ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I expose and discuss the marginalisation and lower status of young children in music education, and also the lower status of those who work with them. I explain how this situation has come about and provide some examples from my own experience as illustration. I suggest that the field of early childhood music has addressed the situation of lesser status by attempting to add value through romanticising the activity of young children and – or – to demonstrate how it is precociously adult-like. However, neither approach tackles the source of young children’s deficit status in developmentalism. For this purpose, I turn to theoretical viewpoints from the work of European Childhood Studies scholars. Interestingly theoretical perspectives emerging from this field are, as yet, little called upon in music education theorising, yet they can provide valuable ideas with which to challenge the positioning of children within social structures. Specifically, for this chapter I take the work of Nick Lee who has challenged fundamental assumptions associated with development and maturation in childhood. Lee suggests that development is not experienced as linear, smoothly progressive and arriving at a terminus in early adulthood, but, on the contrary, is a life-wide process of change that is experienced as ever-shifting, irregular, more wave-like and cyclical than linear. I go on to argue that while some characteristics of young children are indisputable such as smaller size, differently proportioned bodies and lesser strength, lesser levels of experience, and the need for certain forms of support from more experienced others, these different characteristics should not be accompanied by attributions of lower value and status. These are characteristics that change, grow and accumulate in varying and shifting ways throughout the life-span that are common to all of us.
