Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2008
A challenge was issued, in the first International Journal of Music Education, to find ways to achieve a principle of music education which progressive music educators and traditional African music education have in common:‘an all-round development of the child’. This paper takes up this challenge by exploring the idea that creativity is an essential part of western education. Even though this idea receives the unprecedented support of widely respected western educators of the 20th century and of the Tanglewood Symposium, ‘…those with creative potential are neglected, if not discriminated against, at all levels in American education’ (MacKinnon, 1978, p. 169.) To ascertain why this is so, socio-economic studies are presented which reveal how closely linked the issue of creativity in education is to issues which are beyond the realm of music education or of education in general. The suggestion is that these connections adversely effect the all-round development of the child.