The article is devoted to the problem of personality-oriented education of students of general secondary education. A special place in this process belongs to the teacher. Emphasis is placed on the need to develop and implement in school practice such approaches that would be focused on the formation of students' ability to build constructive relationships with participants in the educational process in terms of mutual understanding, creative cooperation. The teacher must have a dialogical style of communication with students, cultivating in them equal subjective relationships. The content of the basic principles of personality-oriented music education and upbringing of students is covered: the subjectivity of the relationship between teacher and students (the teacher must have a dialogue style of communication with students, educating them in equal subject relations); innovative teacher training (teacher is constantly improving and uses modern innovative forms, methods and techniques of working with students); own way of the pupil's relation to a musical work, the world around, other people, to itself. (acquaintance of students with technological systems, style of activity of leading teachers of musical art, accumulation of modern methodical receptions, developments, diagnostic techniques, manuals). The pedagogical conditions of this process are offered: the presence of motivation, an important source of which is the musical needs and interests of children; experience of dialogical interaction with art, which teaches the child to understand the artistic language of the work, to realize its essence; teacher's ability to be creative; creation of personality-oriented situations in the lesson; the presence of features of the teacher's thinking (originality, predictability, accuracy, flexibility); creating a helping relationship by the teacher. Application of the personality-oriented approach to the general art education of school-age children, from our point of view, is provided by the following initial positions: the student's personality is a unique phenomenon, so this personality is worthy of respect, even if it is not exemplary; musical development of the child is the goal of the art and educational system of the school; in the process of art education and upbringing the maximum possible atmosphere of success of pupils and a high level of support of their achievements is created; the student is an active and free subject of the educational process, not passively and obediently assimilating the object of study and education; the child is taught not because to think, but because to think and think about art, music in particular; artistic and educational achievements of the student are evaluated not in comparison with other children, but in the dynamics of only his personal positive changes; the teacher perceives the purpose of artistic development of the individual as socially and professionally significant; methodological views of the teacher is a personality-oriented paradigm, the logic of which requires to build the process of general art education so that in the center of it was the personality of the student.