Platform Papers 20: Beethoven or Britney? The Great Divide in Music Education: The Great Divide in Music Education

School music education in Australia is in crisis. Children are ‘educating’ themselves through their iPod, internet, and mobile phone and with little or no access to quality music teaching. And nothing is being done about this.

Music educator, Dr Robert Walker, questions why this is, when we have an overwhelming evidence of how music-making enhances the core disciplines of mathematics, languages and a mastery of English? He calls for an urgent reassesment of our musical education so we avoid becoming a nation of passive consumers with no conception of music as a profound art.