Toward Sustainability Beyond Advocacy : Systems Thinking for Unlocking the Transformative Powers of Music Education

Abstract

In the face of the unequal effects of neoliberalism on politics, education, and culture globally, there is an urgent call for music educators to proactively address the collective concerns for sustainability. As the need for transformation grows louder, music education cannot advocate for more resources to unlock its transformative powers while maintaining a presumed political neutrality that reinforces neoliberal logic. To transform the field’s professional responsibility beyond self-promoting advocacy, we propose systems thinking as a framework to make sense of our world and its complex interconnections. We use three animated systems stories to demonstrate how music education may sustain unsustainability, and articulate how, by attending to the bigger picture of issues of sustainability, music educators as systems practitioners can reach beyond the narrow purposes of technical rationality and self-centered aims that preserve the status quo of the system towards a new social contract (UNESCO 2021) between disciplinary experts and society.