The Relationship between Family Milieu and Music Education

Abstract

Our study aimed to map the family milieu of 21st-century music students. With the help of the applied social science methods, we studied what patterns facilitated children’s music education and whether there were objectively justifiable differences in the socioeconomic status of music students and non-musical students. In our survey, we used a quantitative method in the form of paper-based, self-administered questionnaires. We sampled eighth-grade students of elementary art schools in several county seats that had a long history of teaching (n = 270) and eighth-grade students in several elementary schools (n = 285) as a control group. We assumed that students learning music are children of families with higher cultural capital, mostly with backgrounds in music education, who consider extracurricular activities investments. We tested our hypothesis using SPSS program, the methods included logistic regression and cluster analysis. Our results prove the existence of differences in the socioeconomic status of music and non-music students.

Keywords

• music education
• family milieu
• socioeconomic status
• cultural capital