Music educational purpose [2]

In last week’s blog I proposed knowing how to make music well a worthy purpose of music education. I argued that while musical knowledge could be framed in a number of different ways, knowing how to make music well was a way of expressing a form of practical knowledge embodying the Greek techne and phronesis, an embodied form of knowledge, and expressed as knowing how and conditional on the ‘well’. If you like, knowing how acts as a kind of spearhead subsuming other forms of knowledge while not being reducible to these.

One faithful and astute reader of last week’s blog pointed out that my blogs take a helical form, that is, they are spiral-like, twisting like a corkscrew back and forth as they interrogate key topics over time – a perpetual return to earlier arguments as a way of generating moves forward and perhaps ironing out contradictions while no doubt creating new ones. The nature of musical knowledge is one such topic.

If the first purpose of music education addresses the question of musical knowledge, the second moves to culture and the idea of social practices which are the bearers of musical cultural life.

It is through processes of socialisation that we become members of society in which music exists and is practised. But we learn that its practices take many forms, and that not all musicians behave in the same way or that the music they make is necessarily comparable. The ancient practice of handbell ringing, while sharing something of the ethos of gamelan playing, enjoys a vastly different set of values to blues singing, for example. The world offers a vast range of musical practices. It is the potential for the regeneration and transformation of practices nurturing a critical orientation that is called for as a second purpose. [1]

Thus a second purpose of music education also embracing the first:

The induction of all children and young people into existing musical practices with the potential for the regeneration of these practices through critical engagement and with the knowledge of how to make music well.

Note:

[1] Somebody said the curriculum is a selection from culture.

Music educational purpose [1] Knowing how to make music well

Say the words ‘musical knowledge’ and thought goes heavy, rushing to the ‘knowing that’ kind of knowledge, theoretical knowledge, ‘knowing that’ this is an ostinato, ostinato as fact. It is known what an ostinato is, key words, concepts, encyclopedias, dictionaries. 

Thankfully, we have another kind of knowledge, ‘knowing how’ – knowing how to create an ostinato, knowing how to make effective use of an ostinato. If you like, ‘practical knowledge’. [1] ‘Practical knowledge’ – yes, still knowledge, really useful knowledge, musical knowledge experienced. [2]

The Greeks had a number of words to denote knowledge. The way I am intending ‘knowing how’ to be understood can be associated with the Greek’s ‘techne’, meaning skill, craft and then ‘phronesis’, meaning practical wisdom.

And it is this way of knowing that I am privileging.

In recent times the distinction has been made between doing and learning as a way of giving intention and purpose to learning that is activity. Ofsted are keen to underline this distinction, for example.

The question is asked: ‘Ok, this is what they are going to do, but what are they going to learn?’ 

So why not think in terms of knowledge and say, ‘well, what are they going to know how to do’ (no, not ‘be able to do’ but ‘know how to do’). Doing and learning become one, raised to the status of knowledge. And we will have ready-made assessment criteria. Take the example of Year 7 Gamelan: knowing how to make sonorous sounds; knowing how to coordinate pulse and tempo; knowing how to make melodic patterns etc. And of course knowing how to do these things implies expressive control and its contingent fluency. The ‘well’ takes on significance.

I once met Schools Minister X X. He raised the question of ‘knowledge’. I set about trying to explain that knowledge could be thought about in a variety of ways (ie. after Plato, Aristotle). I was met with not so much as incomprehension as with not being heard at all. What I was proposing couldn’t be heard, wouldn’t be heard, ever. I was talking to a wall. Knowledge = facts. That was it. The subject changed.

Knowing how to make music well; knowing how to think in sound; knowing how to think about music – knowing how to think critically about the way music is practised. These things matter.

Notes:

[1] There are of course many ways of thinking about knowledge. In chapter 3 of Roger Scruton’s ‘Culture Counts’ he examines a variety of forms of knowledge and relates these to the education of feeling while making a case for cultural preservation.

[2] See Gilbert Ryle, ‘The Concept of Mind’, London, Hutchinson (1949), Chapter 2 for the distinction between ‘knowing that’ and ‘knowing how’.

The point is made, of course, that knowing how to do something does not equate with actually being able to do it. So you can know how to play the piano with the left hand but you can no longer do it in view of losing the hand in an accident.

However, thinking of know how as practical knowledge I hope is sufficient to overcome this objection.

Next week music educational purpose [2]

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