Lex Diez

MUED 380

Prof. Lewis

Book Review

Music Education and Social Justice

Juliet Hess’ Music Education for Social Change Constructing an Activist Music

Education highlights the intersection of how music education is linked to political change,

social activism, and representation both inside and outside of the schools. One of the key

points of Hess’ work is outlining how music itself has been a key factor in major social and

political movements; music through its lyrics and tonalities often have some form of

message or meaning to convey such ideas. It is integral for music educators to recognize

this inherent link between music and communities when bringing music into the

classrooms. Music education should recognize both the diverse communities and

backgrounds that are inside the classrooms, as well as the communities that are outside the

classrooms. Music classrooms should aim to highlight not just social movements, but to

narratives of these social issues. Providing students with these narratives through music is

a means through which to transfer and advocate for issues of social justice and inequity.

These narratives’ are made to honor lived experiences of those that the stories represent.

Including issues of social justice into curriculum is not without its troubles, however.

Educators need to be aware of risks associated with activist music education such as the

risks of stereotyping, hierarchization of western music, cultural appropriation, and bringing

upon “microfascisms” in political music conversations. Ultimately, activist music education

is largely centred around community and communities of music.

 One of the critiques I have for this book is not exploring more of the issues of using

“culture bearers'' or what I believe could be extended to include bearer of communities.

Hess speaks to the issue that holding individuals as culture bearers leads to stereotyping,

but I think this book should explore more in how holding one individual over another as the

one source for approval in your teachings leads to invalidating others of either the same

culture or community, but with different lived experiences. An example of this comes when

people seek validity or approval that something is not cultural appropriation from someone

who is from and lives in a given country, and then invalidating those who may have the

same cultural backgrounds but live in the United States, where while some cultural

traditions would be the same, issues of marginalization are completely different for those

same individuals.

Something else I wished this book explored more was not just activist music

education, but advocate music education. One issue I have personally felt within my time as

a pre service music educator is when there is a belief that an individual or an educator is

actively an advocate for social issues and communities, but when it comes to their own

students facing issues of mental health, discrimination, and economic marginalization they

do not always advocate for them. I would love to hear Hess’ take on how we as educators

cannot only bring light to different communities and cultures than those that may be our

own, but how we can directly advocate and help students and other individuals either in

these communities or facing these systems of marginalization. Activist music education

only works if we can recognize that our own students may be in the communities to which

we are teaching, or facing some of the issues to which we would like to bring light.
 Some questions I still have for Juliet Hess is what was the most surprising piece or

story she found during her research? Were there any conflicting ideologies found when it

came to different pedagogical schools of thought when writing this book? I would love to

hear more about the process of contacting and learning about the lived music education

experiences of the individuals and artists mentioned throughout this work. Lastly, I would

love to see or hear about if or how concepts or pedagogical ideas may have changed since

the publication of this book.