Competition,Knowledge,andtheLossofEducationalVision.pdfVIP

Competition, Knowledge, and the Loss of Educational Vision Apple, Michael W. Philosophy of Music Education Review, Volume 11, Number 1, Spring 2003, pp. 3-22 (Article) Published by Indiana University Press DOI: 10.1353/pme.2003.0002 For additional information about this article /journals/pme/summary/v011/11.1apple.html Access Provided by your local institution at 07/08/10 11:09AM GMT MICHAEL W. APPLE 3 COMPETITION, KNOWLEDGE, AND THE LOSS OF EDUCATIONAL VISION MICHAEL W. APPLE University of Wisconsin, Madison Throughout the United States, we are witnessing the growth of a fundamental mistrust of public schools. We are told that our education system must be made more efficient and competitive. At the same time, many schools in urban and rural areas are experiencing a debilitating fiscal crisis. There are insistent calls to return to the “basics.” In combination, these economic and ideological tenden- cies have profoundly affected some curricular areas more than others. Music and the arts are increasingly considered “frills,” with thousands of positions being cut or not filled. Not only are such positions unnecessary, but they and the knowledge they represent are too expensive in a time when everything in schools must be connected to the project of making our nation economically strong and commit- ted to a “knowledge economy.” In this article, I want to place these tendencies and the crisis they represent for music and the arts in their larger social context, since they cannot be understood in isolation from the transformations in what schools are for, who they should serve, and who benefits the most from the ways knowledge is organized, taught, and evaluated. In order to do this, I need to extend my focus beyond the borders of the United States. The movements that are having such profound effects here © Philosophy of Music Education