Social justice in music education: the problematic of democracy

While social justice concerns of feminist research in music education have been mostly ignored or rejected by the profession, democracy based on paternalist Enlightenment concepts of humanism and liberalism is generally understood and accepted with little or no consideration of its social and economic implications. More nuanced accounts refer to John Dewey's notions of democracy as a way of life, community, or democracy as an ideal, but assumptions underpinning these notions such as community and consensus as unproblematic virtues in addition to considerations of democracy's limitations typically go unexamined, notwithstanding caveats of its failures particularly in terms of women and so-called ‘minorities.’ Focusing on specifically liberal forms of democracy and democratic practices in music education—particularly as they are constructed as models for presumably equitable and just classroom interaction and curricular content—I use feminist, postmodern epistemological and ontological perspectives to problematize assumptions, ideals and processes on which liberal democracy is based and look beyond and beneath the dualisms and representations on which it depends. My argument that unexamined traditional liberal practices and discourses inevitably serve to re-inscribe colonial narratives of salvation is deployed to open spaces for thinking democracy's potential in music education discourses and practices.