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This chapter addresses the need for curricular change in higher education from a social justice perspective grounded in an antiracism discursive framework and focuses on music teacher education in large public and private university... more
This chapter addresses the need for curricular change in higher education from a social justice perspective grounded in an antiracism discursive framework and focuses on music teacher education in large public and private university settings. After a brief discussion of the antiracism framework, I look at some of the historical and current impediments to change unique to music teacher education through a discussion of how those impediments may be reflective of a culture of whiteness in post-secondary institutions. Racial assumptions underlie classical music studies in higher education; those assumptions manifest themselves in our behaviors, educational processes, and educational products. The chapter concludes with several examples of program revisions in music education that have begun to address the types of changes necessary for developing pedagogies of social justice for music teacher education—to move music studies in higher education out of “the shadows of Mozart” and into the...
Canada has established an international identity as a racially and culturally diverse society that prides itself on inclusion. Since the nation’s first policy of official multiculturalism was enacted in 1971, eventually culminating in the... more
Canada has established an international identity as a racially and culturally diverse society that prides itself on inclusion. Since the nation’s first policy of official multiculturalism was enacted in 1971, eventually culminating in the Canadian Multiculturalism Act in 1988, educational organizations, including many of Canada’s community children’s choirs, have sought to promote cultural diversity. Early attempts focused primarily on repertoire, and from today’s cultural understanding seem not only naive but trivializing, and from certain perspectives, colonizing. These initial attempts, congruent with the original goals for Canadian multiculturalism, which focused primarily on diversity of language, customs, and religion, have proven ineffective, however, in helping choirs attract diverse memberships. This chapter explores some of the reasons why the type of multiculturalism practiced in Canadian children’s community choirs has not led to the diversity of membership that many org...
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This paper, then, reports on my analysis of the discourse(s) at work within choral music publishers’ catalogs from the years 2000-2009. Since these catalogs have direct influence on curriculum in performance-based choral music education,... more
This paper, then, reports on my analysis of the discourse(s) at work within choral music publishers’ catalogs from the years 2000-2009. Since these catalogs have direct influence on curriculum in performance-based choral music education, my analysis interrogates both the embedded assumptions and the representations of “American-ness” evident in the catalogs as signifiers of popular opinion and beliefs in the post 9/11 years. In assessing the publishers’ catalogs as texts that not only reflect but serve to produce cultural attitudes in the U.S., my goal is to bring into relief the ways that discourses promoting commodified American patriotism contribute subtly to racism, including but not limited to, anti-Arab racism, sometimes referred to as Islamophobia (Salaita, 2006, p. 340). For purposes of this paper, Islamophobia is “a descriptor for bigotry against Arabs and Muslims” (Salaita, 2006, p. 248).
Toni Morrison’s provocative book Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, serves as the point of departure for this paper, which seeks to interrogate some of the ways that choral music educators in North America may... more
Toni Morrison’s provocative book Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, serves as the point of departure for this paper, which seeks to interrogate some of the ways that choral music educators in North America may rely on what Morrison terms an “Africanist presence” in our efforts to teach a multicultural music curriculum. The focus of the paper is on choral performance programs in both schools and community, and the ways in which educators may both construct and consume the other as we incorporate global song into our programs. This tendency is exacerbated in educational programs whose primary goal is concert performance. The paper investigates three specific tensions evident in choral music programs that incorporate world musics into their curricula. The first tension derives from the culture of whiteness that promotes official multiculturalism and serves to sustain the choral music publishing industry, and from the publication practices that may work to supp...
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Socio-historical contexts are integral to both general and music educational practices. However, when music teacher education candidates ask such questions as, “How can we engage in musics outside of the accepted canon and talk about... more
Socio-historical contexts are integral to both general and music educational practices. However, when music teacher education candidates ask such questions as, “How can we engage in musics outside of the accepted canon and talk about these issues in my class without being accused by parents or administrators of being ‘political?’” they restrict possibilities for engaging with context meaningfully. Yet students,
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... A presentation by Alexandra Kertz-Welzel 34 and a resulting published article 35 about Adorno's concerns for music education caused me to take a reflexive hard look at my own anti-racism pedagogy. As Kertz-Welzel explains ...
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... As has been identified in previous studies (Rich & Cargile, 2004; Solomon, Portelli, & Daniel, 2005), students' reactions to course readings about Whiteness ranged from denial to frustration to eventual acceptance of the... more
... As has been identified in previous studies (Rich & Cargile, 2004; Solomon, Portelli, & Daniel, 2005), students' reactions to course readings about Whiteness ranged from denial to frustration to eventual acceptance of the concept of Whiteness, although due to the racial ...
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© Deborah Bradley 2006 All rights reserved. The content of this article is the sole responsibility of the author. The ACT Journal, the MayDay Group, and their agents are not liable for any legal actions that may arise involving the... more
© Deborah Bradley 2006 All rights reserved. The content of this article is the sole responsibility of the author. The ACT Journal, the MayDay Group, and their agents are not liable for any legal actions that may arise involving the article's content, including but not ...
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An ongoing reflective effort towards understanding the context of music curriculum and education must serve as a common starting point for nurturing robust communities of music educators and learners. We are committed to engaging in a... more
An ongoing reflective effort towards understanding the context of music curriculum and education must serve as a common starting point for nurturing robust communities of music educators and learners. We are committed to engaging in a discussion which reframes all musical learning, including what takes place in schools, as a lived and diverse set of practices that encourages practitioners to be critically reflexive towards concepts of music pedagogy and curriculum as well as those practices represented in local, national, and global paradigms in education.