Politics of Not Knowing: The Disappearing Act of an Education in Music

Abstract

This article presents questions related to educational practices in music through the use of cultural capital, methodolatry and salvation as guiding frameworks.  These are taken as specific concepts, as we attempt to clarify and qualify problems of an institutional education in music, and as a metaphorical exercise for the exploration of political, pedagogic and practical issues reflected in and related to music in schooling.  This article proposes a reflection of dilemmas, propositions and possibilities that are often taken for granted - and consequently yet to be addressed - in both general education and music education.  We suggest that one way to reengage education in and through music in institutional settings is to reconfigure our understanding of the political possibilities of music as well as how politics are denied by structural and spatial confines of schooling.