Roots of inequity and injustice: the challenges for music education

Abstract

Equity and justice are human constructs; the inventions of human imagination. They exist nowhere in nature, in which inequality—the root cause of inequity and injustice—is essential for survival. Our history as a race traces back some two million years, when survival had to trump justice, the latter being an historically recent conception. Music educators in our times have the same obligation as all other citizens, and all other educators—to support and promote ideals of equity and justice in all we do. But we have the particular obligation to relate those ideals to the field—music—in which we are professionals. Attention to equity and justice need not and should not contradict our responsibility to musical learnings, the two seemingly different concerns being entirely compatible. Enhanced musical experience and enhanced moral behavior are reciprocal contributions we uniquely can make to human welfare.