Harry Broudy's aesthetics and music education

This paper centres on Harry Broudy, the scholar who was the first to argue, consistently and extensively, for aesthetics as a foundation for music education in American public schools. Broudy, considered by many as the major philosopher of education in the second part of the 20th century, was not a musician or music educator. His framing of the discipline of school music as aesthetic education evolved out of his philosophy of general education for citizenship, grounded within an ethical framework. In this paper, I examine Broudy's philosophy of music education within the larger context of his thinking, and its impact on music educators in the USA.