Music Education Sins Redeemed

In a time in which too many musicians, teachers, and students experience exploitation and overwork, a tyranny of ideologies that often opposes their values and leaves them feeling powerless, animosity toward and disrespect of education, women, and people of color, a digital environment that spreads misinformation, and an increasingly polarized public, Music Education Sins Redeemed offers a vision of humane music education that points toward freedom and common good.

Revisiting her previous analysis of values in music education, author Estelle R. Jorgensen describes seven sins – sloth, exclusion, forgetting, rage, discomfort, liberalism, and conservatism – to examine the notion of evil in contemporary music education and its possible redemption. With this new analysis, Music Education Sins Redeemed stands as an invitation to take a broad view of the values grounding ideas and practices in music education – as well as a warning to avoid letting views become too narrow. Exemplifying an approach whereby educators can rethink what counts as values, defend their views, and determine the implications for music education policy and practice, this book is essential reading for music educators.

Through the metaphors of "sin" and "redemption," Music Education Sins Redeemed examines those qualities that many well-meaning music teachers regard as evil to find the implicit values each can afford for a vision of education that is humane, generous, transformative, and liberatory.

• Publication date: 4 August 2026
• Page count: 342
• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Format: Hardback
• ISBN-13: 9780253076311