Emotion, Functionality and the Everyday Experience of Music: Where does music education fit?

Music education in schools cannot function effectively without an implicit agreement between stakeholders (e.g. teachers, student, parents, government etc.) about what it is for. The 'meaning of music' is a constantly shifting function of the discourses of these diverse groups, which may coalesce around a 'dominant ideology' which gains enough inter-group consensus to generate a stable educational agenda. It is argued that such a stable agenda has collapsed. Recent research suggests that (i) many school music educators have little respect for or understanding of the musical lives of those they teach; (ii) that the musical enthusiasms and aspirations of many young people are not addressed by the current curriculum; (iii) that the transition from primary to secondary school is a key 'parting-of-the-ways' between young people and their music teachers; and (iv) that music retains a key and central role in the lives of most people who see themselves as 'not musical', and that emotional self-management is at the heart of this role. Classroom music, as currently conceptualised and organised, may be an inappropriate vehicle for mass music education in 21st-century Britain. Hints of the parameters of a more effective music education environment may well be found within the somewhat anarchic mixed economy of out-of-school music provision in this country.