NAMING OUR REALITY

NEGOTIATING AND CREATING MEANING IN THE

MARGIN
CATHY BENEDICT
New York University

Abstract: This paper explores the ways in which music educators have
allowed others outside of music education to name who and how they are in
the world. Often comfortable with voicing advocacy and purpose from the
status of second class citizen, music educators are complicit in the very
processes of reproduction they wish to challenge. Seeking to address what
could be a privileged positioning of marginalized status, this paper also
speaks to the spaces that are created that could afford possibilities of transfor-
mation. Thus, rather than to allow the perceived netherworld of
marginalized status to name who we are and can be, we can name our own
reality as we challenge the ways in which our own thoughts, beliefs, and
actions are acquired and reproduced.

What is named often becomes what is “real,” and the person who names
“reality” becomes the source of control.1

The purpose of education is a philosophically bound question that has forever

and will forever preoccupy those concerned with viewing education in its com-
plexity. The purpose of education is also inextricably bound by a huge number
of progressively hidden hegemonic structures that inevitably serve to obscure

© Philosophy of Music Education Review, 15, no. 1 (Spring 2007)

24 PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW

that purpose. Where then does music education fit in a philosophical discussion
of general education?
Considering the purpose of music education, without first attempting to peel
away the many levels of the purpose of education, looks resolute. Historically,
music education has been considered a less than serious or legitimate course of
study, as a discipline not worthy of mandatory study, and not even as a core sub-
ject. So while the public may think of music education as an important part of
the lives of students, the status of music education sits low on the educational
hierarchical ladder. However, if we consider the low status of music education
in a vacuum or from a dichotomous view as something outside of general edu-
cation, then we are pursuing an us-against-them mentality. In other words,
without first considering the ways in which we have allowed our status to
become marginalized, we shut out the possibility and the narratives necessary
for, as hooks writes, “transform(ing) in a meaningful way all of our lives.”2
The call to rethink music education as part of general education, issued by
an international music educators’ think tank, recently brought many critical the-
orists together.3 It is this call that prompted me to consider that the future of
music education can be constructed on something other than the reactionary—
and often unsubstantiated—views that “the arts offer something the other
disciplines don’t,” or “that we have everything the other disciplines have.”
What of the construction of this low status and marginalization and what of
its transformative possibilities? I would like to suggest in this paper that this mar-
ginalized status partly reflects our own complicity in that we have often allowed
others to speak for us. Historically, narrative spaces, or relativizing moments,
have been created in which we could have chosen to engage in transformative
acts unfettered by societal desires.4 Historically, however, music educators have
copied the perceived successes of the basic disciplines instead of striving for
transformation and in many instances have often responded to the non-musical
ends society has attached to us.5
There are other ways to consider our growth—one that suggests we take
advantage of our marginalized status. We should do this, not as a victimized
group, but rather to consider our actions as hooks would. Yes, from an arts per-
spective, but also from our particular vantage point and space that allows us to
see and name the world through our particular lens. We must first name and rec-
ognize who we are and how it is we appear to be marginalized “so that through
transforming action [we] can create a new situation, one which makes possible
the pursuit of a fuller humanity.”6
 CATHY BENEDICT 25

THE DAMAGING POSSIBILITIES OF THINKING IN A

VACUUM
It may be that as we “concern ourselves with possible future scenario(s) for
music education as part of general education”7 we may indeed imagine what
could be. It seems more likely, however, that if we continue to do so in a music
education vacuum, then we will probably continue to construct what could be
in the guise of what has always been. Thus, it seems important, even imperative,
to grapple with systemic issues that continually haunt us.
I would like to suggest that we focus on our marginal status and examine the
ways in which we have been complicit in the objectification of music education.
I would also like to suggest that future pedagogical and curricular scenarios be
addressed through a lens that provides us with the language or discourse that
enables us and our students to take on critical habits of mind: as we learn to con-
tinually question and challenge what we assume and what we take for granted, a
path of transformation and inquiry evolves.
One of the first steps toward this critical discussion centers on clarifying the
goal and what it is we hope to accomplish in envisioning such scenarios. Clearly
what we hope to accomplish is a new way of imagining what could be because
what has been seems unsatisfactory. If we were also to take, even as a conversa-
tional beginning point, the notion that “[u]se is the empirical evidence of
appreciation,”8 in all likelihood most of us throughout the world would agree
that the current state of music education does not facilitate the habits of mind
and strategies that students need to fulfill this concept of use during or after leav-
ing the formal processes of schooling.
Suppose we were to take on the goal to challenge and transform the current
general education climate for the inclusion of music education. As transforma-
tive acts can be defined as those in which both parties are transformed, simply
addressing transformation from the discrete viewpoint of music education will
not uncover systemic issues of patterns of reproduction or open up venues for
something more than taking on the rhetoric wielded by general educators.
We cannot hope to achieve transformation without inclusion of all voices,
whether they are dissenting or not. The challenge then is to address marginality,
inclusion, and transformation in such a way that does not pit an us-against-them.
In creating and perpetuating this false dichotomy, we set up an erroneous sense
of marginality so that we are neither able to see the possibilities embedded in the
margin or that our marginalization as partly self-imposed. Consequently, we are
incapable of viewing this marginality as a place of empowerment. Therefore, in
order to envision educative scenarios that transcend the usual, the larger and
imperative goal is to address the purpose of education. In order to address inclu-
sion and transformation, we need to address the mainstream pedagogical
26 PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW

processes and the ways in which education has served to reinforce patterns of
cultural reproduction. In addition, we need to examine how mainstream educa-
tion has reproduced relationships of dominance, as well as all forms of
oppression, not just what we perceive as our own. Because status and exclusion
are tied up into forms of complicit oppression, examining the inclusion of music
education without addressing the entire educative system will do little or noth-
ing to effect change. hooks addresses it this way: “Since all forms of oppression
are linked in our society, because they are supported by similar institutional and
social structures, one system cannot be eradicated while the others remain
intact.”9
However, examining these kinds of issues from and within a philosophical
forum layers on an additional intellectual and theoretical framework. This
framework runs the risk of being interpreted by others as the thinkers taking com-
fort and knowing better. As hooks warns, “[that] praxis within any political
movement that aims to have a radical transformative impact on society cannot
be solely focused on creating spaces wherein would-be radicals experience safety
and support.”10 Consequently, our personal caveat is the particular challenge of
realizing the potential ineffectiveness, and perhaps even damaging possibilities,
of thinking in a vacuum. Our challenge is to create a different kind of space
where meanings can be named and negotiated.

THE DARK SIDE OF CONSENSUS

Thinking and creating from the discrete and narrow viewpoint of music edu-
cation does not seem to be the best forum for envisioning curricular and
pedagogical processes that will facilitate an educative environment—an environ-
ment in which all disciplines share a transformative vision. What music
education has done in the past as an organization or field has not been effective
either. The not infrequent call for music educators to demonstrate and present a
united mission to the general public is the very opposite of transformative and at
best insulting. The assumption that we have a united mission to present to the
public is at worst specious, ignorant, and ideologically driven. In matters of the
National Standards movement we have actually been admonished to maintain a
unity of purpose so that as a discipline we appear focused and rational so as not
to “diminish our impact on decision makers and on our students.”11
The National Standards conversation was presented in such a way that made
the parameters of the discussion and the resulting final nine content standards
seem unassailable, with little or no space for “negotiating new definitions and
understandings.”12 While there were town meetings held during the National
Standards development process, the dialogue that came out of those meetings
held little space for the kind of communication that encouraged and provided a
 CATHY BENEDICT 27

forum for conflict. There were arguments as to which scales should be taught or
whether notation and methodologies should be addressed, however, these were
arguments that precluded space to “establish new foundations,”13 thus serving “to
maintain the participants’ pre-established definitions of reality.”14 It is much
more difficult to examine issues and call into question seemingly given and
immutable assumptions. John Dewey underscores this point: “Easier than think-
ing with surrender of already formed ideas and detachment from facts already
learned is just to stick by what is already said, looking about for something with
which to buttress it against attack.”15
The problem though, is that it is not enough to realize that one is on the
fringe or the margin. And while the National Standards conversation may be par-
ticular to the United States, one can imagine curricular reform conversations in
various forms throughout the world. As Paulo Freire points out, “the perception
[of one’s fringe status] is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for libera-
tion.”16 If one of the ways liberation is represented is by our desire for our
students to continue to engage with musical engagements on meaningful level,
then the space we need to facilitate is liberatory with change and conflict as a
given not a goal oriented end-point.

NO ANSWER LIES IN BEING LIKE THE OTHERS

I have suggested elsewhere that striving to adopt the trappings of the so-called
main disciplines not only accomplishes a research lag of several years, it also
serves to keep us in our place.17 Charlene Morton has also pointed out that our
advocacy “focus should shift from burden of justification to a challenge of
oppressive social institutions and ideologies.”18 It is not liberatory to strive to
share the status of the main disciplines, nor is it transformative. Transformation
for ourselves, and by extension for others, does not occur simply because we
desire it. “To create transformative transactions—where we change as do the
transactions—it is imperative we question the assumptions and prejudgments we
hold so dear, particularly those supporting our own historical situations.”19
The goal should not be to mimic the other disciplines and what might seem
their successes nor is it (for instance) to privilege music over mathematics.
Rather our collective actions should be (again as hooks suggests) to “transform in
a meaningful way all of our lives.”20 In this way, our focus will not be on equal-
ity or inclusion of the disciplines, but rather on defining what we are and who
we can be with others.
Carl Bowers suggests that in order to take on the skills and narratives neces-
sary for questioning rather than “passively accepting the social realties defined by
others,”21 we must acquire communicative competence. Communicative com-
petence is simply the “individuals’ ability to negotiate meanings and purposes
28 PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW

instead of passively accepting the social realities defined by others.”22 Yvonne

Lincoln describes these same abilities as resisting “to accept social definitions of
one’s meanings and experiences” and seeking legitimacy from sources other than
“one’s inner understandings and experiences.”23
For a long time, music education has primarily existed low on the hierarchi-
cal ladder of the knowledge that counts. Music educators have traditionally
interpreted this margin to be the focal point for anger, resentment, retrench-
ment, and self-depreciation. Communicative competence, a form of resistance,
provides the tools for rethinking the status of marginality. hooks suggests that see-
ing the margin as ripe with transformative possibilities gives tools to those on the
margin for envisioning what could be in ways that are not available to the dom-
inant status quo. Bowers points out that “marginality and oppression are linked
through the exercise of power, economic exploitation, cultural imperialism, and
violence.”24 He also goes on to say that the margin is both “metaphorical and a
material space from which relationships of oppression might be reimagined and
reshaped.”25 David Gruenewald further addresses hooks’ interpretation of
margin.

Metaphorically and materially, [marginality] is also a standpoint, a perspec-

tive, or a place from which an oppositional worldview is constructed. What
makes hooks’ marginality different from the conventional notion of being
marginalized in an oppressor-oppressed relationship is her determination
not to lose but to choose the margin.26

So, while Freire provides us with the tools for examining oppressed status,
hooks chooses to see the margin as a place to embrace. In the following quote
hooks addresses the Black woman’s struggle. Her point, however, is well taken for
music education when she writes,

It is essential for continued struggle [that we recognize our] special vantage

point our marginality gives us and make use of this perspective to criticize
the dominant racist, classicist, sexist hegemony as well as to envision and cre-
ate a counter-hegemony.27

My intent is not to appropriate the tenets of the feminist movement to end

sexism or to reflect the Black woman’s struggle. Yet the notion of embracing the
margin as a place where our strengths lie should be examined. Music educators
have a perspective that, as hooks would say, is from a “special vantage point.”28
We must also grapple, however, with re-imagining and reshaping our strengths.
Without such agency, we may simply continue to reproduce patterns of domi-
nance and social reproduction.
Taking on the methods of the dominant disciplines and the need for consen-
 CATHY BENEDICT 29

sus as reflected in the National Standards movement is an example of the ways

in which taking on the “educational methods of the oppressor”29 curtailed trans-
formation. Freire points out that one of the characteristics of the oppressed is the
“existential duality of the oppressed, who are at the same time themselves and
the oppressor whose image they have internalized.”30 It is not stretching Freire’s
notion of the duality of the oppressed to the case of crafting the National Music
Standards. In this case, the Standards’ taskforce members did not take on the
tools to question and escape the dual bounds of wanting to act as the oppressor.
At the same time, the task force was unable to negotiate new meanings with and
for the field. Taskforce members did not facilitate discussions that allowed music
educators to move to a level of critical consciousness nor did they give music
educators opportunity to examine their status and their marginality in the
broader political context. What that Standards Movement did, however, was pro-
vide those in authority the opportunity to take advantage of a period in time
where what had been could be written as what now is.

LIMINAL MOMENTS OR MOMENTS THAT COULD HAVE

BEEN
The United States’ National Standards movement was precipitated by years
of educational disenchantment beginning primarily with A Nation at Risk.31 A
closer examination of the development of the standards provides insight into the
ways in which liminal moments have come and gone while much remained the
same. Standards in music education, however, are not a recent phenomenon.
The beginnings of the National Standards in Music can be traced back over a
hundred years with what would appear to be a rather unchanged focus. In 1892,
the Music Teachers National Association Department of School Music passed
what seems to have been the first resolution framed by a professional school-
music body regarding the aims of school music. These resolutions included such
goals as good quality of tone and intonation, emotional or expressive singing, and
the cultivation of musical taste. In 1974, the United States National Council of
State Supervisors of Music published The School Music Program: Description
and Standards (with a second edition published in 1986)32 describing quality
music program standards. In 1994, the current National Music Standards are
published reflecting past goals and resolutions including making music, reading
and notating music, and being aware of diverse styles of music.
These moments in time (and others like them) created space for music edu-
cators to examine and question those taken-for-granted beliefs that had been
defined previously—moments that went by with little or no critical reflection.
Bowers refers to these moments that occur when beliefs are being challenged as
relativizing, which in turn leads to liminal space. This space occurs betwixt and
30 PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW

between where meanings and beliefs can be renegotiated. He points out that this
space takes on political significance for those who have the language skills to
negotiate the moments.

As tradition is disrupted, the political role of communication changes; the

liminality of the social situation provided the potential for a transition to new
ways of thinking and acting. This moment of openness views those who pos-
sess the linguistic ability to name “what is” in new ways, and convince others
to accept their definitions, a basic form of political power. In effect, the lim-
inality gives language, and those who either can use it effectively or control
how it is used, a political significance that it does not have in more tradi-
tional cultures.33

Thus, in terms of the Standards movement, several issues bear pointing out.
One, those who crafted and directed the National Standards movement had the
language available to push the agenda through. It was the language of positivism,
measurability, and accountability. Two, those forces behind the National Music
Standards movement were organized politically. Three, it was made clear that it
would be heresy to challenge the basic tenets of the standards.
Schools have become institutes of standards and accountability. No one can
deny this. Most music educators worldwide would agree we have failed in
“affirming the central importance of musical participation in human life and,
thus, the value of music in the general education of all people.”34 The language
of standards and accountability has become ubiquitous; so much so that it has
become the very fabric of our mind. It governs our choices and decisions. It
frames our pedagogical choices; it even frames a certain inevitability that noth-
ing can be done. In these ways, the language of standards essentially causes us to
feel “powerless both existentially and conceptually to challenge the reality that
appears independent of human authorship.”35 The language of social reproduc-
tion and notions of good music and what music education should be—in many
cases governed by mandated standards and curriculum—have become com-
monsense, the very fabric of our mind. This language governs our inability to
make explicit these taken-for-granted beliefs.
One of our transformative purposes, though, should be to make explicit and
to challenge taken-for-granted beliefs. One of the ways to do this is in fact to envi-
sion “possible future scenario(s) for music education as part of general
education.”36 However, I have suggested that in order to do this we must begin
narratives with the other disciplines. In so doing, we can address this goal in ways
that provide for communicative competence at turning taken-for-granted beliefs
and experiences into problems that must be dealt with.
Along with the importance of communicative competence comes a broader
interpretation of the spaces needed for future scenarios for music education. In
 CATHY BENEDICT 31

a recent American Educational Research Association publication, Gruenewald

addressed the essence of spaces from a multidisciplinary framework. He not only
suggested that our actions define spaces but that spaces define who we are. “[A]s
centers of experience, places teach us about how the world works and how our
lives fit into the spaces we occupy. Further, places make us: As occupants of par-
ticular places with particular attributes, our identity and our possibilities are
shaped.”37 Gruenewald’s notion of place-conscious education dovetails with the
work of Bowers and hooks. He believes that as spaces are pedagogical,38 it is
imperative that we not take spaces for granted but realize that they are reified
cultural products infused with ideologies.39

One function of space, in other words, is hegemonic: domination is main-

tained not through material force but through material forms. Critical
geographers are concerned with how geographical space, always inscribed
with politics and ideologies, simultaneously reflects and reproduces social
relationships of power and domination. The concept of social reproduction
is not new to educators familiar with critical theory. However, a spatialized
critical theory recognizes that it is largely the organization of space, together
with the often—unconscious experience of places, that facilitates and legit-
imizes any cultural production. Space is the medium through which culture
is reproduced . . . .40

As we begin to imagine what could be by bringing to bear questions that will

address taken-for-grated beliefs in every aspect of our work, we must also concern
ourselves with our engagements in such spaces as public schools, classrooms,
political forums, professional organization meetings, and even journals. We need
to realize the need for addressing the ways in which the space of public school-
ing, that is, the scheduled day, the perceived use of music and music education,
the need for performances, and so on are all reified constructs and as such need
to be questioned and challenged. Reassessing the ways in which we work with
others in the schools in order to go about facilitating the creation of liminal
space and the habits of mind that will relativize taken-for-granted beliefs begets
moments in which both parties are transformed.
The title of this paper speaks of negotiating and creating meaning in the mar-
gin. Embedded in this title is the notion that it is our pedagogical practices that
will help to navigate this process. It is a particular pedagogy that allows us to
negotiate. It is not, however, a pedagogy of measurability and accountability.
hooks looks at pedagogy as engaged and liberatory; Freire identifies it as critical
pedagogy; for Patty Lather, pedagogy is “. . .the transformation of consciousness
that takes place in the intersection of three agencies—the teacher, the learner,
and the knowledge they together produce.”41 And for Bowers, this kind of peda-
gogy would engender communicative competence, which he suggests making
32 PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW

the “primary goal of public education”42 by developing a “theory of education

grounded in how thoughts are acquired.”43
How do we go about developing such a theory grounded in how thoughts are
acquired? And what would communicative competence be? What does it mean
in music education to take on the “ability to negotiate meanings and purposes
instead of passively accepting the social realities defined by others?”44 Future sce-
narios depend on the purpose of education. And if the purpose of education has
a moral and ethical grounding then so as to serve that grounding we need to take
on the skills and habits of mind to name and create our own reality. I would
again suggest that it is misguided to think of our goal as simply to place music
education as part of general education. This goal continues to privilege general
education as defined by specific basic disciplines, not a broader definition of edu-
cation, as the beginning point. The point is not to privilege one over the other, I
believe, but rather to tackle together what those deeply embedded cultural repro-
ductions are in each of our disciplines. It also means the ways in which we go
about addressing them in our curriculum development and pedagogy.
What questions and issues will music educators raise so that relevatizing
moments occur? More importantly, how can these environments and moments
be addressed and created in pre-service programs so that our pre-service teachers
engage in these pedagogical practices before they go into to the world to teach?
Many concerns are obvious. Repertoire, for instance. Teachers need to lead dis-
cussions with students about how music is chosen, why it was chosen, and whose
voice and culture is not represented in the choice of a particular piece. Discus-
sions need to take place that address how traditions and interpretations are
reifications and that this thinking influences the choices that are and have been
made. We also need to be cognizant of the ways in which rehearsals, musical
engagements, and classroom discussions are constructed so that students take
responsibility for the construction of their own understandings. Performances
and even the purpose of performances need to be discussed so that inquiry pro-
vides an understanding of the human agency embedded in the cultural myth of
“this is the way it has always been done.” While Paul Woodford underscores the
ways in which performance is an integral part of music education, he also
addresses those ways in which a path of non-inquiry reflects our complicity in the
marginalization process.

Performance is obviously important to society, but in the absence of intellec-

tualizing and public conversation about the nature and role of music and
music education therein, performance and skills-based approaches can lead
to the continued isolation and marginalization of music education from the
educational and social mainstreams.45

These suggestions may seem obvious and even simple. What might not be so
 CATHY BENEDICT 33

obvious, however, are the ways in which music and pedagogy plays (as Bowers
says) in “reproducing in individual consciousness the conceptual maps we asso-
ciate with culture.”46 Nor is the power and potential obvious of how discussions
might bump against these conceptual maps. It is probably not difficult to prob-
lematize repertoire choices and how these choices represent the absence of other
musics. What is difficult is helping students see that knowledge is a commodity,
for instance, and that certain ways of knowing have been privileged above others
and that often those are the ways for which they have been rewarded.
It is difficult for all of us to find the ways in which our particular cultural
codes, or our taken-for-granted beliefs, prevent us from renaming and recon-
structing reality. In this light, it is not enough to recognize the experiences
teachers/learners bring to the classroom. We need to recognize the tacit knowl-
edge each of us brings to our experience, because as Bowers points out,
connecting the curriculum to the student’s experience is meaningless without
understanding the “connections between culture, language, and the student’s
natural attitude toward everyday life.”47
These kinds of educative environments demand ways of thinking that may be
new to us. Educative environments that reflect a moral and ethical dimension
do not thrive when ego investment ensures control and the maintenance of a
healthy status quo. These environments demand that we look closely at our own
taken-for-granted beliefs and help our students and our pre-service students con-
front their own conceptions of what education and music education is.
We cannot find meaning in our own margin if we do not begin to challenge
the ways in which our own thoughts, beliefs, and actions are acquired and repro-
duced. Finding meaning in the margin makes for transformative engagements
and in this current anti-intellectual climate, there is great meaning and transfor-
mation to be found in facilitating true democratic environments in which beliefs
and ideas are examined.
I began the paper with a quote of Bowers reminding us of the power of allow-
ing others to name our reality. In the past we have often behaved in a prescribed
behavior that has “follow(ed) the guidelines of the oppressor.”48 In many cases,
we have allowed other disciplines to name what we are and can be. We have
crafted and named our importance in a version of their eyes. Do our students
have the habits of mind or the communicative competence to use what they
have learned in ways that allow them to continue questioning and challenging
so that growth is continual? Do we have the habits of mind, or the communica-
tive competence, to continue questioning and challenging so that our growth is
continual?
We do well to remind ourselves again how Gruenewald, in reflecting on
spaces through the work of hooks, writes, “Metaphorically and materially [mar-
ginality] is also a standpoint, a perspective, or a place from which an oppositional
34 PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW

worldview is constructed.”49 We should, then, recall the inordinate amount of

time we have spent fighting the perceived netherworld of the margin. What
would it mean to our individual growth (never mind the growth of our profession)
if we chose the margin and took on the responsibility of first examining our own
communicative competence and who we are and how this has influenced our
development? This margin, or place, is our standpoint and a perspective from
which we have allowed a worldview to be constructed for us. Gruenewald warns
us that, “Either we can awaken to the significance of places, or we can teach each
other, through neglect, a lack of attention.”50 How much longer should we teach
through neglect? Naming our reality brings power to a margin made ephemeral;
one in which we exchange delimited lines for spaces of possibility.

NOTES
1
Carl Bowers, The Promise of Theory (New York, NY: Teachers College Press,
1987), 68.
2
bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (Cambridge, MA: South End
Press 2003), 8.
3
The genesis of this paper was a presentation given at the MayDay Colloquium,
Amherst, MA, 2004.
4
The National Standards movement being one most recent example.
5
Consider, for instance, the influences of recent brain research on music programs.
6
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York, NY: Continuum, 1970/1993), 29.
7
MayDay Group: Action for Change in Music Education. http://www.maydaygroup
.org/ Accessed: March 3, 2007.
8
Thomas Regelski, personal communication.
9
hooks, Feminist Theory, 37.
10
Ibid., 30.
11
June Hinckley, “Music Matters Column,” Music Education Journal 85, no. 4 (Jan-
uary, 1999): 6–7.
12
Bowers, The Promise of Theory, 58.
13
Ibid., viii.
14
Ibid., 74.
15
(1902/1990, 182)
16
Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 182.
17
Cathy Kassell Benedict, “Chasing Legitimacy: The National Music Standards
Viewed Through a Critical Theorist Framework,” EdD diss., Teachers College, Colum-
bia University, 2004.
18
Charlene Morton, “The Status Problem: The Feminized Location of School Music
and the Burden of Justification,” PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1996.
19
Ronald Doll, Curriculum Improvement: Decision Making and Process, 8th ed.
(Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon 1992), 136.
 CATHY BENEDICT 35

20
hooks, Feminist Theory, 28.
21
Bowers, The Promise of Theory, 2,
22
Ibid., 2.
23
Yvonne S. Lincoln, “Curriculum Studies and the Traditions of Inquiry: The
Humanistic Tradition,” in The Handbook of Research on Curriculum, Phillip W. Jack-
son, ed. (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1992), 93.
24
Bowers, The Promise of Theory, 631.
25
Ibid., 631.
26
David Gruenewald, “Foundations of Place: A Multidisciplinary Framework for
Place-Conscious Education,” American Educational Research Journal 40, no. 3 (Fall
2003): 632.
27
hooks, Feminist Theory, 16.
28
Ibid., 16.
29
Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 50.
30
Ibid., 43.
31
A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (April 1983), A Report to
the Nation and the Secretary of Education United States Department of Education [On
Line]. The National Commission on Excellence in Education. http://www.ed.gov/pubs/
NatAtRisk/index.html. Accessed March 3, 2007.
32
The School Music Program: Descriptions and Standards, 2nd ed. (Reston, VA:
Music Educators National Conference, 1974).
33
Bowers, The Promise of Theory, 7.
34
MayDay Group, 2003. http://www.maydaygroup.org/.
35
Bowers, The Promise of Theory, 63.
36
MayDay Group, 2004. http://www.maydaygroup.org/.
37
Gruenewald, “Foundations of Place,” 621.
38
Ibid., 623.
39
Ibid., 626.
40
Ibid., 628–629.
41
Patty Lather, Getting Smart: Feminist Research and Pedagogy with/in the Postmod-
ern. (New York, NY: Routledge 1991), 15.
42
Bowers, The Promise of Theory, 2.
43
Ibid., 49–50.
44
Ibid., 2.
45
Paul Woodford, Democracy and Music Education: Liberalism, Ethics, and the Pol-
itics of Practice (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005), 25.
46
Bowers, The Promise of Theory, 3.
47
Ibid., 79.
48
Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 29.
49
Gruenewald, “Foundations of Place,” 632.
50
Ibid., 645.
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