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Social Justice in Music Education
Kelsey Rose
Westminster Choir College
2014
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Abstract
This paper explores the concept of social justice within the context of music education. It
begins with the historical events that gave rise to the exploration of the topic then
expands to look at its developing role in the 21
st
century music classroom. It explores the
ideas of community, multiculturalism, and other prominent topics in critical pedagogy as
they relate to the topic. This paper includes the ideas of Wayne Bowman, Paolo Freire,
Gustavo Gutierrez, Peter Block, and Patrick Schmidt, and others in order to present many
of the current ideas and philosophies specific to the topic and education.
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Social Justice in Music Education
Introduction
Poverty means death (Gutirrez, 1990, p. xxi). In his book, A Theology of
Liberation, this was a description Gustavo Gutirrez used to describe the life of the
oppressed peoples in certain areas of Latin America in the 1950s and 60s. A large
percentage of the population was considered poor or a member of the working class,
whereas, a handful of people were exorbitantly rich. These oppressed peoples that
Gutirrez mentions were the lower class. This large monetary divide between the classes
created socioeconomical conflict between the two groups.
The poor lacked adequate food and housing, could not properly attend to
educational and health needs, and lived under the control of unjust limitations placed on
personal freedom and self-expression (Gutirrez, 1990, p. xxi). According to Gutirrez,
the oppressed are deemed absent from society. They are of little or no importance, and
without the opportunity to give expression themselves to their sufferings, their
comraderies, their plans, their hopes (p. xx). Like Gutirrez, Paolo Freire (1970)
observed that the rich abused their power to the point of inflicting a living death upon
the oppressed class (p. 113). This death that both Freire and Gutirrez described was not
a physical death, but a social and spiritual one.
Most of all poverty meant the lack of respect for their human dignity. Without
this, their position of poverty brought them great anguish, with no visible remedy. As part
of a TED talk series on identity, Elif Shafak (2013) claimed that if you want to destroy
something in this life, be it acne, a blemish, or the human soul, all you need to do is
surround it with thick walls. It will dry up inside. The poor lived life as they were used
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to it, not thinking that they could create a better life than their oppressors allowed for. It
reduced them because they thought it was natural, the way things were supposed to be
(Shafak).
From an educational standpoint, the poor class was engaged in the process Joan
Wink calls, hegemony. In her words, it is the domination of one group over another with
the partial consent of the dominated...[and] the control of knowledge and literacy by the
dominant group (Wink, 2010, p. 68). Freire realized that the lack of literacy in the lower
class perpetuated their life as oppressed peoples. He was then able to begin to shift the
social reality in Brazil through teaching people to read and write. With this gained
literacy, people were given to opportunity to change their circumstances. This basic
literacy became a means of liberation.
Both Freire and Gutierrez demonstrated that the impetus for change is in
education. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), Freire introduces his pedagogy by
acknowledging that humanitys central issue is achieving humanization. He said, the
great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed is to liberate themselves and their
oppressors as well (p. 168). In his view, this liberation must be forged with, not for the
oppressed (168). It calls for the inspiration of reflection upon their circumstances from
which will come their necessary engagement on the struggle for their liberation (68).
Education is a key to our liberation from limitations put on our freedom and self-
expression. It should be used to help develop a critical awareness of the world and a
passion to transform it. In Freires Pedagogy of the City (1970), he characterized what the
schools should work towards as, a school system that transforms the space where
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children, rich or poor, are able to learn, to create to take risks, to question, and to grow
(p. 37). In this setting, the students have an equal opportunity to learn and take chances.
Social Justice
As the idea of justice is socioculturally situated, it can vary between people and
be difficult to enforce. Perhaps the only thing that is straightforward about social justice
in music education is that it is not straightforward (Bowman, 2007, p. 4). What
constitutes socially just practices? One might assume that to be socially just, a teacher
must treat all students equally. However, this creates a contradiction because it implies
that there are no special privileges or responsibilities. How can this be possible in a
classroom where special education students are mainstreamed? Are teachers to deny the
gifted and talented students the academic challenge they desire? What might this mean,
then, to do the right thing where right defies definition in absolute or universal terms,
and where the idea of contextually-independent moral truths has lost its currency?
(Bowman, 2007, p. 5) Each student is unique. To deprive a gifted student of learning that
is appropriate to their level on the basis that every other student cannot to the same is not
a socially just practice. In short, well-intending authors tend, at times, to write as if it
were perfectly clear what social justice means and as if achieving socially just practices
in music education were simply a matter of making minor technical adjustments to
instructional method and content. It is not (Bowman, 2007, p. 2). Social justice is not a
concrete idea, but a process. Social justice education begins with adopting a disposition
to perceive and then act against indecencies and injustices (Allsup, 2012, p.47). The first
step is awareness. The teaching choices that are made in the classroom and rehearsals
must have purpose and these choices may have implications beyond the surface level
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intentions of the teacher. The term hidden curriculum, which was coined by Phillip
Jackson in 1968, explains this idea. It describes the curriculum that is not explicitly
planned out in lesson plans or curricular goal outlines. For example, if a teacher programs
music from a handful of white males from the eighteenth century, then it may be
perceived as a statement that only composers who fit within those parameters have
created works of value. Although, not all hidden curriculums may be realized by the
teacher or students, it is still important for teachers to strive to give a depth of reflection
to their curricular planning.
Allsup goes on to say, Teachers are public figures entrusted by a democratic
society to act in the best interests of the children in their care. Music educators must
embrace this social contract by going public or coming outreaching beyond
incomplete musical engagements and into larger and more intertwined social, artistic, and
political domains (2012, p. 47). The music classroom is not a vacuum where musical
learning opportunities exist. Learning opportunities exist within the classroom and reach
beyond it. These opportunities reach into other subjects and communities. When teachers
take the time to consider other topics or subjects where students are involved in learning
not only does it create a point of connection for the student between the two subjects, but
also opens the door to a deeper understanding of each. According to Bernice McCarthy
(2000), Meaning amplifies memory (2000, p. 10). Meaning can be found in these
connections and through this, the memory is enhanced.
Who are we serving?
How can these connections be formed? As educators, we have to ask ourselves
the question, Who are we serving? Even if we start out knowing the answer to this
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question, we may soon forget the true meaning of the idea. Educators guilty of this serve
their students on a basic level, but do not go the extra mile to make sure the students have
what they need to be not only successful musicians, but human beings as well. According
to Regelksi, With professional standing comes the ethical responsibility to serve those
for whom a profession exists; in teaching, the students and society (2010, p. 10). We, as
teachers, are obligated to serve our students and the society that they live in.
Community
Millions of communities of varied size and focus exist within society. A
community is a group of people that is based on a common factor like shared traits,
common goals, dwelling place. Consciously or unconsciously people pick up the ways of
their communities. In the concluding sections of his essay, Elliott turns to the issue of
socializing music educationthe issue to which the title of his essay alludes. He argues
the need to reconceptualize music education along lines that make community (and the
social) more central to our understandings of what music is, and the need for strategic,
collective action, as opposed to mere talk. Elliott urges us, in short, to work to find ways
of transforming the music education profession into one that is socially robust,
responsible, and responsive (Bowman on David Elliots essay on social justice that was
published in the same article, 2007, p. 14). This transformation starts from within.
Through a commitment to transform the context we live in, community can be a means of
enacting social justice. Within schools communities are built and dissipate every year as
part of classrooms.
To build a successful community, accountability to build relatedness, structure
belonging, and move the action forward (Block, 2008, p. 14) is imperative. Once
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possibility, accountability, and commitment make their way into our language,
transformation becomes almost inevitable. This goes echoes the idea of the fourth tenet of
critical pedagogy, which states that education is transformative. If we as educators look
from a standpoint of possibility, then we are bringing the future of what we can achieve
together with our students into the now.
A lack of commitment, however, can have the opposite effect. The way we
function is powerfully impacted by our worldview, or in Werner Erhards language, how
the world shows up for us. If a person declares the world to be cold and uncaring, that is
the reality that they will live in, whether there is any truth to it or not. Even if this
mentality is not a common trait within a community, it still has an effect on the group as
a whole. A stuck community is an expansion of this idea.
The philosophy of learning being presented by the news in a stuck community is
one of zero tolerance, mistakes are not allowed and punishment is guaranteed for all
offences- accidental or otherwise. The stuck community markets fault. If students are
caught up in a fear mentality where they cannot make mistakes and blame is assigned to
anyone who steps outside the metaphorical box, creativity and individual thought suffers.
The students become inwardly focused for their own survival.
The music classroom is one largely focused on creativity and individual or group
expression. Creativity and expression are not possible if students are too afraid to take a
risk or express themselves. The establishment of a safe, judgment free environment by
music teachers is integral to the success of the music classroom. Too often students sit in
classrooms where they are unhappy or do not fully understand the material being taught
and do not say anything about the situation. They convene after class to try to figure out
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through collective reasoning what the days lesson was or to grumble over the general
awfulness of the class.
In Brazil, the people had to first question their own habitual actions before they
could claim their basic human rights. As Boff and Boff (1987) describe, the strategy of
liberation theology, a movement that arose as a response to this social injustice in Brazil
and Peru is, the oppressed come together, come to understand their situation through the
process of conscientization, discover the causes of their oppression, organize themselves
into movements, and act in a coordinated fashion (p. 69). This is similar to the idea of
conscientization that is found in critical pedagogy. In these terrms, conscientization is
used to describe the point of learning at which the students have achieved a sense of
mastery- they know that they know. When students reach that level of knowledge they
gain a sense of empowerment with and from the material.
Multiculturalism
It is through this material that students can be offered the opportunity to expand
their cultural understandings. When we are reading a good novel, we leave our small,
cozy apartments behind, go out into the night alone and start getting to know people that
we have never met before and perhaps have even been biased against (Elif Shafak, 2013,
TED talk). Music can have this same effect. Students can be presented with music to sing
by Rachmaninov, Durufle, and Brahms all in the same concert. Through singing these
pieces, we are given a window into the culture and world of these composers.
Rosita Sands presents that the concern is fairness. To be fair music educations
curricular content must prepare students to work with diverse studentsto meet the
needs and interests of students from diverse cultural backgrounds (Bowman, 2007, p.
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13). If we are multicultural as teachers, we can give students and authentic look into the
world of another culture. We get to know cultures, as people, that we have never met
before or may have developed assumptions and bias about. This invitation to diversity
will give students a deeper understanding of their social context and plant the seed of
compassion. Bowman argues essentially that music education cannot become more
socially just until it becomes more inclusive of diversityand this means diversity of
musics, peoples, voices, values, and more. Until we confront strategically, deliberately,
and decisively the current homogeneity of music education and of music educators, I
argue, appeals to social justice will continue to ring hollow. (p. 7) As the old saying
says, we have to walk a mile in someone elses shoes.
How can we become more socially just agents?
The point is not just to understand what we think; nor is it to change others. The
object of the social justice project is ourselves: to allow ourselves to be changed though
engagement and dialogue with othersengagement and dialogue that seek true
reciprocity (Bowman, 2007, p. 13). In landmark Education, the leaders have lines of
committed speaking and listening. They help foster community and achievement with the
idea that you are accountable for your actions, yet are not alone in your endeavors. In
education accountability is stressed with different means of assessment for teachers and
students.
School systems use different frameworks like Danielson, Student Growth
Objectives, and state standards to pursue accountability and ensure successful teaching.
These means of assessment can be overwhelming if approached alone. Supervisors
should have a committed relationship with teachers and vice versa beyond just being
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observed a few times a year. If we truly are committed to empowering and
comprehensive education, then we should first show that commitment within the teaching
community. Teachers that have open lines of communication are better able to create
interdisciplinary lessons, lessons that include concepts from multiple disciplines
simultaneously, and support each other in the challenges of the field. This relationship
also provides another viewpoint in navigating social justice as it is situated within the
community.
One of the most important steps we can take towards achieving this goal is simply
by listening- the very action music teachers are trained to do throughout their careers. As
McCarthy (2000) goes on to state, When a teacher creates a climate where subjectivity
is honored and listening is attuned and personal, students make connections. The learning
is powerful (p. 84). In a classroom where students are encouraged to share their views
and ask questions, they will be much more willing to experiment with new information
until they understand it. As the Critical Pedagogy outlines, nothing in our doing or the
way we go through life will shift until we can question. Then, once they have grasped the
new concepts, the information remains with them far beyond the scope of the course.
Conclusion
Concern for social justice in music education is not a new topic, however it is one
that is continuously evolving in philosophy and in practical application. Is it reasonable
to hold music educators accountable for socially just practices when the institutions in
which they are trained and within which they work are often profoundly unjust? Clearly,
there is a lot of work to be done. But just as clearly, it is essential that work be
undertaken. (Bowman, 2007, p. 12) Our lessons and ideas as educators are living
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documents, continuously improving with each set of gained knowledge. We must be
continuously be questioning our world and modifying our actions.
Just actions rely on meaningful interactions. Stefan Young stated, As teachers,
we must remember that we are not just teaching the subject matter, we are teaching
human beings (personal communication, 2014). No matter how valuable a subject is or
how the teacher presents the information, it will all be for naught if the students do not
feel valued. When the teacher comes to know his or her students, this knowledge can
inform just actions that are taken to improve the circumstances specific to the situation of
the community. Education is a key to our liberation from limitations put on our freedom
and self-expression. It should be used to help develop a critical awareness of the world
and a passion to transform it.

You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Maya Angelou

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