Hindrances to recognition in Finnish music schools

Context: the Finnish music school system

By music schools, I refer to Finland’s partially state-funded institutions for the musical education of children and young people (aged roughly 6–18 years), which takes place as an extracurricular activity. Music schools where music (instruments, music theory, orchestra practice, etc.) is taught as a leisure activity are common in European countries: the Association of Finnish Music Schools is part of the European Music School Union, which represents 26 national member associations and more than 6,000 music schools in Europe (Riediger et al., 2010). There are 96 music schools in Finland (Suomen Musiikkioppilaitosten liitto, 2017), and in total, 4.6% of those aged 7 to 19 take part in music education (in some parts of Finland, the participation rate is as high as 7.9% of this age group) (Aluehallintovirasto, 2012). ¹

The curricula in music schools are authorised by the Finnish National Agency for Education (Alt et al., 2017). Music schools have a strong standing in Finnish arts education, and that standing is reinforced by various laws (particularly the Law Concerning Basic Education in the Arts, 1998/633; for a more detailed overview of the legal process, see Kangas & Halonen, 2015, pp. 199–200). Basic education in the arts concerns various fields of the arts, ² and by law, it (1) is target-oriented, (2) advances from one level to the next, and (3) is organised primarily for children and young people. It prepares students to (4) express themselves and (5) apply for professional training in their chosen field (Law Concerning Basic Education in the Arts, 1998/633). This music education is available in 140 of 295 municipalities ³ (Aluehallintovirasto, 2012).

In music schools, students advance through course examinations to complete their diplomas. The completion of diplomas enables students to apply for professional musical training. In most music schools, students are selected on the basis of an entrance examination. Depending on the area, up to 50% of applicants may not be accepted (Kangas & Halonen, 2015, p. 203). The exact content of the examination varies from one institution to another.

Theoretical background: recognition theory

In this article, I study how music school students’ experiences resonate with different recognition theories, namely, those of Dominique Girardot (2011) and Axel Honneth (1995; see also Fraser, 2003; Väkevä, 2013). Through a call for contributions, I asked former and current music school students to write about their good and bad experiences at music school in relation to being included or excluded. Some of their responses give us answers as to whether these students felt recognised or not in their music schools.

Recognition can be divided into three categories or patterns of recognition: love, respect and esteem (Honneth, 1995). Love, or emotional support, is the model of intimate relationships such as friendships, love relationships and parent–child relationships. Cognitive respect refers, for example, to legal relationships where respect is shown through the guarantee of legal rights and the treatment of people as equals. The third pattern of recognition is social esteem. This entails the recognition of personal traits and abilities by the community of value (Honneth, 1995, pp. 92–130). Here, I consider how respect and esteem are granted (or not) in a music school context. Esteem is especially important here, as recognising students often means recognising their musical abilities. However, the two other patterns of recognition are also relevant in music schools. In this article, in addition to esteem, I have chosen to analyse respect-related issues, as they enable us to look beyond the explicit, legally imposed goal of music education – that is, the acquisition and development of skills – and allow us to focus on questions of equal treatment.

I have already outlined possible recognition-related problems in previous articles (Elmgren, 2015, 2018) based on the work of French philosopher Dominique Girardot (2011). Here, I examine how some of these issues – namely, opportunities to attain distinction, the reification of merit and the threat of instrumentalisation – are manifest in the music school context (see ‘Can one distinguish oneself? Lack of creativity at music school’ to ‘Playing one’s instrument while becoming an instrument? Talent as a burden’ sections). In a previous theoretical article, I studied the importance of having one’s achievements recognised as distinct. I argued that it is essential to be able to pursue distinction – that is, original excellence – rather than just standard performance, and to have these activities and their results recognised as distinct (see Elmgren, 2015; Girardot, 2011). In this article, I analyse respondents’ answers from the viewpoint of their opportunities to attain distinction at music school.

By showing that there are problematic ways of realising recognition relations in music schools that are linked to institutional values and practices, I aim to initiate the first phase of what Arvi Särkelä (2008) has called the process of the struggle for recognition. He describes this first phase where ‘a recognitive relation and habitual attitude can become thematised as problematic, because it is experienced as involving domination or wronging or else as bad’. I demonstrate that some practices described by my respondents are examples of recognition relations involving teachers’ domination over students, and the wronging of some students due to unfair treatment in ways that are connected to recognition. By pointing out these problems, I wish to create possibilities to reconcile them so that successful recognition can be attained (Särkelä, 2008). More harmoniously realised recognition relations would create more participatory parity among music school students (see Fraser, 2003).

The term pathologies of recognition has been used in the contemporary literature to describe the harmful, hindering and disruptive forms that recognition relationships might take (see, for example, Hirvonen, 2018; Ikäheimo, 2015; Laitinen, 2015). Pathologies of recognition are defined as institutional, processual problems in recognition relations (see Laitinen et al., 2015; Särkelä, 2008). I have chosen not to use the term pathology in this article. Instead, I use the term hindrance. The normative and stigmatising connotations of the word pathology make it problematic in this empirical context and might cause undue harm to the institutions implicated in my study. There are also conceptual problems linked to the notion (Freyenhagen, 2015).

Previous research

Recognition theory has been utilised in education, especially in the field of adult education and in the context of lifelong learning over the past 25 years (see, for example, Andersson & Fejes, 2010; Fleming, 2014; Hanhela, 2014; Huttunen, 2009; Sandberg, 2016; Sprung, 2013; Stojanov, 2018). According to Stojanov (2018, p. 88), ‘relations like empathy, respect and social esteem have a particularly strong educative impact’; he even refers to results in educational neuroscience (i.e., Blodget et al., 2011; Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007) that confirm the importance of empathy in teaching and learning (Stojanov, 2018, p. 100, n. 9 ⁴ ). Studying recognition relations in education helps us to discern, for instance, ways of teaching that do not feature domination and which thus create better conditions for the development of the student’s identity. Following Honneth, Hanhela (2014) explicates the relationship between forms of recognition and the development of one’s relationship to oneself as follows: ‘love . . . enables the development of self-confidence; rights [or respect] . . . enables the development of self-respect; and social esteem . . . enables the development of self-esteem’ (p. 60). Support for the development of these relationships is arguably essential to any type of education – especially when the students are young and still growing, as is the case in music schools.

To date, no empirical research concerning recognition relations has yet been conducted in the field of music education. In his theoretical and normative article, Lauri Väkevä (2013) analyses how love, respect and esteem can present themselves in the relationship between an instrument teacher and a student in a music school, and how the struggle for recognition can manifest itself in this relationship. Väkevä aims to explicate that there is an obligation on the teacher to recognise the student. I use Väkevä’s work as the starting point for my analysis, but I disagree with some of his conclusions.

Research questions, data, methods, and limitations of the study

This article studies recognition relations in music schools: the opportunities for students to become recognised at music school, and the dynamics and practices that can create hindrances to recognition. I will argue that some of my respondents faced hindrances to recognition, problems in recognition relations, or problems with how recognition is granted in music schools. My research questions are the following:

Data

Music school students’ experiences are still under-studied in Finland and worldwide. To gain as many inputs as possible, an open questionnaire was set up online for my data collection. The data were collected during the late autumn of 2015 and the winter of 2016. It was gathered online through a call for contributions ⁵ published on a University of Jyväskylä webpage and was distributed mostly via Facebook and on some music-related mailing lists. The survey consisted of an introductory text, a short questionnaire concerning background information, and a space where the respondents could recount their experiences. The scope of the enquiry was limited to the last 20 years, that is, to people who had studied in music schools during the period 1995–2015. There were 117 usable responses. ⁶ The respondents are anonymised in this article.

Sixty-nine per cent of the respondents were aged between 21 and 30 years. Most respondents were no longer continuing their studies at music school. Only 12.8% were male. The lack of male participants results at least partly from the fact that fewer boys than girls go to music school (Aluehallintovirasto, 2012).

Most participants (78.6%) evaluated their family income level as medium, 18.8% as low and 2.6% as high. Based on families’ income levels and the respondents’ and their parents’ education levels (Figure 1), it seems that respondents mostly came from middle-class or upper-class families. The background of music school students has not been systematically studied, but it is possible that this ratio indicates that middle- and upper-class parents send their children to music school more often than parents from lower classes.

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Figure 1.

Parents’ education level.

Can one distinguish oneself? Lack of creativity at music school

In a previous theoretical article (Elmgren, 2015), I studied the importance of having one’s achievements recognised as distinct, that is, as simultaneously both original and excellent. In situations where one is trying to attain such distinction, there is a hindrance to recognition if there is no room for personal, non-standard expression, or if such personal expression is not recognised as excellent but instead regarded as inherently flawed.

The legally decreed goal of basic education in the arts is to enable students to ‘express themselves’ (Law Concerning Basic Education in the Arts, 1998/633). I interpret this to mean that arts education ought to develop students’ creativity, or their abilities to express their personality traits, interests, preferences, and/or personal tastes through their hobbies. This might be achieved, for instance, by emphasising students’ own musical expression through the practices of improvisation, composition and other kinds of musical experimentation. However, in 2005, such activities were mentioned only briefly in the core curriculum for basic education in the arts and were not mentioned at all in relation to advanced level. This suggests that they were not widely taught, and my data support this suggestion. The new core curriculum, issued in 2017, addresses these issues as well as the discrepancy between the law and the practical realities of music schools, but the respondents who answered the survey in 2015 and 2016 were undertaking or had undertaken their studies under the 2005 core curriculum.

My data reveal that there were cases where personal expression as a goal of study was completely overlooked. Five respondents (4.3%) write about their institution’s negative approach to creativity. Anette (aged 33) writes, ‘the music studies did not in any way encourage creativity and independent musical thinking’. Mari (aged 23) writes of the ‘elimination of creativity’. For Saara (27), music education was all about concentrating on mistakes and perfect execution, overlooking creativity and experimentation.

In the context of classical music (which was the curriculum followed by most of the respondents, including the five mentioned above ⁹ ), this seems to be linked to the Western tradition: the standards of performance are shared almost unanimously wherever Western classical music is taught and played. In their keynote at the Musical Cultures conference in Hull in April 2017, Daniel Leech-Wilkinson and Mine Doğantan-Dack stated,

Classical music performance practice, as a form of art making, [has] remained entirely untouched by the critically reflective and socio-politically engaged stances surrounding them. The discourses that have shaped and sustained the aesthetic and cultural boundaries of performance practice in the classical music world have come to resist not only change, but even the idea of change. The performer’s role has become fixed as the faithful transmitter of the composer’s message and communities of judgment have emerged to ensure conformity with sanctioned ways of performing. (Leech-Wilkinson & Doğantan-Dack, 2017, emphases in original)

In the data, it is possible to find examples of this insistence that there is one definite way in which a piece of music must be played (see ‘What counts as merit? Perfectionism at music school’ section on perfectionism). If even musicians in the professional world are supposed to be faithful transmitters of someone else’s message, as Leech-Wilkinson and Doğantan-Dack suggest, then perhaps the respondents who complain about a lack of personal expression were exposed to something similar. I wish to stress that this problem neither originates from nor is limited to Finnish music education. As Leech-Wilkinson & Doğantan-Dack (2017) point out, the idea of one true interpretation is a feature that marks all Western classical music. Teachers who insist on one single way of playing a certain piece are thus following an international convention. It is quite likely that they believe themselves to be doing the best they can to coach their students and give them the necessary skills for their future music studies. However, the way this materialises in music education can be discouraging for students.

If students’ creativity and personal input into music is not taken into consideration, or is considered to be non-existent, it seems clear that they cannot try to achieve distinction, that is, original excellence. Instead, they have to settle for a competition where they can be measured with quasi-quantitative methods, by counting mistakes and other deviations from the score. I believe it would be a simplification (and quite a misunderstanding) to claim that there is no creativity in classical music practices. ¹⁰ Not all of the respondents complain about such issues, and the relationship between creativity, interpretation and classical pieces is too complicated to be addressed here. However, five respondents do explicitly mention the lack of creativity. Crucially, for these respondents, the practices in their music schools, and the way they were transmitted and (unsuccessfully) communicated to students, came across as hostile to creativity. Recognition of the student as a creative agent who was capable of originality did not take place; instead, only the right kind of impersonal achievement and technical performance was appreciated. This is at odds with the explicit aims – set out in law – of basic music education.

What counts as merit? Perfectionism at music school

The ability to strive for distinction is important because it enables one to reflect on one’s personal goals and the personal meanings of the activity and to look for the ways in which one can do something no one else is doing. When striving for distinction, instead of competing and comparing oneself with others, the students can focus on their own ‘game’ and excel at it according to their own level of commitment. The trouble with classical music is that the ‘game’ is often extremely limited, as described above, and there is not much room for negotiation over goals. Eleven respondents (9.4%) write about perfectionist demands at music school. Music school students may feel, as Maiju (27) does, that ‘either the difficult run [in a sonata] goes right or it goes wrong. Without the perfect execution, it is nothing’. This leaves the student with fewer avenues to find their own niche of expertise, and easily exposes them to explicit competition and comparison with others. According to Girardot (2011), in competition the idea is to become comparable with others, and thus competition actually forces similarity (p. 148). Under such conditions, achieving originality is rare and difficult. Niina (27) describes perfectionism as ‘eating away’ at what, according to her, should be the core function of music education: the joy of music.

In an earlier article (Elmgren, 2015), I theorised a pathology of recognition linked to the reification of merit through procedures that measure it in a supposedly objective fashion. In such procedures, merit is in constant danger of becoming an ‘object’, that is, reified. With the standardisation of the processes of granting merit, only certain, already established forms of excellence can be recognised as worthy of such merit. It is, then, very difficult for anything new to emerge. In music schools that teach their students to stick strictly to tradition, the threat of reification seems evident. Some respondents lament that both what is played and how it ought to be played are decided beforehand. Thus, the merits of the performance are also predetermined. It is arguable that in these situations, students are recognised only if they recreate the ‘right kind’ of interpretation of a piece. This prevents them from creating new meanings and new interpretations of the works. Thus, the system threatens to make its practices of recognition problematic by reifying what it considers to be merit.

Playing one’s instrument while becoming an instrument? Talent as a burden ¹¹

The Law Concerning Basic Education in the Arts decrees that students’ studies must advance from one level to the next. This guarantee of advancement also provides the justification for government subsidies of music studies (Law Concerning Government Subsidies, 2001/688). Advancement thus easily becomes understood as the main goal of music studies. This demand for advancement may affect teachers’ attitudes towards their students. In some cases, they may favour those they see as potential future professionals and have less regard for others (on hierarchies among music school students, see Elmgren, 2019). Sometimes, however, as Elisa (20) describes, the effect is the opposite, although no less problematic: ‘the teacher tried to make everyone a professional and did not understand that, for some, playing was [just] a pleasant hobby and that mediocrity was enough for me’. Merita (24) also writes, ‘teachers expected that [my] career choice would be music and that music was always the top priority’. In these cases, the students’ own interests were not taken into consideration. Music studies may take up a considerable amount of any student’s time: in addition to instrument lessons, there may be lessons on music theory, music history, orchestra, and so on. Studying at music school can mean having to dedicate most of one’s free time to that hobby. This is not something every student is prepared to do.

Even when a student is motivated and considered talented, as Jenni (27) was, they may face difficulties due to the ambitious goals of the institution. Jenni writes, ‘due to my being talented, advancing became more of an obligation’. Olga (20) feels her teacher had ‘nearly an obsession’ with moulding her into a professional musician: ‘I was musically talented but partly due to “forcing” by my teacher and parents I no longer had the motivation to practice and develop’.

From the recognition-theoretical point of view, this situation is interesting, as the problem is not a lack of recognition, but rather the reverse. In these cases, the students are indeed recognised as talented and promising, and teachers and parents try to push them to overcome their limits and actualise what they see as the students’ potential. In the process, however, something goes wrong. The student is esteemed, yet they are also simultaneously instrumentalised vis-à-vis the goal of the musical training, that is, becoming a professional; in a way, they are made instruments of music. The students as persons are no longer the top priority; what is crucial about them is their musical potential. This is particularly clear when the student is not expected to take any part in negotiations over their studies, and not even to have a say in what they play (three respondents report not having had any say or very little say in the selection of pieces), let alone how they play it. In sum, this can add up to another hindrance to recognition, namely, instrumentalisation.

Lack of respect in the abundance of esteem?

As noted in the last section, in some cases the problem is not the lack of recognition – or esteem, to be precise. How can it be that an abundance of esteem still results in the student reporting a lack of motivation or stress, and/or even quitting their studies? It seems that while there may be enough esteem, there is a simultaneous lack of respect for the students as worthy negotiators in matters concerning their own lives. Respect in the context of recognition theory means equal appreciation of all as ‘deontic co-authors’ (Ikäheimo, 2007), or as Honneth puts it, as ‘full-fledged partner[s] in interaction’ (Honneth, 1992, p. 191; see also McBride, 2013). If we respect someone, we ought to see them as a person who is capable of taking part in negotiations over common norms, and for instance over what they think is good for them.

Väkevä (2013) suggests that respect in a music school context ought to be interpreted as the right of each member of society to be able to ‘realize one’s musical growth-potential to as full an extent as present society allows’ (p. 58). Väkevä takes a more general view of respect in music school and formulates it as a broad right to participate in music. Ikäheimo’s and Honneth’s definitions of respect are more demanding than Väkevä’s suggestion: they stress that each person should also participate in the constitution of norms. The unequal treatment of music school students described by my respondents (see ‘Respect and hierarchies’ section in this article, and also Elmgren, 2019) suggests that respect ought to be taken into consideration in music school practices too, not just as a general societal guideline.

Respect in school contexts is a complicated matter. Often, interactions in music school (including those to which Väkevä’s article refers) take place between a teacher and a student, whose roles are not equal but hierarchical. This means that respect in education (generally, not just in music education) is more complicated than respect between, say, two adult citizens who are taking part in a political process. Now, a hierarchy between a student and a teacher may be justified and reasonable. However, as students get older, if they are to be granted respect as members of the musical community, they arguably should be included in discussions concerning how they organise their music studies in their everyday lives, as well as about what and how they play.

As we saw in the last section, the students who complain about the lack of creativity, or who were being forced to train against their will, may still have been well recognised – esteemed, to be precise – by the institution. Their skills were appreciated, and the teachers expected great things from them. However, there may not necessarily have been an appreciation of the students’ judgement. Having no say in one’s studies, as one respondent writes, is also an instance where a student’s judgement is overlooked. This might be understandable for small children, as their faculty of judgement has not yet developed, but with teenagers and those aged nearly 20, it seems simply disrespectful.

Leech-Wilkinson and Doğantan-Dack (2017) portray Western classical music as a tradition that was already established before the individual enters it and that will remain, hopefully unchanged, long after that individual has departed. If this is the prevailing conception among music school teachers, then the idea that students ought to take part in the constitution of the norms that guide action in music schools seems to be in stark opposition to it. The problem of the instrumentalisation of students (see ‘Playing one’s instrument while becoming an instrument? Talent as a burden’ section) also links to disrespect for them. Claiming to recognise the talent or potential of a student can be used as a justification for treating that student as a means to an end, supposedly in their own interest, while not including them in actual negotiations concerning their hobby and their life. This results in a lack of respect for students’ autonomy and inherent worth as persons. They are recognised only in relation to their musical abilities.

Respect and hierarchies

In music schools where respondents perceive a clear meritocratic hierarchy among students, and sometimes even among teachers (see Elmgren, 2019), the hierarchical nature of the institution may play a part in the recognition-related problematics. There may be a difficulty in including both respect and esteem in a hierarchical institution, due to its central values and practices. As these institutions aim to hone people’s skills to their maximum capacity, the texts I collected show that respecting students as equals is not a self-evident state of affairs. In some institutions, there is no equality among students: some receive more attention, more encouragement, and even more opportunities to perform. ¹² However, this is not the case in all institutions: despite differences between students’ skills, they can still be treated equally – for instance, in relation to others at their formal level – and given equally long lessons, equal opportunities to perform, and so on. ¹³

Fourteen persons in my data write about facing hierarchies in their music school; in addition to these, two write about unequalising practices (in total, 13.7%). This shows that students in music schools are not always treated as equals, but instead experience being placed in hierarchies with multiple levels. ¹⁴ Hierarchies have a tendency to efface equality: there is no equality because some are simply better than others. Such hierarchies are considered to be meritocratic, that is, they are based on students’ skills and perceived talents. Most of the respondents are unable to resist these unequal practices and believe in the meritocratic logic that is used to justify them: others have proven themselves worthy of recognition (have merited it), but they themselves have not.

Instead of respect, the form of recognition that is more likely to be available is esteem based on skills and perceived talent. The most devastating outcome of this unequal distribution of respect and esteem is the way it connects with the meritocratic undertones of the institution: the implication is that the differences in treatment are justified. They are not random preferential treatment, but are based on differences in skill that are visible at student concerts, for instance. This makes it difficult for students to stand up for themselves, as the special treatment is framed as a consequence of superior skills and talents. Maria (19), who studied the pop-jazz curriculum, describes this:

during my time [at music school] there were a lot of skilled beginning musicians, many of them had loads of potential. Then there were also top students, exceptional talents considering their age, whose families had long roots in making and playing music.

For Maria, they simply were ‘exceptional talents’, although she mentions their backgrounds and lists the unequalising practices that benefitted these ‘top students’.

This combination of (1) institutional values that place more importance on skill and rapid advancement than on making sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to develop their skills, and (2) a meritocratic logic according to which those who are doing better deserve more than others, leads to a problematic situation where respect is a formality that can be overridden if needed.

The conflict between esteem and respect in music schools can be traced back to the tension between promoting musical values and caring for people. ¹⁵ The belief (which often also appears in relation to youth sports, for example) seems to be that good results demand tracking – and that if one does not do that and instead treats everyone equally (in a way, caring for them), this risks losing the musical values the system currently helps to actualise. The tension between promoting musical values and caring for people is real, but there are ways in which it can be alleviated, by taking a different angle on what is taught and how in music schools. There is a new core curriculum (Finnish National Agency for Education, 2017) in Finnish music schools that takes a more holistic view of students and places more emphasis on personal expression. This approach will more likely also help to avoid some of the recognition-related problems I have sketched in this article.