Challenging Voices

Children with challenging behaviour who get excluded from school often go on to have some of the worst life outcomes of any group in society. Often relocated into Pupil Referral Units or PRUs, few of them do well academically and when they leave school many get caught up in the criminal justice system or become homeless. Yet these young people can be very creative and frequently have a passion for music, although they often do not get the opportunity to play or get involved in music making. This book looks at these children, who they are and how they are treated by the education system. The book’s aim is to illustrate successful ways musicians work with these children, how they treat them with respect and enable them to grow as young musicians. Drawing on his decades of experience working with these young people, his PhD research and interviews with over forty educators and community musicians, the author shares a very different methodology to that used in mainstream music education, a methodology that values the child more than the curriculum and puts equal emphasis on musical, personal and social development.