These days, when people discuss how education needs to develop, the talk turns almost automatically to technology—as in: digitalisation, artificial intelligence, natural science competencies. These themes are also the ones that dominate public debates and news reporting due to how they’re associated with innovation. Our society, after all, tends to pay special attention to anything that is novel.
We do, of course, need skills to go with new technologies, just like we need debates on how such skills should be imparted. However, the education provided by our schools needs to do more than just react to current developments. It needs to educate people overall—which means going beyond the simple acquisition of basic knowledge to also focus on practicing those foundational skills that enable people to orient themselves in the world, to work together with others, and to act responsibly. Precisely because of today’s strong focus on technological innovations, it’s all too easy to forget that we’ve long known how musical training can convey just such fundamental skills.
Especially in debates about how to deal with artificial intelligence as a society, we’re all too quick to assume the logic of the technology itself—making it the point of reference in our notions of education and overall competence. This reflex is one that I hold to be wrong. When technology assumes more and more routine tasks, this engenders a need for more spaces where people can develop qualities and skills whose manifestation can’t be delegated to machines—things like attentiveness, the capacity for resonance, creativity, responsibility, and cooperation.
It’s for precisely this reason that musical training is neither a luxury nor a nostalgic throwback to bygone curricula. Music’s significance as an aspect of general education resides in how it conveys skills that a society urgently needs—including when said society becomes subject to novel technological conditions. Many people are insufficiently aware of how music education isn’t simply about training future professional artists. It’s much rather about something fundamental: those who make music learn to listen attentively. Those who sing or play instruments in ensembles learn to react to others, to relate their own contributions to a greater whole, and to sometimes hold back before stepping forward to assume responsibility the very next moment. One develops concentration, expressive capacity, coordination, the ability to adhere to a common form without giving up one’s own voice … and it’s in precisely such aspects that its societal power resides.
Music shapes realms of experience where people realise how difference needn’t automatically entail separation. Different voices remain different, but it’s precisely this that results in a common sound. Those who make music together have an experience that is central to coexistence in a democratic context: namely, that of how we needn’t agree on everything in order to engage in collective action. In times when polarisation, simplification, and polemicism are on the rise, this is of special significance. A musical education hence nourishes not just creativity but also social skills, respect, the ability to work in a team, and the capacity to engage in reflection—capabilities that are all foundational to the preservation of a democratic society.
It’s especially young children and teenagers who need space for all this. Good musical instruction affords latitude for self-experimentation. It bolsters self-confidence and the capacity for expression. It opens up experiences of self-efficacy and shared responsibility.
For a musical education to have this effect, it needs to be of high quality—including with respect to how its providers are trained. After all, music at school doesn’t happen on its own. It happens when teachers possess the musical assurance they need in order to sing, make music, and guide music-related processes together with their kids. If such assurance is lacking, music quickly becomes a marginal theme.
Precisely this is why it’s so important that pedagogical training in the field of music remain anchored at arts universities—where it enjoys a direct connection with artistic practice and a lively artistic environment. The result is that the new teachers who arrive at schools know from their own experience just what real-life musical practice means, which enables them to pass on this experience to children in a convincing way. Musical training is an investment in a society’s ability to listen, to share responsibility, and to generate commonalities without erasing differences. After all, democracy isn’t just a political system—it’s also a cultural practice.
