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This study aimed to determine the significance of music and music education to middle and high school adolescents, including those enrolled and not enrolled in school music programs. Of particular interest were their expressed meanings of music both in and out of school, with attention to adolescent views on the role of music in identity formation, the musical and nonmusical benefits for adolescents of their engagement with music, the curricular content of secondary school music programs, and the qualities of music teachers in facilitating music-learning experiences in middle and high school classes. An examination of essays, statements, and reflections in response to a national essay content was undertaken using an inductive approach to analyze content through the triangulation of interpretations by the investigators. Five principal themes were identified within the expressed meanings of music by adolescents: (a) identity formation in and through music, (b) emotional benefits, (c) music's life benefits, including character-building and life skills, (d) social benefits, and (e) positive and negative impressions of school music programs and their teachers. Overwhelming support was expressed for music as a necessary component of adolescent life, with support for and comments to probe concerning the work of music educators in secondary school programs.
If music is a universal human behavior-a component of "human nature"-dien it follows that music is present in the lives of young people. Alan Merriam (1964) asserted tiiat music is "a universal behavior" (p. 227), while John Blacking (1995) stated more circumspecdy tiiat "every known human society has what trained musicologists would recognize as 'music'" (p. 224). Music, a human phenomenon, is hailed as a source of personal and collective identity, a means of individual expression, a social fact (Blacking, 1987, 1995; Swanwick, 1999). Its function as a universal language is hotly contested, but its very presence within the lives of young people is inarguably common to all cultures.
From a developmental perspective, music appears at every stage and age of human growth. In adolescence as in infancy, childhood, and adulthood, music plays a valuable and valued role in the individual's social-emotional and intellectual-artistic domains. From age 12 through the high school years, adolescents have been known to embrace music through their active musical engagement in it and often as passionate consumers of...