Thoughts on the Law, Gatekeepers, and Rerooting

Practice ' (2005, p. 165) Paul Woodford issues an invitation for shared dialogue and debate regarding the state of music education in developed countries. Through an appropriation of John Dewey's thoughts regarding a democratic society, Woodford sees great hope for the position and function of a democratic type of music education, with wider implications for a more democratic society. This essay explores what democracy in music education means for Woodford via Dewey, and the extent to which music education is democratic in contemporary societies. A postmodern counterpoint is then contrasted and woven between the notions of 'performativity', and of ethical judgment as the nominal condition in which to orchestrate a democratic music education. A deliberately ambivalent stance is taken regarding Woodford's book as finished and static. Instead, this essay illuminates and extends mobile conceptual threads drawn from Woodford and extended through the insights of the French cultural theorist Jean-François Lyotard, that critique music education through its own conditions of existence. The intention is to contribute to this conversation, and further conversations, for a democratic music education.

University of Guelph, 2018

In law the role of the judge is seminal, both as a symbolic figure representing justice to the layperson and as the practical arbitrator among competing interests in the adversarial common law system. A canon of thought has emerged pertaining to judges and judicial decision-making: the way in which judges approach the task of responding to each case in front of them, and the resources they use to do so. This includes conventional understandings of the judge's role as that of a detached, neutral mediator, as well as development of substantial critiques of such understandings in the form of procedural justice, therapeutic jurisprudence, and feminist approaches to judging (Hunter et al.). These latter approaches have done much to emphasize the importance of a more active and engaged role for the judge to ensure fairness and respect (Tyler;; Lind and Tyler), facilitate emotional, psychological and physical wellbeing of individuals engaged in the justice system (King;; Wexler), and be attentive to the gendered nature of law and justice (Hunter) respectively. In this piece, we aim to add to such literature, considering how judicial decision-making, and the skills involved in this activity as a practice of judging the singular, may be productively thought through in terms of improvisation. 1 The tools of improvisation, and a grasp of improvisation as an important, emancipatory social practice, 2 facilitate insights into judging which are not possible by other means. From this we encourage judges to consciously think of their role in improvisational terms: to actively engage in a critical practice of improvisation in law that is directed towards enhancing just outcomes for each case they judge on. In undertaking this exploration we draw upon qualitative interview data with judges working in the area of family law and professional improvising musicians 3 collected during the course of the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project Into the Key of Law: Transposing Musical Improvisation. The Case of Child Protection in Northern Ireland. 4 This project is unique in its interdisciplinary grounding and in engaging the study and discipline of law with that of music. The aim of the project is to draw upon the concepts and practices of improvisation in music to explore space for, and indeed already existing practices of, improvisation in law. Initially, law may seem a highly unlikely site for improvisation given the centrality of tradition, precedent, predictability, and stability in its underpinnings. In fact, the judge-made common law that exists alongside statute law in jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom, Canada, India, Hong Kong, Australia, and the United States of America, offers not only inherent possibilities for, but also requires improvisation in the course of its everyday activity (Ramshaw, Justice). Law is, at its heart, a practice, not a text, involving response to an individual case within a system of precedent using the legal and practical resources that are available. Currently, improvisation appears as a subtle, tacit practice employed by judges, lawyers, and other professionals involved in the legal system, although rarely consciously thought of as such. Here is where productive space exists for improvisational thought to provide insights into judging and for a consciously critical practice of improvisation to emerge.

In Democracy and Music Education, Paul Woodford offers not a philosophy of practice, or a conception of music education in strict educational terms, but rather the development of an interesting political philosophy of, and perhaps for, music education. Using a framework that departs from the work of Dewey, Woodford considers the value of a liberal education and the need for the encroachment of abstract reason, while urging the significance of a political life in the process of rethinking music education practices. In fact, one could say that, for Woodford, the political life is in many ways at the center of the educational life. Democracy and democratic practices are the lifelines that provide possibilities for education and the thread to be followed, changed and reconsidered. Dewey (1920/1957) spoke of the need for reconstruction in and of philosophy, and frameworks that are nascent of his conception are again momentous for a reconstruction in music education today. He suggests that, "there is… nothing more radical than insistence upon democratic methods as the means by which radical changes be effected…" (Dewey, 1985, p. 299). Woodford proposes that democratic ideals and engagements are not only timely but powerfully connected to a needed shift in our educational practices. As such, it would be interesting to note clearly and in greater detail whether and in what ways Woodford's proposition is a radical one, as Dewey submits above, or one that still refrains from change while speaking of change. Similar to Dewey, Woodford conveys and supports 'public intelligence' as an ideal pregnant with possibilities. While the voicing of political needs in and of educational practices is a welcome discourse in music education-albeit one that has been present historically, if marginalized-the challenge perhaps not taken in Democracy and Music Education is one of engaging with the particularities of politics as well as the specificity of political manifestations and discourses of race, gender, class, ethnicity, privilege, systems, etc. While Woodford proposes an articulate and forceful vision for the needed interrelation Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education 11 _______________________________________________________________________________ Schmidt, P. K. (2008). Democracy and dissensus: Constructing conflict in music education. Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education 7/1: 10-28. http://act.maydaygroup.org/articles/Schmidt7_1.pdf between political thinking and educational thinking, he seems to propose that issues in music education are the result of ignorance, 1 or perhaps misguidance; dismissing or dissociating the hold and insidiousness of ideology, endemic in much of our educational discourse and norms. Giroux (1981) proposes, "I think it is accurate to argue that every rationality has within it another problematic struggling to get out" (p. 11). In this sense I would like to propose not a 'critique' of Democracy and Music Education, but rather a dialogue with the struggling problematics that are raised or absent in Woodford's text. I am reminded of Lipman (1991) as he proposes that conversation seeks equilibrium, while dialogue instead aims at disequilibrium where, "each argument evokes a counterargument that pushes itself beyond the other and pushes the other beyond itself" (p. 232). Such is the nature of the interaction I hope to develop here. I start with the work Woodford has developed and subsequently take a few of these elements in a different direction. Democracy and Music Education, in my view, invites conflict and sees the constructive and constitutive potential of such conflict. It incites dialogue inside a profession more comfortable with either diatribe or consensus. Considering, acknowledging, and engaging with the idea that, as Freire (1998) submits, "all educational acts are political acts" is, fortunately, a broadening path in music education; a path to which Woodford's voice contributes. Democracy and the Politics of Education Rogers and Oakes (2005) suggest that "Dewey's greatest contribution is helping us understand the need for public engagement and social inquiry." "However", they continue, "his worries about teachers enacting and imposing class privilege lead Dewey to say little about the role of leadership or organizing within social movements" (p. 219). Speaking of the need for an enactment of discourses that speak of democracy, justice, and equality, Rogers and Oakes (2005) bring forth what Dewey has called 'economic literacy', that is, a

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2012

This paper explores the ways in which music educators have allowed others outside of music education to name who and how they are in the world. Often comfortable with voicing advocacy and purpose from the status of second class citizen, music educators are complicit in the very processes of reproduction they wish to challenge. Seeking to address what could be a privileged positioning of marginalized status, this paper also speaks to the spaces that are created that could afford possibilities of transformation. Thus, rather than to allow the perceived netherworld of marginalized status to name who we are and can be, we can name our own reality as we challenge the ways in which our own thoughts, beliefs, and actions are acquired and reproduced.