In a delightfully self-conscious philosophical "mash-up," Randall Everett Allsup provides alternatives for the traditional master-apprentice teaching model that has characterized music education. By providing examples across the arts and humanities, Allsup promotes a vision of education that is open, changing, and adventurous at heart. He contends that the imperative of growth at the core of all teaching and learning relationships is made richer, though less certain, when it is fused with a student's self-initiated quest. In this way, the formal study of music turns from an education in teacher-directed craft and moves into much larger and more complicated fields of exploration. Through vivid stories and evocative prose, Randall Everett Allsup advocates for an open, quest-driven teaching model that has repercussions for music education and the humanities more generally.
"Writing carefully and compassionately, Allsup's argument is exquisitely nuanced, playing out slowly, lightly, in a Turneresque pastel watercolor of light and inference. This book is unequivocally an important and essential contribution to music education scholarship."
Elizabeth Gould, author of Exploring Social Justice: How Music Education Might Matter
"Better than anyone else in the field, Allsup explores what a more open, less top-down and hierarchical approach to music teaching and learning (and musical meaning) might look like."
Paul Woodford, author of Democracy and Music Education
