The Limitations of Functional Literacy

There are a number of reasons why educators may prioritize functional literacy. This prioritization may mirror their own experiences in music education, they may be responding to school-based directives, or they may understand functional literacy as essential in helping students develop the technical mastery of competencies needed to function within a particular context or society (Gutstein, 2006; McLaren, 1989).

Within music education, this can translate to “curricula . . . based on pre-packaged materials, such as music series books, beginning band, orchestra, and choral method books, and the U.S. National Standards” (Gould, 2009, p. 47). Practices in functional literacy are often individualistic and emphasize “efficiency and time on task,” leading to singular pathways of learning and a focus on “right answers” (p. 48). Such a focus highlights a singular narrative, placing the acquisition of a predetermined set of skills as a non- negotiable hurdle necessary for future participation in music education.

Functional literacy is, at its core, about utility. In music education, it is, in part, the prioritization of the mastery of skills and concepts. These pre-determined understandings are part of a longstanding culture that is widely and deeply in place among many school music classes. Educators often acknowledge that education can and should be about the development of multiple literacies (Freire, 1970; Giroux, 2005 McLaren, 1989), including those that students bring to class from their lives and experiences outside of school, but too often functional literacy is still exalted as primary in music education.

Surrounded by this narrative, functional literacy too often becomes an “endpoint in the formal process of learning,” creating an ideological hierarchy that insists upon the need for (Western classical) functional skills as a baseline for musical engagement (Benedict, 2012, p. 152). Cathy Benedict noted that “for those who believe that functional literacy prepares people for the real world . . . there is a blind kind of hopeful-hope, in which the present is sacrificed for a future that desires to protect the past” (p. 157). It is of little surprise, then, that music educators often utilize composition primarily as a tool to measure and assess functional skills, thus resulting in a diluted understanding of what creating in and through music might mean and maintaining a particular historical construction of the purpose, place, and possibility of music education.

While functional literacy is important in that it helps students develop competencies that can help them engage with music, this narrative can also lead to privileging certain ways of knowing and devaluing others. Left unchecked, the “sequentialism” and methods and models of functional literacy can prioritize a culture of conformity over “moments of interaction with students’ query, identity, and desire” (Schmidt, 2012, p. 6). An education that is established solely on functional literacy can serve to maintain the status quo, thus preserving, or even reinforcing and exacerbating, inequities. Concentrating solely on standardization can reduce educators’ capabilities to respond to and encourage engagements with different beliefs, opinions, and ideas in the classroom (Fautley, 2015; Kannellopolous, 2015; Kratus, 2007).

In such cases, music class can become predicated on a singular narrative that prioritizes predetermined outcomes, potentially leaving diverse voices, multiple ways of knowing, and divergent ideas unnoticed. Students who operate outside dominant narratives may feel silenced, believing their stories, opinions, and creative practices to be inferior (Kumashiro, 2000). Each of these consequences can lead to the creation of curricula where students do not engage with the understandings and experiences of their peers, resulting in missed opportunities for relational experiences that can add complexity and nuance to how students understand themselves, others, and the world. Consequently, criticality and opportunities for students to challenge assumptions can disappear in a culture of taken- for-granted norms where valued knowledge is narrowly understood.

Functional tasks can be beneficial. They often have a clear end goal, frequently align with national standards, and connect with performance-based practices. The concern presented lies in the idea that when functionality is the only purpose, music educators can be boxed into a “limited understanding of what is available in the wider world of music” and robbed of opportunities to help students engage with the multiple, complex, and dynamic ways music is explored and created (Reimer, 2012, p. 27). It is important, then, as music educators to create environments with students where they see composing as part of a larger narrative of being a musical creator in the world. In such environments, the music they create can have purpose beyond the general music classroom, cultivating encounters that demonstrate how musical work can matter in the larger world.