The Housewright Symposium on the Future of Music Education, held at Florida State University in Tallahassee in 1999, assembled 175 music educators, industry representatives, community arts leaders, and students to speculate about what music education might look like in 2020 and the directions the field might take. Participant presentations were published in 2000 as the book Vision 2020, and the current reprint shares the ideas of the likes of Wiley Housewright, Clifford Madsen, Judith Jellison, and other illuminati of music teaching and learning.

The contributors to this book asked leading questions about the value of music education, its place in the curriculum, and its possible futures. Many preservice music teachers in the intervening twenty years read chapters like “Why Study Music?” or “How Can All People Continue to Be Involved in Music Education?”—questions whose answers are as relevant today as they were at the end of the last century.

As music education moves into a new phase with the current pandemic, the topics considered in this publication are of increasing importance to the discussion. An introduction by two successive presidents of the National Association for Music Education, Kathleen D. Sanz of Florida and Mackie V. Spradley of Texas, place this work in the context of the present day and look at future directions of the profession.