Does Political Correctness Undermine 'Real' Music Education?
One of the things I really rate about the wider 'music education' landscape in this country is the that through the kind of projects and organisations funded by Youth Music and the likes; lots of young people from all walks of life have the opportunity to learn about and make the music that they love, on their own terms. But every now and again I come across forces that would oppose this approach arguing that although young people have tastes in music, they are wrong when it comes to 'real music' because they haven't been enlightened yet.
'this belief was once fundamental to musical education, but it offends against political correctness. Today there is only my taste and yours. The suggestion that my taste is better than yours is elitist, an offence against equality. But unless we teach children to judge, to discriminate, to recognise the difference between music of lasting value and mere ephemera, we give up on the task of education.'Roger Scruton, The Tyranny of Pop
Back in November 2015 I heard a short broadcast by respected philosopher & writer Roger Scruton called 'The Tyranny of Pop'. Although Roger makes some good points (e.g. the value of silence and societys growing unease with it) to my mind his validity is completely compromised by his absurd diatribe on the damage that pop and digitally produced music, a 'far worse pollution' than passive cigarette smoke, is doing to society. Turning our young people into addicts, rendering them unable to complete sentences and leaving them as incapable of realising what they are missing in ''real music' as a congenitally blind person is of perceiving the beauty of colours. Needless to say this podcast really got my back up!
Listen to it here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06mv4js
I'm happy to say that I have never come across such an unapologetically vitriolic or elitist standpoint from other professionals or colleagues in music education but I'm sad to say that there are still definite undertones of this perspective that ripple through the wider sector and although things are slowly improving, I suspect that dispositions such as these influence the landscape, from policy right through to practice and at worst, fuel a hierarchy in music education that threatens to undermine not only the creativity and agency young people, but their chances of reaching their potential not only in music but in many areas of their lives.
I'd like to think that views like these aren't borne as much from eltitism as ignorance (for example a lack of understanding of the musicality involved in modern music making techniques), or a fear of the new & unknown. Indeed I can imagine a time when the ingenuity of the work of Beethoven or Bach caused upset in the system because their innovative ideas broke the 'rules' that preceeded them, much like more modern institutions like Jazz or David Bowie for that matter!
Anyway...if like me you feel the urge to respond constructively to the kind of opinions shared in this podcast please share your thoughts here or join me at 8.30pm tonight (Wed 27th Jan) on Twitter, where I will be hosting a #mufuchat on the subject on behalf of AudioActive
Here's is the storify from the said #MuFuChat
https://storify.com/musicalfutures/is-there-a-hierarchy-in-music-and-mus...