ABSTRACT
This chapter examines to juxtapose the informal with the formal, four boys' search for musical meaning and a self education alongside a curriculum prescribed to ensure the sustaining and making of a particular social order. Government reforms seemed to be achieving very little in music. While teachers appreciated the confirmation of a common curriculum structure, many nevertheless, and based on my own many visits to schools, appeared disorientated and frequently somnambulant in respect of the kind of curriculum development being imposed upon them. When close surveillance threatened in the form of inspection they awoke, coped and performed. Most were unwilling or unable to colour the curriculum with insight or interpret it with generosity. It was something to fit in with demanding adaptation and compliance. As a high-stake assessment regime emerged along with the idea of continual school improvement and ever more efficient outcomes from the investment in education, so teachers were beholden to micro management within their schools.
