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Tensions between authoritarianism, pluralism, sectarianism, inclusion, diversity, and religious and national identity pervade and construct the possibilities of global discourse. In many ways, these tensions signal a retreat from reforms that require discomfort, reflexive engagements, courage. This retreat manifests in policies, both real and those we imagine to be real, that seek to neutralize public educational pedagogies and curriculum. We reside now in a perfect storm, the nexus between ideologies of politics, class, race, gender, and religion, wherein authoritarian populist movements (including those of religious factions) are reshaping society. In this article, I argue the falseness of pedagogical neutrality and explore the need for pedagogical spaces that recognize manifold layers of pluralism. I suggest that a structural blindness to values that are incommensurate with those each of us hold, particularly those that pertain to being religion-blind, furthered by democratic and secular religious "neutrality," has had a reproductive effect enabling and furthering an agenda that serves to sanction and "demarcate the intolerable" (Brown 2012, 6).

Recent initiatives by for-profit corporations and funding measures instituted by governments intend to support the preparation of students for careers in computer science and technology. Although such initiatives and measures can indeed increase opportunities for students' engagement with computer science and technology in K-12 schools, we question whose needs are being served, for what purposes, and at what cost. In particular, we ask whether music educators might be complicit in advancing technology that subordinates human needs--specifically students' interests in making music in their own creative ways--to modes of production that benefit certain dominant commercial interests in society. After discussing how current computer technology narrows students' choices, we counter this determinism by highlighting a music subculture that creates and appropriates music technologies for music-related purposes. Our example of the "chipscene" illustrates how music educators might reconceptualize "music making" through modification of existing music technology and thereby restore students' freedom to "reclaim making" in the age of neoliberalism.

This response is based on my presentation at Teachers College, Columbia University celebrating the launch of Allsup's (2016) book, "Remixing the Classroom: Toward an Open Philosophy of Music Education." I enter the text with openness, and with a willingness to ponder and consider. As such I offer the following considerations for further "thinking through." These are considerations, given the context of the book, I feel are necessary to address: independent musician, child centered / learner centered, or constructivism writ large, learning outcomes, and finally the space in the elementary setting for the kinds of pedagogical engagements and purpose Allsup outlines throughout his text.

In this article, the author states that she supports Wayne Bowman's (2006) concern with the impact narratives can have, including their potential to legitimize "existing patterns of privilege and possibility." She argues that "there is nothing inherently emancipatory about narrative." In fact, narrative "may, and often does, legitimatize existing power relations, existing discourses, existing patterns of privilege and possibility." Narrative often leads one to the heart of action and ideals. For those who are in search of varied meanings, storied accounts can lead toward a telling of events that, in their unfolding, present ethical encounters with and for resistance; thereby giving accounts of "processes of rupture" and reinforcing how significant they may be. The wake of said stories present one with how music practices and pedagogies in urban contexts need more than the dualism between healing tales or accounts of horror--they need narratives of rupture. The author follows Kincheloe and Berry (2004), believing that the kind of "feedback looping" involved in a "point of entry" treatment of a text, functions to "expose locations of power, challenge taken-for-granted assumptions and de-center positions of authority." Consequently, this article is an exercise in how one may continuously add questions and thoughts to issues raised in the article. (Contains 1 note.)

This article examines the educational function of the North American wind band program. Issues such as band education's methodological control, perceived lack of self-reflection or inquiry, its insecurity concerning program legitimacy, and the systemic fear that seems to permeate its history provide the framework for this exploration. With a philosophical eye toward the future of school-based instrumental music education each author brings perspective to the task of critiquing an institution that has taken on the seemingly sacrosanct and inviolable trappings of tradition and ritual.

The authors have chosen to move together in examining the issue of social justice because they both struggle with the pedagogical implications of what it means to be in this world. As the authors seek to embody the dialectic process of creating new understandings in their lives, and thus in their classrooms, they seek also to create this through their examination of this topic: its implications, its discourses, and its enactments. In this article, these pursuits take the form of theorethical engagement; the authors then bring this theory into the realm of music education. Consequently, this paper reflects a collaborative effort to devise a way of thinking through and creating understandings that are not wholly constrained by the written word. This article reflects how each of the authors has engaged with social justice through the voice and the ideas of the other. First, the authors explore the purpose of social justice, asking "Social justice for whom? And social justice, how?" Second, the authors want to resist the conflation or equation of equity and social justice. Finally, the authors want to examine social justice through a pedagogical lens. (Contains 14 notes.)

The article explores the ways in which music educators have allowed others from different fields of disciplines to name who and how they are in the world. The author notes that music educators could name their own reality as they challenge the ways in which their own thoughts, beliefs and actions are acquired and reproduced. Music education within the context of political movement, social transformation, marginalization and anti-oppression movement is discussed. Music educators could shift their focus away from the equality or exclusion of music and other disciplines in order to make meaningful transformation on the life of students.