Erik Scherder, Mischa Spel, and why the New Lobby for Music Education desperately needs some opposition

Interesting times for music education in the Netherlands. A New Lobby for Music Education seems to be forming. It consists of journalists, researchers, opinion leaders, performing musicians, culture hotshots. They (claim they) base themselves on research showing why music is important in education. And they equate 'music' with 'playing an instrument', and 'music education' with 'learning to play an instrument'.

A possible - and rather black - interpretation of this New Lobby could be the one in which the argument runs thus: the guild of professional performing musicians, traditionally mainly classical musicians but today also jazz and even pop, were mainly found in government-sponsored orchestras and ensembles, they performed on government-sponsored stages and taught music lessons in government-sponsored music schools. Now that the gusto in governmental circles to keep on sponsoring seems to diminish, professional performing musicians and the enormous fringe of organisational professionals around them look into other governemnt-sponsored areas where they might work, and have cast their eye on schools. Hence the attention for the benefits of 'music' (read: playing an instrument) for 'the brain', 'creativity', and 'social skills' (all very important in educational discourse these days). And hence the call for money for music education, and for specialists in the classroom; a call with the mixed origins of wanting the best for our kids and wanting to secure work for professional musicians.


Such an interpretation asks for a sharp look into discourse; for a precise look on which actors act when and where, and an equally precise analysis of power relations; for a Foucauldian view on language use; for critical ethnography; and for an armor and an iron umbrella for the persons doing it because the (un)popularity of their analyses in the decision-making cultural and political circles is predictable (although I must say that when I presented a snippet of such an interpretation recently in a German conference on culture education, I met mostly understanding and confirmation; but then again, most present were researchers, not musicians or politicians).

But I would here like to take a quick look at two recent pleas in favor of music education. One is by the now nationally famous neuro-psychologist professor Erik Scherder. In a recent interview in the national newspaper Parool (which was happily embraced by the music education world), he argues that music - and especially music making - is good for empathy because the orbitofrontal bridging in the corpus callosum is stronger in musicians. Or something like that; I am not a neuropsychologist and have no intention whatsoever to become one in this life. The journalist concludes that "music making is life advancing in all imaginable manners" and therefore, the interview states, there must be much more music in education.

Two things come to my mind here. One: if it is true that playing an instrument enhances empathy, one would expect that professional musicians are, at the same time, professional empathicians. I am not aware if any psychological research has be done in this domain - I should check - but what I can share with you is that my 30+ years of experience of working in all kinds of settings in which professional musicians are (very) present has not led me to suppose that professional musicians are more empathic than the average Dutch person. At all. The best I could say is that some - but not all - musicians are able to be empathic in their playing; but transfer to other domains should be proven first, and the more interesting hypothesis might be that the social functioning of professional musicking in the Netherlands here and now in most cases stands in the way of empathy rather than fostering it.

Two: the reasoning in neuro-psychological circles embracing music education and in music education circles embracing neuro-psychology is heavily relying on the evidence-based model; on the idea that music may be an 'intervention', that you can show a difference by pre- and post-tests, preferably, I guess, in randomized controlled trials. Music is a pill. Apart from the question whether the insane complexity of human social life can ever be caught in terms of interventions in cause-and-effect-chains, I wonder if the pill-idea is really helpful when thinking about playing an instrument. A pill is swallowed once a day, or 12 times a day if necessary; it requires mostly little social or emotional investment apart from the ability to keep to a strict schedule of pill-taking and to cope with the idea of pill-taking. Playing an instrument is a different kind of pill; a pill requiring an investment of much more time and energy, but above all: a pill that is loaded with huge emotional and social meanings. It is precisely the reason why so many people who play an instrument are so adamant about it, and why the 90 percent of the population who do not actively play an instrument or sing (or at least, who say so; one should consider such figures coming from large-scale survey research at best as rough indications about the realities of everyday life) are so hard to convince to start or maintain doing it.

If it would be the case that one could take one pill a day to become a more empathic person or keep one's brain in a fitter state and thus keep the doctor or pscho-therapist away, many people would take the pill (though even then not all, if only because some people rightfully would ask: "Whose empathy? Whose brain fitness? May I - rather than the State - please remain the owner of my own life?"). But playing an instrument is quite something else, and I would suggest here that the idea that fostering playing an instrument through investing in music education in school because of brain benefits unwisely ignores the emotional an social meanings of playing an instrument in our society; it ignores the fact that music is musicking, and playing an instrument is one of the many forms of musicking. It is, and never will be, a neutral pill, nor is it an individual act; it is intensely social behaviour from the beginning to the end.

Then there is Mischa Spel. She writes about classical music for another highly respected national journal, NRC Handelsblad. And she argued currently that the current efforts to foster music education in schools are laudable but not enough to learn as many children as possible in a serious way to learn to play an instrument. So she calls for a sort of national action plan for all children from 4-18, including the investment of money from the Ministry of Social Affairs in youth orchestras.

Again, a couple of things spring to mind. One: the fact that Spel comes from the classical music scene - the dominant, or even hegemonic music scene in formalized music life in the Netherlands - and writes about music education in general may be considered as another impulse to carefully look into the current New Lobby for Music Education from a political, discourse-based, power-relation angle (this is not an ad hominem, I must stress, but rather a necessary attempt to consider actors in the music education world - including journalists and, of course, researchers - not as neutral and unworldly abstractions but as actors with a habitus and a position in a field, to use some Bourdieusian terms). Two: the easiness with which the goal of music education in primary and secondary schools is formulated as learning to play an instrument is a product of hegemonic discourse rather than a straightforward obviousness. Three: the plea to invest money in youth orchestras and the 'Leerorkest' (a recent Venezuelan El Sistema-derived system of school youth orchestras) might benifit from some critical thinking rather than characterising them solely as 'sympathetic initiatives' (check my blog entry about Baker's critical ethnography for some more thoughts). Four: the contention that 'music education in secondary schools is still in its infancy' seems a gross misapprehension by an outsider - yes, things might be better there but the statement completely ignores the fantastic work of many secondary school music teachers and the huge tradition their work stands in.

All this leads eventually to my feeling that the fact that the importance of music is hotly debated at a national level these days is great; but that the debate currently is rather unreflective and one-sided, and could gain in strenght when other voices are heard than the usuals suspects claiming that music education is, in essence, a pill miraculousy solving a problem if enough people swallow it. And - as stated before - what I miss especially is input from the music educators themselves. Things are mainly said about them and for them - but too little by them.