Democracy and Music Education

The Music Department of St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra hosted a presentation by Prof Paul G. Woodford from the University of Western Ontario, Canada on Tuesday the 16th of October.  Prof Woodford is Professor and former Chair of the Department of Music Education at the Don Wright Faculty of Music and author of Democracy and Music Education: Liberalism, Ethics and the Politics of Practice (Indiana University Press, 2005).  An important aim of his work is to reclaim a democratic purpose for music education by raising students’ and teachers’ consciousness about societal and professional problems that have contributed to their disfranchisement and marginalization in contemporary society.  His book is deliberately controversial in challenging music teachers and teacher educators to rethink traditional rationales for teaching music, for example that music education is just about teaching skills and musical knowledge divorced from the world and its problems.  He argues that Music can break through our intellectual defences in ways that language cannot while helping us to empathize with and learn more about others. In that sense music can be liberating.  But it can just as easily be used to cynically manipulate, deceive, or distort (as for example when anti-capitalist protest music of the Vietnam War era is exploited by banks or governments for advertising or propaganda purposes). Staff from the Music, Education and English Departments of St Patrick’s College, attended the presentation together with primary teachers and colleagues working in teacher education in neighbouring colleges.  A lively discussion resulted which included a variety of perspectives on human engagement with music and the consequences for music education.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last Updated: Thursday October 18 2007