For many, John Paynter has been the most significant figure in music education in Britain and beyond over the past 50 years. He remains widely influential through his work and his many publications, some of which are hard to locate. This collection of seminal writings, selected in collaboration with a range of music educators, brings the ideas afresh to a new generation of teachers, and includes useful introductory notes by John Paynter. The collection embraces the core topics and values of music education and includes contributions from a range of publications, among them core text books and articles, as well writings hitherto published in Britain.

'If you only buy one book this year, I would make it this one.'

About the Author
Dr Janet Mills (1954-2007) began her career teaching in a comprehensive school. She was a teacher educator at Westminster College in Oxford and the University of Exeter. Her work as an HM Inspector of Schools included the implementation of the first national system for inspecting Local Authority Instrumental Music Services. Mills was a Research Fellow at the Royal College of Music in London and in 2004 won a National Teaching Fellowship. She wrote several books, and many articles in books, magazines, and research journals. John Paynter (1931-2010) was known for his advocacy of composition as a basis for the school music curriculum. He was appointed Professor in the Department of Music at the University of York and became Head of Department in 1983. He directed the project Music in the Secondary School Curriculum which ultimately established regional music education centres. This work played a leading part in the formation of Music components in the National Curriculum and in GCSEs.

Reviews
Get hold of a copy of the book, where these ideas and many others are expressed much more eloquently. If you only buy one book this year, I would make it this one. * David Ashworth, www.teachingmusic.org.uk, August 2009 *
This is not an easy read, nor is it intended to be: Paynter wants to make us think, and he succeeds. This is writing of the highest quality - thought-provoking, passionate and perceptive . . . Who should read it? Every music teacher who cares about music education and its place in the school. It is clear that we all owe this man and his colleagues a great deal; now he is gone, the least we can do is preserve his work by reading his writings and, much more importantly, continuing to make music in the nation's classrooms. * Patrick Gazard, Music Teacher, September 2010 *
The selection presented enables re-evaluation of the work of John Paynter and in reviewing his thinking it is not long before its relevance to the present time becomes apparent. It offers an alternative to standardised curricula, to the prescription of outcomes, to standardised approaches to assessment, to prescribed strategies, to conventional thought about progression in musical learning, to the homogenising of ways of knowing and understanding and the systematic downgrading of intuitive understanding, to the teacher as unresponsive to what the pupil has to offer, to classrooms that proscribe pupils having ideas and lively classroom conversations, and to the marginalisation of thinking and making. It offers a way of being musical and knowing music. * John Finney, British Journal of Education *



Book Information
ISBN 9780193355910
Author Janet Mills
Format Paperback
Page Count 240
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 156mm * 13mm