Refusing narratives
functional literacy and determinism
pp. 291-303
in: Margaret S. Barrett, Sandra L. Stauffer (eds), Narrative soundings, Berlin, Springer, 2012Abstract
The narrative of music education is both real and imaginary. Real, in that events happen and are recorded. These events, though, are filled with coexisting and contradictory possibilities, presenting conflicting versions. Consequently, in the process of choosing what to tell and how to tell our story, a moralising authority imposes an ordering, separating real from imaginary which tends to frame a solution and resolution. In this chapter the author investigates "narration sickness' in music education as one that presumes legitimacy to be that of the narrating subject of method and efficiency (functional literacy), of sequential layering, linear development (step-by-step repetition of events) and suggests that this discourse has not only tied music education to particular social functions, but has locked us into a fairy tale story that has a mythical origin, a middle, and, someday, a vague, and unarticulated, happy ending.