The importance of music as a mediator of values and ideologies should be clear to everyone: it has served different ideologies and had different aims through history. Finland and Estonia have been in a good position because they still maintaining music as a compulsory subject in the National Curricu-lum, which deserves research in specific fields from history of music educa-tion to psychology of music and implementaeduca-tion of different methods, to name just a few.
In the present national curricula of both countries for basic education, music is a part of the arts. The whole concept of arts as well as arts education has many meanings and connections and is not easy to define perfectly: it encompasses the development of affective, cognitive, technological, psycho-motoric and social skills as well as specific subject knowledge. Arts
educa-tion covers visual arts, music, handicraft, sports (physical exercise) in both Estonia and Finland, plus dance, theatre, drama and literature.
The mentioned subjects being taught at general comprehensive schools are based on long educational traditions, different philosophical points of view, changing educational focuses, different social and political factors and humanistic, commercial, competitive or utilitarian points of view. The arts have both individual and broader social and cultural meaning. They may lead the way to understanding people’s minds, thinking, emotions and deepest feelings. The value and status of different arts in an individual’s mind may vary widely. The modern idea of arts education includes the idea of every human being’s right to the arts, the right to feel, react, experience or make arts (Kaartinen & Viitanen 2000). Philosophical discussions about the essen-tials and foci of art and arts education in connection with its manifestations are taking place in many forums. These different background philosophies are embodied in the teaching and learning processes of individual teachers, either consciously or unconsciously. As a whole, the volume of research, which has been done, or is being done on arts subjects at school, is far from the desired goal, although Heidi Westerlund (2003) and Lauri Väkevä (2009) have studied in depth the philosophy of music education in Finland in recent years.
In Estonia the research done on music education is only beginning. So far the main themes in music education research have concerned the history and methods of music education. Despite the solid foundation of Estonian music education, laid in the 1930s by
Professor Riho Päts, who masterfully united the modern ideas of Euro-pean reform-pedagogy, the ideas of Kodaly and Orff with Estonian folk and artistic music, no in-depth studies can be found. At present this unique and consistent concept of music teaching has been supplemented with modern ideas of activity learning, music therapy (painting, drawing) and multicultur-alism.
Ruokonen & Muldma ( 2007) have researched sustainable and cultural meanings of music in basic education through 8th grade pupils’ thoughts and experiences. Their study indicates that Estonian and Finnish 8th grade pupils see music as an essential value. At the same time, in spite of the continuous systematic process of music education, they mostly appreciate contemporary music. Both ‘inherent’ meanings and ‘delineated’ meanings (Green 2006) were found in pupils’ writings and they were strongly connected with each another. Strong emotions and meaningful experiences in listening to and making music became meaningful especially on all levels of three-dimensional theory as shown by Erkkilä (1999). Practical musical activity
stays in the background and therefore pupils primarily regard music as either pleasure or therapy.
Music also had important cultural and educational roles for sustainable development in both countries. The meanings of music were connected to the values of recognising diversity and increasing the respect and tolerance for differences. Music also promoted the creativity of pupils in a spirit of free-dom and intercultural dialogue. New technology seemed to become important in promoting new original forms of musical expression. Music was also one of the best ways to maintain cultural vitality. In Estonia, people had experi-enced “the Singing revolution”; in Finland folk music can be studied as a main subject at Sibelius Academy. The trend of globalisation was also strongly seen in the music cultures of young people. Their research demon-strated that music lessons in form 8 had no effect on the development of national identity and there were only a few pupils admitting that they liked listening to folk music in both countries. Another regrettable circumstance is that only some pupils go to the opera or attend concerts of classical music (Ruokonen & Muldma, 2007).
According to Ruokonen & Muldma (2007), students considered music education to be a part of their culture and cultural education. There seemed to be a significant interest in music and music education among students, and more widely than a basic education can nowadays provide in Finland. The personality of a music teacher was an important motivator in school music studies. Music could be more connected to the cross-curricular themes, which were included in the core to teach pupils future-oriented thinking about eco-logical, economical, social and cultural sustainability. If the Finnish curricu-lum would also include compulsory music education in forms 7 to 9, the music teacher could support pupils in their musical, cultural and personal growth According to students, music meant a lot to them, mostly on a per-sonal level; the themes concerning musical self-expression and a person’s emotional growth are found in the essays. Music gave pupils the opportunity to join a group and develop their social and musical skills by playing, singing and dancing. Writers emphasised the need for praxial learning (‘learning by doing’) in school music education, as well as the importance of understand-ing the music culture as a lively, developunderstand-ing but not rootless, process. Music mattered to pupils in basic education, in both Estonia and Finland. The im-portance of music reflects the many challenges for sustainable development in culture and education (Ruokonen & Muldma 2007).