ABSTRACT
These studies demonstrate the potential that is to be found in locating music education within the parameters of class and culture. Undoubtedly they mirror some of the advances that have been made within the History of Education since the late 1960s. However, Cohen’s (1999) listing of the range of topics tackled by what he calls social historians of education is enlightening: social control and social conflict, urban history, family history, history of women, history of people of colour, history of ethnic and religious minorities, and history ‘from the bottom up’. This is not to mention postmodernism, and the construction of what Cohen calls a New Cultural History of Education. Clearly, music education historians have simply scratched the surface, we have much to do. More specifically we badly need more research that will illuminate our understanding of music education’s function in fostering a sense of identities that have to be constantly invented, transformed and recovered.
