- Title
- Harmonisation with nature: enhancing health education through empathetic ecomusication
- Creator
- Smith, Kylie Deborah
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2015
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- This is a thesis about the spiritual connections between music and health and health and the environment. These connections might at first blush seem problematic, but I aim to show that elucidating these associations at a deeper level can make an enormous difference to the purpose of education at every level. I shall endeavour to show that we are a culture that has paradoxically come to sacralise what is sacred in our world, while at the same time sanctifying what is secular. In contrast to such sociocultural currents, I believe that music education, environmental education and health education can all be reconceptualised pedagogically as modalities of spiritual education. To comprehend the purport of this disquisition involves reframing each of these areas in a new way, while also discerning the ideological impediments which are structurally exemplified to militate against our doing so. The argument I shall advance in this thesis is that if we are to become guardians for spiritual values which give to our lives a special sense of meaning and purpose, it is essential that we identify and expose the covert ideology of technological materialism propagated in our schools, and to which we have thus often inadvertently given our allegiance and commitment. I shall argue that the effect of this ideology on the evolution of musicology serves as an impediment to the spiritual well being and health of our children and the integrity of the environment which sustains them. It is my belief that it is only by making explicit the things that oppress the human spirit that we can discern what it takes to emancipate it. Once the human spirit is set free, the task of liberating ourselves from the spell of technologies of power and the unauthentic lives to which they may give rise is just a step away. With the will to see the truth that was always before us, it becomes possible at last to restore the vestiges of humanity that somehow got left behind as a consequence of the preoccupation always to look ahead to technological innovation as the ultimate panacea for our social, and perhaps even our spiritual, salvation. I argue that the restoration of the music we sing to God in gratitude is one such vestige of this liberation. In the pages that follow I shall devote myself to the delicate task of making explicit the paradigmatic value assumptions and hidden presuppositions of the technological materialism which continue to engender the cultural madness of depersonalisation, dehumanisation, and mindless destruction of the environment. This is the lifestyle that has seduced us, and it is the lifestyle from which we have yet to escape, thereby establishing empathetic and loving connections with other people and the world around us.
- Subject
- philosophy of education; music technology; environmental sustainability; ecomusicology; health education
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1309887
- Identifier
- uon:21957
- Rights
- Copyright 2015 Kylie Deborah Smith
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Abstract | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Thesis | 20 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |