The Ideology of Competition in School Music explores competition as
a structuring force in school music and provides critiques of that
system from multiple philosophical and theoretical perspectives.
Competition is seen by many music teachers, students, and
supporters as natural and inevitable—a taken-for-granted aspect
of music education or an irresistible force, rather than a choice.
This book uncovers this ideological nature of competition and
examines its effect on student learning, teacher agency, and equity
within music education. It considers ways in which music educators
might reconsider the role of competition in their teaching practice
and offers alternative frameworks for organizing school music. In
this book, author Sean Robert Powell views competition as a
microcosm of the wider neoliberal capitalist society, in which
subjects are interpolated in an antagonistic competitive field as
market logic dictates a system of accountability, reduction, and
audit culture. Music teachers, students, and education
administrators, consciously and unconsciously, reinforce,
replicate, and sustain the competitive structure, even if they do
so while expressing a cynical disavowal. Powell considers
competition broadly, including, for example: formal competitions
between schools in which ensembles are given numerical scores and
ranked; "festivals" in which groups are given ratings based on
pre-given criteria; state, regional, and national honor ensembles;
hierarchical arrangements within school music programs; or simply
the pursuit of social prestige, reputation, and ever-higher
performance standards. Although the book provides examples from the
competitive landscape of school music in the United States (and,
especially, Texas, considered a "hyper" example of competitive
culture), Powell's analyses and discussions are relevant to readers
in any context around the world. Although the degree to which
competitive achievement as an explicitly-stated aim of instruction
varies from program to program and location to location, the
"realism" of neoliberal capitalism—and its effect on all aspects
of education—is a global phenomenon.
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