‘A House Divided’: Music Education during the Schools Council Era of the 1970s

The image of the curriculum as the site of a battleground over values and beliefs (Kliebard, 1995) is helpful in a consideration of music education in the United Kingdom in the 1970s which was strikingly characterised by Swanwick as ‘a house divided’ (Swanwick, 1977). The division was between a model of music education which was subject centred, and one which was child centred. Musically, according to Swanwick, the former represented skills, literacy and the value of the Western music tradition, whilst the latter encompassed experiment, creativity and an emphasis upon contemporary developments in music (ibid., 67).