THE SOURCES OF DISPUTE OVER THE EDUCATIONAL VALUES OF POPULAR MUSIC

Abstract

The aim of the article is to present theoretical sources of the dispute concerning the educational values of popular music that has been going on since the sixties of the 20thcentury in the sphere of American as well as European pedagogy. Despite the es-sential role that popular musical genres such as rock, hip-hop and techno, have played (and have been still playing) in the process of shaping the cultural identity of many gen-erations of youth, they have long been pushed outside school premises, or, at best, they have been placed on the margin of educational influences. The reasons for that were partially embedded in the exclusively aesthetic look on the part of pedagogues at popular pieces, deprived of references to their wider functions which they fulfill in the sphere of recipients` everyday lives. The author does not present the course of the very dispute. While outlining the main stands (aesthetic and sociocultural ones), he seeks roots of the mutually clashing convictions from philosophical, aesthetic, anthropological, sociological and psychosocial perspectives of the mass/popular culture which have been providing arguments for and against the pres-ence of the up-to-date youth music in school curricula. The somewhat superficial (on account of the complexity of problematic aspects) overview oftheories and outlooks,on the basis of which the controversy about educational values of popular music originated, opens up new areas of pedagogical activities, addressing various aspects of the contemporary complex and multidimensional culture.