ABSTRACT
This chapter continues to examine the recontextualisation process in secondary school music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It uses the broad historical divisions identified by Plummeridge and Spruce in their writings on music education in England. In the early part of the twentieth century, the dominant ideology for music education described music's value in education in terms of its potential to promote the socialisation and citizenship values of society. Music within school was regarded as having no further utility than its ‘desirable cultural influence, its preparation for the profitable use of leisure time, and its development of sensitivity and imagination'. In more recent times, teachers have tended to ‘pick and mix' in an eclectic fashion between a variety of approaches for curricula development, drawing on both traditional and progressive models.
