical pedagogy will be keenly
aware of such issues and will to address
those over which exerting ‘critical’
effort will be most productive given local
8 Music Educators Journal  June 2014
conditions and the subject matter in
question. For details, see the Activist
Teacher website (http://activist
teacher.blogspot.com/), featuring a
range of issues of concern to critical
pedagogy and, thus, the range of activ-
ism that is possible—activism that,
many critical theorists would argue,
is ethically required of teachers; see
Eve Hague, “Critical Pedagogy in
English for Academic Purposes and the
Possibility for ‘Tactics’ of Resistance,”
Pedagogy, Culture & Society 15, no.
1 (March 2007): 83–106, for a sum-
mary of critical theory and pedagogy,
a sample of some “tactics of resist-
ance,” and an abundance of resources
about critical theory and pedagogy;
see Andrew H. Churchill, Rocking Your
World: The Emotional Journey into
Critical Discourses (Rotterdam, the
Netherlands: Sense Publishing, 2008)
for an introduction to the challenges;
and Peter McLaren, “Radical Negativity:
Music Education for Social Justice,”
Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music
Education 10, no. 1 (August 2011):
131–47, http://act.maydaygroup.org/arti-
cles/McLaren10_1.pdf, for challenges to
music educators.
35. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of
Communicative Action, 2 vols., trans. T.
McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984).
36. The same is true of teaching methods
and approaches. These arise at a particu-
lar time and place, and are often tied to
their originating conditions. Use in other
times and places, under often vastly
different conditions (society, schools,
students, music have all changed dra-
matically in recent years), requires at the
very least considerable adaptation. Over
time, then, methods and approaches
need to evolve if they are to remain
effective. These variables account for the
considerable differences between teach-
ers of a particular method—differences
that individual practitioners are often
unaware of, mistakenly assuming that
all who follow “the” preferred method or
approach are teaching the same things
in the same ways. Such differences
between teachers of a particular named
method are common, thus worsening
the problems of alternativism where all
teaching is ‘good enough.’
37. Regelski, Teaching General Music
4–8; and Thomas A. Regelski, “Action
Learning,” Music Educators Journal 69,
no. 6 (1983): 46–50.
38. Thomas A. Regelski, “Action Learning
versus the Pied Piper Approach,” Music
Educators Journal 69, no. 8 (1983):
55–57.
39. Thomas A. Regelski, “Amateuring in
Music and Its Rivals,” Action, Criticism,
and Theory for Music Education 6 no. 3
(2007): 22–50, http://act.maydaygroup.
org/articles/Regelski6_3.pdf.
40. Thomas A. Regelski, “Critical Theory
and Praxis: Professionalizing Music
Education,” MayDay Group, April 15,
1998, http://maydaygroup.org/
1998/04/critical-theory-and-praxis-
professionalizing-music-education/.
41. For details of the relationship between
professionalism and applied ethics,
see Carr, Professionalism and Ethics in
Teaching; Thomas A. Regelski, “Ethical
Dimensions of School-Based Music
Education,” in The Oxford Handbook
of Philosophy in Music Education,
ed. W. Bowman and A. L. Frega (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2012),
284–304; and Thomas A. Regelski,
“The Ethics of Teaching as Profession
and Praxis,” in Kunskapens Konst:
Vänbok till Börje Stålhammar [Art of
Knowledge: A Book from Friends to Börje
Stålhammar], ed. Eva Georgii-Hemming
(Örebro, Sweden: School of Music, Örebro
University, 2007; repr. in Visions of
Research in Music Education 13 [January
2009], http://rider.edu~vrme/). Traditional
apologias are, in the current age, notably
failing, as music education programs are
sacrificed, weakened, or otherwise made
dysfunctional. As is said, the definition of
insanity is doing something the same way
despite negative results. The status quo of
adhering to the long-term traditional mod-
els (i.e., large ensembles and marching
bands, etc.,competing for prizes; prolifer-
ating methodolatries; some claiming faux
scientific credentials) is leading to a state
where the ‘elephants’ will no longer even
have a room in which to roam. Maybe the
garage or outhouse?
42. McLaren, “Radical Negativity.”
43. For example, deMarrais and LeCompte,
The Way School Works, 178–80.
44. “[I]t is significant that the kind of ser-
vices that professionals are in business
to provide have increasingly come to be
regarded as human rights. . . . Indeed,
. . . , perhaps the best philosophical
handle we are likely to secure on the
righthood [sic] of health care, education
and legal redress is in terms of a notion
of what is necessarily or indispensably
conducive to overall human flourishing;
. . .”; Carr, Professionalism and Ethics in
Teaching, 27–28, italics in the original.
45. See, for example, Ronald Dworkin,
Justice for Hedgehogs (Cambridge,
MA: Belknap/Harvard University Press,
2011). While Dworkin is writing about
government, his two principles also apply
to a school music program: “First, it
must show equal concern for the fate of
very person over whom it claims domin-
ion. Second, it must respect fully the
responsibility and right of each person
to decide for himself how to make some-
thing valuable of his life” (p. 2); see
2–4, passim.
46. Thomas A. Regelski, “Music and
Music Education—Theory and Praxis
for ‘Making a Difference,’ Educational
Philosophy and Theory 37, no. 1 (2005):
7–27; journal republished as Music
Education for the New Millennium:
Theory and Practice Futures for Music
Teaching and Learning (London:
Blackwell, 2005), with same pagination.
47. Overall well-being is also an important
criterion. It ensures that musical ben-
efits are not promoted by means that
otherwise have a negative effect on
students in other realms of their lives;
for example, the use of psychological
manipulation (e.g., embarrassment) and
competitive strategies (e.g., one “win-
ner” but many “losers”) that, despite
the musical benefits claimed, often have
seriously negative personal side effects.
Issues of physical well-being also are
relevant (e.g., vocal damage, repetitive
stress disorders, poor biomechanics, and
injurious acoustics). Personal benefits
other than musical are important too, but
www.nafme.org
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these are the concern of all teachers and
do not themselves fully legitimate music
education.
48. Technically, “ethical praxis” is redun-
dant: “In the strict sense of the word,
. . . all action [praxis] is moral; it
involves deeds for which we may be
praised or blamed . . .”; Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics, trans. R. C.
Bartlett and S. D. Collins (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2011), 305;
from the translator’s glossary.
49. Wayne Bowman, “Music as Ethical
Encounter,” Bulletin of the Council
for Research in Music Education 151
(Winter 2001): 11–20.
50. See Nell Noddings, The Challenge to
Care in School, 2nd ed. (New York:
Teachers College Press, 2005).
51. For both consequentialism and virtue
ethics, we are allowed to meet our
personal needs and those of our music
programs, but only to the degree that
in doing so we clearly meet the musi-
cal needs of the individual students
who are our programs and who are the
sources of our employment and any
other rewards we gain from teaching.
As regards a “program,” to be guarded
against is when a program becomes a
one-size-fits-all production line or mold
into which students must ‘fit’ or be left
by the wayside. Or where the “music
program” selectively focuses only on
school music and ignores the musics
available at large in a community. This
is where distributive justice comes into
the picture.
52. Aristotle’s eudaimonia, the goal of the
“good life,” has been translated as
“well-being,” though decidedly not in
the sense of states of mind such as
happiness or pleasure, but of active
“flourishing” or “thriving” of all kinds:
the life well-lived; see Aristotle, The
Nicomachean Ethics, rev. ed., trans.
D. Ross, ed., J. D. Ackrill and J. O.
Urmson (London, UK: Oxford University
Press, 1998), xxvii; translator’s notes.
53. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, 316.
54. In January 2014, the National Academy
of Recording Arts and Science initiated
its first Grammy Music Educator of the
Year award. There were 10 finalists
from among 32,000 nominations. The
winning teacher, Kent Knappenberger,
teaches at Westfield (New York) Academy
and Central School, a rural school of
720 students that has 500 involved in
music classes and various ensembles,
offers four years of music electives,
has four full-time music teachers and
more boys in the music program than
in sports. Knappenberger is a model of
the action learning, praxial, participa-
tory, and distributive justice premises
discussed here. For the details and
action ideals of the winner and other
finalists, see the NAfME website, 2014,
keyword “Grammy Award.” Nothing these
great teachers can say amounts to ‘what
works.’ Everything they have to say goes
to an ethos of professional dedication to
benefitting their students—a praxial and
ethical criterion, not some vague claim
for “aesthetic education.”
9