Edinburgh Napier University

  2018 saw the 50th anniversary of the publication of Paulo Freire’s book ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’, which has become an important text that has influenced many progressive educators, internationally. The concepts and ideas set forth in this work have been critiqued, analysed and developed in numerous scholarly contexts over the last half-century, and this includes some analysis and application within the field of music education. However, within the relatively new area of popular music education (PME) few scholars have dealt with or explicitly drawn on this work to influence their analysis of our growing field.

This paper will draw on a number of key concepts from this classic text and use them to critique some of the normative practices, standard approaches, and unquestioned values that are prevalent in music education in HE. Use of Freire’s concepts as a framework helps to link this discussion to a wider critical analysis of the place of higher education in society, problems with the neoliberalisation of HE institutions, and the awkward position that music (and particularly popular music) finds itself in as an area of study within this system.