Curriculum Stasis: Gratton in South Australia

Abstract

This article employs a theory from the field of evolution as an analogy for the processes of change or nonchange in the historical development of the school music curriculum. The theory of punctuated equilibrium argues that stasis or nonchange is the norm in the evolutionary growth of species. It is important to recognised that stasis exists, should be expected and may well be the prevailing norm. This idea is illustrated through a consideration of the development of the music curriculum in state-supported schools in South Australia during the first decades of this century with Francis Lymer Gratton, the Supervisor of Music, as the particular personification of stasis. Gratton was a product of the music education system that he came to oversee. He embraced its policies and practices and upheld them throughout his career, presiding over a period of curricular stasis in music education.