Critical Pedagogy for Music Education

Critical Pedagogy is a way we can fix our world. Paulo Freire, in his work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed lays down the framework for this educational philosophy designed to give oppressed people the tools to understand their oppression and take constructive action to end it. Though I believe critical pedagogy can be applied in any form of teaching and there is more work to be done in critical pedagogy, I have collected dozens of resources in a livebinder, specifically geared toward Critical Pedagogy for Music Education.

Below is embedded my video introduction to the livebinder (in which I go off script and “um” quite a bit) as well as the loose script I used to make it.

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This is an introduction to a livebinder I created to collect dozens of resources relating to Critical Pedagogy for music education. I’ve broken the livebinder into 5 categories, each represented by a tab at the top of the livebinder page.

The first, which I called “introduction” simply contains this introductory video. If you’re viewing this video on youtube, the link to the livebinder will be below in the video description.

The second category is called “what is critical pedagogy.” The main page that I link to under this tab is the wikipedia page, which give a good overview of what critical pedagogy is.

Critical pedagogy is an educational philosophy that was created by Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator, who’s book, Pedagogy of the oppressed, I placed under the first tab. Though the book, written in 1969, was available through the 70’s, it wasn’t until the 80s that this educational philosophy was expanded and really brought to the United States by Henry Giroux, whose work I also have links to in the binder.

Critical pedagogy is basically the critical reflection about the values that inform our teaching while we help students to be able to critically self-reflect on the knowledge and values they find in the classroom and to recognize connections between their problems and experiences and the social contexts in which they live. Giroux says, it’s [an] “educational movement, guided by passion and principle, to help students develop consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive action” (Giroux, 2010).

In America we still have a straight, white, middle class male hegemony. Our school systems were originally built on this as a tool to enculturate our population, and since our educational system was adopted in 1852, it’s served this purpose pretty well. I say adopted, not created, because it was based on the 18th century Prussian system, created by the king to provide “not only the skills needed in an early industrialized world (reading, writing and arithmetic), but also a strict education in ethics, duty, discipline and obedience” (Prussian Education System on Wikipedia). Kids who don’t fit the description of white middle class, many kids of color, kids that aren’t neurotypical, kids from different cultures, are often made to feel inferior and inadequate. Critical pedagogy should correct this problem.

Originally intended to be used to teach adults in Brazil to read, the ideas of critical pedagogy that Freire developed have since been used to teach oppressed people all over the world. The reason I think it’s important to multicultural education in the music classroom is because music has been a source of resistance for centuries! This brings me to my next tab in the binder which is called “Music as Resistance.”

In this tab I have placed a number of articles and videos describing how music like African American slave songs, south American protest songs, Irish songs, punk rock, and reggae have all been important in changing things in the world for the better. It’s also important to remember, especially with the modern genres, there are many sub-genres that develop, some dark and negative – it’s important to understand where the music is coming from. Much of this music will be valuable in your curriculum.

This brings me to the next tab, “Critical Pedagogy for Music Education.” In this tab I draw heavily on the work of Frank Abrahams who developed the ideas of Critical Pedagogy for Music Education. Abrahams draws on the work of critical theorist Jurgen Habermas, sociologist and philosopher Pierre Bourdieu, and critical pedagogs bell hooks, Henry Giroux, and Paulo Freire to develop his system that begins with four questions: Who am I? Who are my students? What might they become? and What might we become together. He challenges the traditional structure of the classroom which has a definite heirarchy, with the students right at the bottom. He instead seeks to validate the students by acknowledging and honoring what they already know, what they’ve learned outside the classroom, the richness of knowledge that they bring with them. Freire called the traditional teaching method “the banking method” in which the teachers are to deposit knowledge into the students who are seen as empty vesels. Abrahams then uses the knowledge of the students as the bridge to the curriculum we as music educators need to teach.

Finally, there’s a hidden benefit beyond bringing our students closer to real liberation. Abrahams found in his studies with sixth graders in critical pedigogy in music education that when they “were interviewed four months after they completed their music course. Results showed that they were able to discuss the concepts presented, remember the musical content, and had overall positive feelings about their experiences in the general music class. Furthermore, they were able to meet benchmarks for students in grades 5–8 as articulated in the National Standards for Arts Education” (Abrahams, 2009?).

By the end of 6th grade, through critical pedagogy these students had hit all the benchmarks they needed to hit by 8th grade!

My last tab is called “Other Resources.” It’s not specific to music or critical pedagogy, but it’s a collection of interesting supporting materials regarding education, social justice, ethnomusicology, and sociomusicology.

I fully endorse critical pedagogy for music education. The resources I’ve placed in my livebinder will take some time so examine, so I’ve placed the most immediately helpful pages first under each tab. Explore, enjoy, and thank you!

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The Prussian Education System

John Taylor Gatto, Against School, Originally published in Harper’s Magazine

Giroux, H. A. (2010). Lessons From Paulo Freire. Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 57, Issue 9

My Critical Pedagogy for Music Education Livebinder

How We Learn: The Importance of Autonomy

Autonomy is independence, self-direction, freedom.

When thinking about learning, we might imagine a teacher standing before a classroom. We might even see the students as uninterested. I know that many of my students, when in school, are exactly in this situation. Being told what to learn without a hint of independence or self-direction. The learner has no choice, no autonomy.

How can we learn this way? When there is no interest in a subject it becomes difficult to pay attention, let alone actually remember what’s being discussed! There are people who can set aside disinterest and thrive under any circumstance, but for many of us it requires extra work and can even result in a total disdain for school in general.

On the other hand, when there is a real interest in a subject it’s easy to pay attention. In fact, students usually go out of their way to explore it on their own. Learning comes naturally to us because of our curiosity.

When there is no autonomy, it becomes the teacher’s role to force the student to learn. When the student has autonomy, the teacher’s role is that of a guide, introducing the students to new ideas. It’s always more fun and much more rewarding to be in this role.

I’m always surprised when my students, who come to me after hours of “traditional” education, have trouble responding when I ask them what they want to work on. It’s as if they were never asked that question and have been conditioned to never consider their own interests!

Students who have freedom in their education explore subjects that interest them. More importantly they also learn how to learn on their own and, as a result, become life long learners. Those who have been trained to never look beyond the teacher’s lessons run the risk of shutting down.

The fear is that the self-directed students won’t learn everything they need to survive but learning how to learn is probably the most important skill they will ever need. It’s one of my goals to place this among the things I help my guitar students learn while they simultaneously learn the music they’ve chosen.