This paper addresses the question “How has American music education, as a field, understood and constructed its value?” by analyzing the kinds of discursive strategies used in the past to generate a value-discourse of music education. Through analysis of how value-discourse is constructed for music education in the professional discourse as represented by the Music Supervisors’ Journal from 1920-1930 and how the value discourse changes in response to its socio-historical context we may be able to better understand our own current value discourse and its relationship to our current socio-historical moment. Through historical discourse analysis two primary themes are identified: “social efficiency” and “Americanization.” “Social efficiency” is linked to larger movements in national discourses around education as a tool for inscribing social cohesion and norms. It was leveraged inside the music education professional discourse to provide a ground for value claims for music education throughout the decade. “Americanization” similarly mobilizes the Americanization movement from the early 20th to make claims about music education's value for cultural assimilation. After outlining these themes and how they were used in music education discourse I then turn to our contemporary context and use this historical perspective to trouble the implications of adopting ideological value propositions from metadiscourses and how this may inform our own contemporary claims to value for music education, including how adopting value propositions without careful consideration presents a danger for both music education and society.