Pondering an End to Technology in Music Education
In their Core Perspective contributions, Samuel Leong and Smaragda Chrysostomou describe international efforts on the part of governments, nongovernmental organizations, and market forces to codify, via policy, the development, distribution, and applications of information technologies in education. In response, I distinguish between techne and poiesis, as those concepts pertain to the ways in which young musicians use technology. I offer Aristotle’s concept of “that for the sake of which” as a framework for critiquing, interrogating, and counterbalancing the implications of such efforts and the underlying assumptions, values, and forces they represent. In the process, I raise questions I hope will be kept at the fore of policy deliberations and that focus such deliberations on the end to, or that for the sake of which, we integrate, use, and give meaning to technology in music education.