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Singing the Nation into Being: Teaching Identity and Culture at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Lynn M. Sargeant
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Extract

Although music has long had a place in the school, its position has often been precarious, relegated to odd hours and odd locations, and starved of both funds and attention. While at times music and the arts have enjoyed considerable support, these subjects are often the last ones added and the first ones cut from the curriculum. Yet, the arts have passionate advocates as well, including parents and pedagogues who support a holistic model of education that emphasizes humanistic values and aesthetics as well as utilitarian training. Still, music educators have struggled to justify their subject, often relying on extrinsic arguments to support its inclusion in the curriculum. Music, one is told, helps students raise their reading and math scores, improves their self-discipline, and builds community. Such arguments are rarely persuasive to voters concerned with eliminating expensive “frills” or to officials trying to balance tight budgets and raise test scores. Local newspapers bear witness to this struggle, as music and art programs fight to stay alive in American schools. This story, so potent today, has a long history. It dates back to the nineteenth century and the very birth of school music programs. It crosses continents, having as much currency in Europe as it does in North America. Debates over music in the schools are nothing less than debates over the meaning and purpose of education. Music is not one of the “three ‘R's.” Yet, precisely because of music's peripheral

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Articles
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History of Education Quarterly , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , August 2009 , pp. 291 - 322
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Copyright © 2009 History of Education Society 

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References

1 On the effects of the “No Child Left Behind” act on music and arts education, see MacPherson, Karen, “Educators: A Dire Picture for Arts Ed under ‘No Child’ Law,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 19, 2004; Hoffman, Gretchen, “Most School Districts Lack Arts Plan,” San Gabriel Valley Tribune, September 28, 2005; Hudson, Eric J., “Parents Step Up for Arts, Music: Group Formed to Aid Struggling Programs,” Boston Globe, February 9, 2006; Alspach, Kyle, “School Music Program Axed,” Sentinel & Enterprise (Fitchburg, MA), December 13, 2005; Caviness, Crystal, “Beating the Drums for Music Education,” UPI, August 13, 2003. status, the debates over its inclusion in the curriculum reveal the hidden ideologies that shape the place of the school in society.Google Scholar

2 Although the identity of the “music educator” was still under construction in both the Russian Empire and the United States during this period, I have opted to use this term to describe musicians and pedagogues whose primary concern was the establishment or development of a coherent system of music instruction in the schools. Many of these individuals, however, were not classroom teachers.Google Scholar

3 The nature of Russia's national/imperial/cultural identity continues to trouble historians. The collapse of the Soviet Union, and with it the final collapse of the larger Russian empire, has provoked scholars to reexamine not only specific issues regarding Russian identity but also to question the usefulness of applying approaches to identity developed for other societies to the Russian case. Yuri Slezkine's classic study of Soviet ethnonational identity, “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism,” Slavic Review 53, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 414–452, explored the failure of attempts to build a distinctly Soviet supra-identity encompassing the many “nations” of the Soviet Union. For the nineteenth century, scholars such as Marina V. Loskoutova remind us of the importance of the region as a competitor to the nation/empire for the loyalty of Russian subjects. See her “A Motherland with a Radius of 300 Miles: Regional Identity in Russian Secondary and Post-Elementary Education from the Early Nineteenth Century to the War and Revolution,” European Review of History/Revue européene d'histoire 9, no. 1 (2002): 7–22.Google Scholar

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