MUSIC, SOCIETY, EDUCATION Christopher Small WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS Middletown, ConnecticutPublished by Wesleyan University Press Middletown, CT 06459 www.wesleyan.edu/wespress © 1977, 1980 by Christopher Small Foreword to the 1996 edition © 1996 by Robert Walser All rights reserved Wesleyan University Press paperback edition 1996. First published in Great Britain in 1977 by John Calder (Publishers) Ltd. Printed in the United States of America 5 4 3 ISBN-13: 978-0-8195-6307-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Small, Christopher, 1927— Music, society, education / by Christopher Small p. cm. “Wesleyan University Press.” Originally published: London : J. Calder, 1977. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8195-6307-2 (pa : alk. paper) 1. Music and society. 2. Music—Instruction and study. 3. Music—Philosophy and i Title. ML3795.855 1996 phy and aesthetics. I. Title. eae 96-200108 Children as Consumers The point at which the twin concepts, the producer-consumer relationship and knowledge as essentially outside of and independent of the knower, come together most significantly is in the field of education, or rather, to use Ivan Illich’s valuable distinction, in schooling, since schooling and education are by no means synonymous; contrary to popular supposition, one does not need to go to school to become educated, and, conversely, going to school does not necessarily give one an education, as thousands of frustrated pupils and ex-pupils can testify. As Illich points out, not only is schooling essentially a commodity which a community buys on behalf of its younger members (and even the richest societies are beginning to find the price higher than they can afford), but also the purveyors of the commodity find themselves in a monopoly situation; its recipients have no choice but to accept what is offered. Just as any other monopolistic purveyor will try to disguise the lack of real choice of product by offering a number of different-sounding brand names, so the western system of schooling offers different brands which are in all essentials the same product. In Britain these brands go under the names of public school, independent school, preparatory school, comprehensive, grammar and secondary modern school, but what is offered is always the same: packaged knowledge which the pupil is expected to consume but which it is not expected he can create for himself. Each package is called a course, and each has a catalogue of contents known as the syllabus, and, like parcels labelled ‘Not to be opened till Christmas Day’, the packages may be opened only in classrooms in the presence of a teacher, and then only when the pupil has first shown that he has consumed the contents of other, simpler, packages. Illich’s criticisms cover a wider area than solely education; he is concerned that all social services are undergoing the same processes. Health becomes the province exclusively of doctors, community care that of social workers and so on, and he rightly comments on the way in which the professionalization of these services is undermining the ability of the individual to help himself