LEARNING TO LEARN
A culturally responsive music curriculum needs to include diversity across social and ethnic strata , too . Hein ’ s polemic argues that ‘ the Eurocentrism of school music sends a clear message about whose cultural expression we value ’. It is a point of contention whether the educator should decide what music is to be learnt and therefore valued , or whether one should respond to the lived experience of young people and the music they engage with on a day-to-day basis . It should not be a zero-sum game , and ultimately diversity and inclusion is the answer . Whilst being diverse , educators also need to be willing to decentre the styles of music they might have hitherto privileged . Hein ’ s blog issues the directive that ‘ music educators can support the growth of culturally flexible students who possess multiple cultural competencies and are able to relate to people different from themselves ’.
Just another hashtag ?
Is the current obsession with equality , diversity and inclusiveness just a fad ? Far from it . The last five hundred years of history have witnessed a gradual progression towards greater liberty of the individual . Via watershed moments such as the Reformation , Enlightenment and French Revolution , the aspiration of equal rights for all is being gradually reified . Grayling ( 2007 , p . 3 ) lists the abolition of slavery , the rights of working people , and the enfranchisement of women as some of the fruits of the struggle for liberty . One of the frontiers now is the inclusion in society of transgender people and their experiences . Music , and by extension the expressive arts , as a site of social and political contestation can benefit from as well as contribute to the progress of individual liberty . As a medium that expresses both the communal and personal , it is ideally equipped , if we only allow it , to give voice to all our diversity and difference .
Clara Schumann
Fanny Mendelssohn
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