Towards an ethical music education? Looking through the lens of Levinas

Abstract

What happens when pupils encounter unfamiliar musical expressions in the music classroom? What responsibility do we have towards those whose music we ‘use’? Underlying these concerns is the need for an ethical underpinning for music education. Drawing on a year-long ethnographically informed case study of music-making in the lives of a class of 13 and 14 year olds, this article begins to explore an ethical orientation towards music education, conceptualised as a means of encounter with the Other. Strands of just one pupil's everyday experiences and perspectives are examined in the light of the work of French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas for whom ‘the Other’ suggests an absolute difference, a stranger whom we encounter face-to-face and who calls from us a profound ethical response. Themes emerging from this exploration have implications for music educators as existing models of what it means to come to know in the music classroom are broken open. The curriculum is one way in which the relation to the Other can be realised, but is a site in which this obligation and responsibility to the Other is ‘commonly, casually, systematically denied’ (Standish, P. 2008. Levinas and the language of the curriculum. In Levinas and education: At the intersection of faith and reason, ed. Denise Egéa-Kuehne, 61. New York: Routledge).

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