Culture, Music Education, and the Chinese Dream in Mainland China

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxi

   PDF

2. Introduction: Dreams, Culture, Politics of Memory, and Power in Education

   • Wai-Chung Ho

   Pages 1-24

3. Exhibiting the Past: The Politics of Nationalism, Historical Memory, and Memory Practices in China’s Culture and Education

   • Wai-Chung Ho

   Pages 25-53

4. Power, Public Diplomacy, and Cultural Diplomacy in China’s Education: From Soft Power to the Chinese Dream

   • Wai-Chung Ho

   Pages 55-82

5. Propaganda Songs in Music Education: Between Chinese Nationalism and Chinese Socialism

   • Wai-Chung Ho

   Pages 83-117

6. The Confucian Value of Harmony in Music Education in Relation to Songs

   • Wai-Chung Ho

   Pages 119-154

7. The Rise of Individualistic Values, Social Change, Popular Culture, and Depoliticization: Challenge to Music Education

   • Wai-Chung Ho

   Pages 155-193

8. Critical Perspectives on Values Education in China’s School Music Education in a Changing Society: A Study of Beijing in the Global Age

   • Wai-Chung Ho

   Pages 195-232

9. Conclusion and Implications: Values and Practices in Achieving the Chinese Dream in School Music Education

   • Wai-Chung Ho

   Pages 233-250

10. Back Matter

    Pages 251-256

    PDF

This book focuses on the rapidly changing sociology of music as manifested in Chinese society and Chinese education. It examines how social changes and cultural politics affect how music is currently being used in connection with the Chinese dream. While there is a growing trend toward incorporating the Chinese dream into school education and higher education, there has been no scholarly discussion to date. The combination of cultural politics, transformed authority relations, and officially approved songs can provide us with an understanding of the official content on the Chinese dream that is conveyed in today’s Chinese society, and how these factors have influenced the renewal of values-based education and practices in school music education in China.

• Chinese dream
• Confucian education
• Chinese socialist dream
• Chinese nationalism
• school music education
• values education

“Ambitious in scope, the book explores the socio-historical and political complexities underpinning music education in mainland China. Based upon an impressive mix of scholarly literature, official documents, text books and interviews with music teachers in Beijing, it represents a major contribution to the field of international and comparative research in music education.” (Dr. Gordon Cox,  Co-Editor (with Robin Stevens), The Origins and Foundations of Music Education: International Perspectives, London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2017)

“It is rare to come across research and scholarship in music education with so wide a vision and so acute a political sensibility as this book. Wai-Chung Ho, already internationally renowned as an expert on Chinese music education, has excelled herself in this masterful analysis. The book will be of interest not only to specialists in the field of Chinese music education itself, but to anyone concerned about relationships between music, society, policy and education across a range of contexts.” (Professor Lucy Green, Emerita Professor of Music Education, UCL Institute of Education, University College of London, UK)

“Understanding of the relationship between the Chinese Dream, soft power and the deployment of culture, in particular music, in community and school music education in China to reconstruct China as a nation is of the utmost importance at this time.” (Professor Ruth Wright, Music Education, Don Wright Faculty of Music, Western University Canada, Canada)

• Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong

  Wai-Chung Ho

Dr. Ho Wai-Chung is a frequent contributor to leading international research journals in the fields of education, music education, and cultural studies, and has been published in such top-ranked journals as Comparative Education, Popular Music & Society, Social History, British Journal of Music Education, International Journal of Music Education, and Music Education Research. Her recent book, Popular Music, Cultural Politics and Music Education in China, addresses the power and potential use of popular music in school music education to produce and reproduce cultural politics. As inspired by the Chinese dream, this book furthers her research on the recent social and political developments in China’s music education and provides a critical account of how the Chinese authorities use music (particularly singing songs) in the construction of values and identities in both the national community and school music education.

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