Music Education in Times of Eco-Social Crisis: Healing the Fragmentation of Psyche, Society, and Nature

This book explores how music education can remain relevant in an era of multiple environmental crises that threaten human thriving and life on a planetary scale. The author argues that music educators must join with educators in other fields to deconstruct unsustainable ideologies and replace them with sustainable curricular practices, while focusing music learning on the project of fostering hope, healing, resilience, justice, and community cohesion. Drawing on the perspectives of radical ecopsychology, ecojustice, and ecofeminism, this book considers how music education can address the emotional and spiritual dimensions of coping with environmental crises. Offering a critique of the compartmentalized nature of current educational practices and envisioning a new approach to music learning that can help teachers and students heal the bifurcations between the psyche, nature, and society at the root of the environmental crises, this book is essential reading for scholars of music and arts education as well as graduate students and educators.

Tawnya D. Smith is Assistant Professor of Music and Music Education at Boston University.