“To be a complete person in the modern world, one must be sensitive to culture in a global context,” wrote Victor Fung in 1995, and it’s a quote that has only gotten more potent with increasing globalization. And this can be a very good thing: I firmly believe that experiencing new and different cultures from one’s own leads to a kinder heart. We can build critical thinking skills, compassion, empathy, and curiosity in students by emphasizing the wide variety of music practices in the world. There are worries that teaching other kinds of music in American classrooms means forcing Western classical music out the window, but we won’t lose western music by also including music from other cultures—both are music and both can be taught in the same school without causing problems. In fact, it’s probably beneficial.
The American high school music education system is very western-oriented. Students focus on music by western composers, with very few exceptions. This leaves lots of room for enhancement via introducing students to other cultures’ music making practices. We should include a greater amount of genuine performances of non-western music. We should include non-western music in our repertoire, in our lesson plans, and in our daily lives. Even if a student is dead set on performing western music and nothing but western music, I guarantee they will find studying other cultures’ music to improve their abilities all around.
My number one priority in the classroom is to model kindness and compassion for my students and to teach them to do the same. Giving my students musical skills is a very important secondary goal. Hate, anger, intolerance all often come from a place of misunderstanding or lack of experience. In order to combat that, I must first be experienced myself in learning about other cultures’ music, and I must develop a network of people I can rely on to share their culture’s music with my class. I hope that by exposing my students to lots of different music and lots of different cultures, I can teach them to be kind and build a safer world for them at the same time.