The Value of Music Education: An Australian Context

Music education can develop critical intrinsic and extrinsic attributes in students if taught in an authentic, innovative, and experiential way that challenges learners to think creatively and critically. Research studies, in Australia and internationally, provide compelling evidence that supports that engaging with music learning and school-based arts education has the potential to develop not only important aesthetic values, but students’ academic, personal, and social development skills and knowledge (Bryce et al., 2004; Burnard, 2008; Crawford, 2017a, 2020a, 2020b; Deasy, 2002; Guhn et al., 2020; Karkou & Glasman, 2004; Karlsen, 2013; Marsh, 2015; McFerran et al., 2017; Ojukwu, 2017). Despite this strong empirical research, music and the arts are often considered one of the first subject disciplines to be omitted from school programs and curriculum.

In the Australian context, it has been a considerable number of years since the 2005 national review of school music education recommended that improving and sustaining the quality and status of music education in schools should become a priority and sufficient funding to support effective music education should be provided (Pascoe et al.). Also patently neglected is the 2013 Parliamentary inquiry into the extent, benefits, and potential of music education in Victorian schools, which made 17 recommendations to improve music education, including a call for the development of a music education strategy to ensure that all students have the opportunity to experience a quality school music education program (Education and Training Committee, 2013).

More recently, the federal government announced a university fee restructure, which will see an increase of 113% in the cost for arts and humanities degrees in Australia (Tehan, 2020). This may have dire consequences for discipline areas such as music education at all levels including pathways to further study (Crawford, 2020c). This sends confusing messages about the relative value and import of some disciplines over others. Discounting the value of music and arts education disregards vital intrinsic and extrinsic values that are embedded in such disciplines.

Curriculum and policy documents in Australia and internationally are littered with the importance of developing 21st century skills and knowledge, such as creative and critical thinking, intercultural competence, and socially inclusive behaviors. A holistic education that develops such skills and knowledge cannot be achieved without the inclusion of music education. Governments cannot understate that the arts and humanities contribute to critical jobs for the future. Reducing learning to non-essential and essential skills and compliance requirements, will have a lasting impact on society and catastrophic consequences for highly multicultural countries like Australia.

Although music is often referred to as being part of the arts domain, music itself has always been a discrete discipline with a lengthy and valued academic history that can be traced to Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates. When universities were established in the Middle Ages, music was one of the liberal arts and taught in conjunction with arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, grammar, logic, and rhetoric. While 264 music courses are offered by 45 tertiary and higher institutions in Australia, there has been increasing pressure to justify the value of music in education and schools. This has led to two distinctive ways of thinking about music: extrinsic benefits of music as related to academic and/or cognitive development and psychosocial well-being, as opposed to intrinsic benefits that relate to direct musical and aesthetic values (Crawford, 2020b).

While this distinction can be useful for targeted advocacy, it can present numerous challenges in defining what might be considered musical or non-musical and has the potential to devalue the musical intrinsic elements completely. It was therefore encouraging to observe that in the case studies explored in this chapter that music programs are designed on the premise that musical participation affords opportunities to enrich human experience in holistic and integrated ways, valuing a balance of intrinsic and extrinsic benefits and formal and informal learning.

In order to educate toward holistic learning and recognize that students have different interests and learn in diverse ways, then there needs to be a reconsideration of what is considered essential or non-essential learning. Fostering student differences through musical experiences will not only motivate and stimulate learning but provide avenues for all students to achieve and experience success in their education. Thinking seriously about what we teach, how, and why, will contribute positively to a society that educates for a future that values diverse thinking and skill sets.

The case studies presented in this chapter represent different educational contexts that will challenge the current rhetoric about the devaluing of the arts. Ideas explored will illuminate how engagement with music and the arts through composition pedagogy can develop creative and critical thinking, build social inclusive skills and intercultural competence, and use technology to enhance music learning opportunities. Firstly, a consideration of how music and composition is situated in the Australian curriculum will provide further context.