Fighting a Resurgent Hyper-Positivism in Education is Music to My Ears

Abstract

In this article, I argue that one of the gifts of the Age of Enlightenment, the ability to measure, to experiment, to predict—turned rancid by hyper-positivism—is re-asserting itself globally in the field of education (including music education). I see a neoliberal, neocolonial connection—in terms of the ideologies that fuel them—between some of the homogenizing, epistemologically/culturally imperialist aspects of globalization and this resurgent hyper-positivism that has been accompanied by a corporatization of education. I posit that critical education, including critical music education, is an essential component of a necessary—if rancorous—dialogue in maintaining a definition of education that is as varied and diverse as those students we wish to educate. In essence, I argue that critical education is one of many tools to help us fight a ‘re-colonization’ by this resurgent hyper-positivism in education