Will Coppola
William Coppola is interested in the role of humility and egoism as they pertain to the cultivation of prosocial musical engagements in music education. He has recently published a co-authored book on issues of inclusion and diversity in instrumental music education for the Routledge World Music Pedagogy Series, edited by Patricia Shehan Campbell. Additional research interests include positive psychology of music education, social justice in music education, cultural diversity in music education, music education philosophy, and collective identity formation in participatory musical settings. Will has presented his research nationally and internationally. Prior to his hire as an assistant professor of music education at the University of North Texas, he taught undergraduate and graduate courses in music teacher education and served as the Student Teaching Supervisor for the music education program at the University of Washington, where he earned his Ph.D. William is a certified Smithsonian Folkways World Music Pedagogy and Kodály educator. Earlier in his career he was an elementary music director for New York City Public Schools, where he taught PK–5th grade general music, band, chorus, bucket drumming, and directed the annual musical.
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What if Freire Had Facebook? A Critical Interrogation of Social Media Woke Culture and Virtue Signaling in Music Education Discourse
In contemporary music education discourse, social media has carved out a grassroots-like arena for critical dialogue and debate. Particularly among marginalized communities, its popularity has worked to supplant the ivory tower of scholarship historically reserved for journal publications and academic conferences. With many professionals viewing these traditional academic spaces as “out of touch” and consistently white- and male-dominated, it might come as no surprise that much of the deep work of social justice reform in music education is now taking place on social media outlets such as Facebook. We might further expect critical philosopher Paulo Freire (1970/2010) to be quite fond of social media’s hold in society today, especially given its ability to promote discourse beyond the detached confines of academia. He might view such digitized spaces as optimal settings for engaging openly in praxis—where humans engage in the dialogical acts of reflection and action toward transformative ends. However, behind the glow of a digital device also lies a darker side to social media discourse: one in which even collegial dialogue has become susceptible. It is within these aspects of our social media universe that Paulo Freire might struggle to find his pedagogy of humanization being fully realized.
Relevantly, the social capital associated with possessing heightened sociopolitical awareness has led to the vogue of “woke culture”—a social movement which has advanced social mindfulness toward matters of marginalization, but has also resulted in such antagonistic social trends as “call-out culture,” “cancel culture,” and other behaviors that serve to reprimand others for their apparent lack of social justice know-how, irrespective of personal effort or growth. Despite woke culture’s lucrative benefits, it simultaneously highlights the social appeal of belonging to a community of like-minded progressives (Lynch, 2019), causing people to self-delineate their own status of social belonging as a result. In the process, it becomes common practice for scholars to proclaim their own wokeness by uncritically raising Freire’s name in the name of social justice—a matter that appears particularly germane and delicate for white and white-passing scholars. Such conspicuous conveying of moral superiority, also known as “virtue signaling” (Wallace, Buil, & de Chertaony, 2018), becomes a practice with self-regarding—rather than transformative—intentions. However, through a closer reading of Freirean philosophy, and its ardent call for humility as central to praxialism, it becomes difficult to conceive of Freire’s support for such self-interested displays of wokeness. Rather, Freire would surely endorse the more rigorous and difficult work of practicing intellectual humility through the complex and at-times uncomfortable work of addressing one’s oppressors. Indeed, Freire would likely agree that “humanization is not about the oppressed replacing the oppressors, but about the collective creation of a more egalitarian society, without exploitation, exclusions or power hierarchies” (Schugurensky, 2017, p. 5).
In this provocation, I seek to more deeply and rigorously interrogate the often-problematic use of Freirean philosophy in music education discourse through social media woke culture. In particular, I question the practice of conjuring Freire’s name and wielding his phrases to justify the tactic of engaging in dialogue with others through “call-out culture,” “cancel culture,” and “virtue signaling.” I deliberately distance this process of critical reflection from the equally-problematic act of “tone policing,” in which ad hominem criticisms are utilized as a silencing tactic to negate the valid emotionality of a marginalized person’s argument. With social media’s identity as an intimate stage with impersonal networks, I argue that without critical reflection, reductive attempts to engage in praxis can easily devolve into dehumanizing behaviors, ultimately thwarting forward progress through this otherwise powerful social tool.
References
Freire, P. (1970/2010). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. Ramos, trans.). New York, NY: Bloomsbury.
Lynch, M. P. (2019). Know-it-all society: Truth and arrogance in political culture. New York, NY: Liveright Publishing Co.
Schugurensky, D. (2017). Freire and the millennials: Revisiting the triangle of transformation. Rhizoma Freireano, 22, 1–9. Retrieved from http://www.rizoma-freireano.org/freire-and-the-22
Wallace, E., Buil, I., & de Chernatony, L. (2018). ‘Consuming good’ on social media: What can conspicuous virtue signalling on Facebook tell us about prosocial and unethical intentions? Journal of Business Ethics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-018-3999-7
Relevantly, the social capital associated with possessing heightened sociopolitical awareness has led to the vogue of “woke culture”—a social movement which has advanced social mindfulness toward matters of marginalization, but has also resulted in such antagonistic social trends as “call-out culture,” “cancel culture,” and other behaviors that serve to reprimand others for their apparent lack of social justice know-how, irrespective of personal effort or growth. Despite woke culture’s lucrative benefits, it simultaneously highlights the social appeal of belonging to a community of like-minded progressives (Lynch, 2019), causing people to self-delineate their own status of social belonging as a result. In the process, it becomes common practice for scholars to proclaim their own wokeness by uncritically raising Freire’s name in the name of social justice—a matter that appears particularly germane and delicate for white and white-passing scholars. Such conspicuous conveying of moral superiority, also known as “virtue signaling” (Wallace, Buil, & de Chertaony, 2018), becomes a practice with self-regarding—rather than transformative—intentions. However, through a closer reading of Freirean philosophy, and its ardent call for humility as central to praxialism, it becomes difficult to conceive of Freire’s support for such self-interested displays of wokeness. Rather, Freire would surely endorse the more rigorous and difficult work of practicing intellectual humility through the complex and at-times uncomfortable work of addressing one’s oppressors. Indeed, Freire would likely agree that “humanization is not about the oppressed replacing the oppressors, but about the collective creation of a more egalitarian society, without exploitation, exclusions or power hierarchies” (Schugurensky, 2017, p. 5).
In this provocation, I seek to more deeply and rigorously interrogate the often-problematic use of Freirean philosophy in music education discourse through social media woke culture. In particular, I question the practice of conjuring Freire’s name and wielding his phrases to justify the tactic of engaging in dialogue with others through “call-out culture,” “cancel culture,” and “virtue signaling.” I deliberately distance this process of critical reflection from the equally-problematic act of “tone policing,” in which ad hominem criticisms are utilized as a silencing tactic to negate the valid emotionality of a marginalized person’s argument. With social media’s identity as an intimate stage with impersonal networks, I argue that without critical reflection, reductive attempts to engage in praxis can easily devolve into dehumanizing behaviors, ultimately thwarting forward progress through this otherwise powerful social tool.
References
Freire, P. (1970/2010). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. Ramos, trans.). New York, NY: Bloomsbury.
Lynch, M. P. (2019). Know-it-all society: Truth and arrogance in political culture. New York, NY: Liveright Publishing Co.
Schugurensky, D. (2017). Freire and the millennials: Revisiting the triangle of transformation. Rhizoma Freireano, 22, 1–9. Retrieved from http://www.rizoma-freireano.org/freire-and-the-22
Wallace, E., Buil, I., & de Chernatony, L. (2018). ‘Consuming good’ on social media: What can conspicuous virtue signalling on Facebook tell us about prosocial and unethical intentions? Journal of Business Ethics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-018-3999-7