Difficult and Exciting: Music Educational Imaginings and Futures by Sarah Minette, Ph.D. As I start writing this article, I am very aware that I am listening to Chika’s “Industry Games” album (specifically “Crown” in my school office with the door wide open for colleagues and students who walk by to hear). While this combination of instances was not intentional, I find the irony palpable—both in the title of the album but also the nature of the music that I am listening to within the institution of music education. This choice of music, within the institution, sets the stage for the article that will invite you to consider the ways in which we are engaging students from all backgrounds in meaningful music making opportunities. In this article I aim to explore and invite you to consider: our own educational journeys and identify the ways in which these journeys have influenced our understanding of education and knowledge, and consider how we might ask #whatif as we think about our students in relation to the curriculum. Stauffer (2017) prompted music educators and music teacher educators to consider the implications of curriculum and how listening to and with students might change the way music education feels: Whose imaginings? Whose futures? I don’t know. What if, instead of imagining a future for undergraduates, we imagined with them? What if, instead of imagining a future for inservice teachers, our colleagues, we imagined with them? What if, instead of imagining a future for preK-12 learners, or any learner anywhere for that matter, we imagined with them? The future is not us. The future is them. (p. 10) Stauffer (2017) explored this idea through the lens of “radical listening” (p. 7) and suggested we listen mindfully, with an intent to understand, rather than with an intent to dismiss or contradict. Pairing this with her musings about whose imaginings and whose futures, I wonder how we are listening to students when making programmatic (whole program, not musical selection program) decisions. Whose voices are present? Whose voices are being silenced or ignored because they may not have the cultural or social capital to be heard? What music is present in music education? Whose
music? How do we view students, either as P-12 learners or adult learners? These questions will be explored throughout this article and I encourage you to consider these questions for yourself and within your department (if you are not a department of one!) as you plan for the upcoming school year.
Music as a cultural lens
My experiences as a “band kid,” as well as being a daughter to music educators, led me to a path of being a band director. I loved it and I still love working with large ensembles. However, as I started my Ph.D. program, I became acutely aware of experiences missing from my own music education that had led to students who had been under my care to miss out on potential meaningful experiences. I realized that I was using my own lens to create a curriculum. I thought that my needs were the same as the needs of the students with whom I worked. I started exploring culturally relevant teaching, which has evolved to culturally sustaining pedagogy, and now we have reached anti-racist pedagogy. The core of this lineage is that students’ experiences matter and should be considered when we are creating curriculum. Music education is not static, nor should it be so. However, there is resistance to exploring and imagining the possibilities of what is and what could be because of our personal journeys through music. I am one of those that resisted change until I became witness to what would prove to be a huge career change. When considering Stauffer’s (2017) questions, “Whose imaginings? Whose futures?” (p. 10), why do we as a profession of educators tend to put our own interests first? Dr. Bettina Love discusses the importance of cultural memory that begins very early on in childhood. In her 2016 keynote address at the Conference for Community Arts Education, she shares how students don’t need to be taught how to engage in a hip-hop cypher —they know because this is embedded into their cultural identity. I’ve included the link to a portion of her talk. While the entire 5:44 clip is worth the watch, the section that I keep watching and sharing with students begins at 3:47 with a toddler, who is just beginning to formulate words, is rapping with an adult. The child is using gibberish words, but has flow and time. This did not come
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CMEA Magazine
