ABSTRACT
Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator and philosopher, believed that ‘men and women are searchers and their ontological vocation is humanization’ (Freire 1970/2005, p. 75). According to him, humanisation is achieved through a dialogical, problem-posing education in which teacher and student learn from each other and are not prevented from making decisions as if they were reduced to ‘things’ or objects. Rather, they ‘become subjects of the educational process by overcoming authoritarianism and an alienating intellectualism’ (Freire 1970/2005, p. 86). Drawing from the sociology of knowledge and discussing Young’s (1971, 2014a, 2014b) views on ‘powerful knowledge’ as opposed to ‘knowledge of the powerful’ we examine what kinds of musical knowledge and practices might enable our students, in Brazilian Higher Music Education Institutions, to engage in a dialogical construction of knowledge. Based on our reflections about some practices we have been implementing in our universities, we discuss the extent to which some music pedagogies have been helping us promote a more balanced power relation between teacher and taught. We also argue that those practices bear the potential to produce knowledge of one’s abilities and needs that may encourage collective values, collaborative work and ‘exchange between people, rather than [the] financial exchange’ promoted in neoliberalism (Cowden and Singh 2013, p. 1). Such practices may transform our contexts and humanise our realities as we humanise ourselves.
