Abstract
Since its inception, the Society for Music Teacher Education (SMTE) has been aware of the need to diversify the knowledge and experiences of both our preservice music teachers and the professors who prepare them. Bennett Reimer (1991), in the initial issue of the fledgling Journal of Music Teacher Education (JMTE), articulated the repertoire issue: Our major error in this regard has not been that we emphasize this (Western) literature—it is that we tend to do so to the virtual exclusion of other literatures. Such literatures include both the diversity of Western musics outside the concert context and the diversity of musics of world cultures, practically all of which are represented in our population. (p. 9)
The 2015 SMTE Symposium on Music Teacher Education, Toward a Stronger, Richer Community, featured speakers and presentations on issues of both repertoire and professorate diversity. A report on that conference, authored by SMTE Chair, Susan Conkling, is available at http://smte.us/2015/10/15/report-on-2015-smte-symposium/. A more in-depth analysis of differences in school music opportunities based primarily on race and economic status can be found in Conkling’s From the Chair titled “Beloved community” in the June 2015 issue of JMTE. This insightful summary of access to music education among various constituents is well worth reading, considering, and rereading. I urge you to do so.
Examination of recent JMTE articles reveals an ongoing interest in the many facets of diversity. These include the value of a diverse repertoire with authentic multicultural experiences (Howard, Swanson, & Campbell, 2014) and the performance of vernacular music (Isbell, 2015). Other researchers emphasize diversity among teachers, including linguistic differences (Eros, 2015), gender issues (Robinson, 2015), teaching children with disabilities (Taylor, 2016), and strategies for culturally responsive teaching (McKoy, MacLeod, Walter, & Nolker, 2015). Each of these is currently available via SAGE Publications’ OnlineFirst that provides access to forthcoming articles prior to publication.
In this essay, I’d like to expand the diversity conversation to include our bedrock beliefs regarding how music is learned. At my university, as I suspect is true of many of yours, we have a number of international students who are pursuing doctorates, most of whom intend to return to their home countries in order to provide leadership in preparing music teachers there. Currently, in addition to American students, we have representatives from China, Uganda, Canada, Thailand, Iran, Tanzania, and Korea. As you can imagine, we have interesting discussions about how music is taught, how schools are structured, and the life of music teachers within these cultures. However, I’m not sure that we’ve ever encountered a true examination of the differences in how one learns music until this incident.
The Incident
A Ugandan doctoral student is working on an interesting project comparing improvised rhythmic accompaniments after a song is learned via notation or via oral tradition (watch this video and join in whenever you are comfortable). But the truly enlightening incident happened when he explained his project to a graduate class of which he is a member. The reactions of several of the American students were almost visceral when they were told they would be asked to “improvise a rhythmic accompaniment to this song.” Responses included emotional comments: “I can’t improvise,” “I don’t want to improvise,” and “You shouldn’t use ‘improvise’ in the directions because it causes so much anxiety.” American students seemed generally understanding of the expressed fear of improvisation. International students, especially those from oral traditions in which community performances are the norm, were amazed and frankly unbelieving. “How could anyone possibly be nervous about this task? It’s what we do.” It was only after much probing that we began to understand just how different our childhood backgrounds were and what impact these differences might have on our understandings of what it means to teach and learn music.
Students growing up in an oral tradition culture seemed to think of improvisation as a normal part of their skill set. It was done without thinking and with little if any performance anxiety. Student growing up in a notation culture tended to find the task of improvising terribly intimidating. Of course, it should be remembered that our students audition based on their accomplishments at reading the notes on the page and so as doctoral students have experienced multiple successful high-stakes audition/sight-reading situations. They are accomplished readers of notation and have achieved based on that accomplishment. The important part of the event: Neither group initially understood the other group’s reactions. There was surprise on both “sides.”
Did I anticipate this reaction? Definitely not, or at least not the strength of the anxiety. Did I facilitate this situation so that my students could learn? Definitely not, but I will in the future. How long did it take before the people in the room recognized that they were not on the same page? They struggled many minutes with the idea that something so basic was not shared by everyone and continue to talk about it weeks later. The entire experience caused all of us to rethink exactly what we know about our own culture and our own musicianship, and even how we define “musician.”
My point: If these international students had not been present in our program, I don’t believe this conversation would have ever occurred. I don’t think this is an understanding one can get from reading about this issue. In point of fact, I am struggling to emphasize the magnitude of the impact of this event on everyone involved as I write this essay. The memories about what one did as a very small child are bedrock. The assumption that everyone had these same basic experiences as a small child is so strong that many cannot even see that there are possible differences in cultures on this fundamental issue. Up to this point I believe we had all been viewing cultural differences as chiefly a matter of repertoire and performance practice variations.
For me personally, it was a watershed moment in my understanding of the fundamental differences among cultures. And for me, this is the strongest reason for implementing a mix of cultures via the presence of international students. Perhaps an examination of bedrock assumptions must occur before a true multicultural experience can happen. Perhaps listening and performing music of a different culture (even quite authentically), while certainly a step in the right direction, isn’t sufficient.
This incident might be interpreted as impetus toward learning music by means other than notation (Isbell, 2015). Certainly true. Why can’t I play piano by ear, even though I can read the spots on the page quite well? To what extent does learning notation keep one from playing by ear? Or does it? Certainly the by ear/by notation issues should be examined. Actually, that very process has been examined throughout American music education history as teaching strategy (see “The rote/note controversy”; Mark & Gary, 2007). But I think it goes deeper than that.
Tell Me Something You Don’t Know
The interesting thing about this incident was how puzzled everyone was about the reactions of others. On both “sides,” the reactions seemed to be completely unexpected. Such thoughts raise the question of whether it is possible to “tell me something you don’t know.” When our basic assumptions are such that we can’t even imagine a scenario in which anyone could possibly be different, then we truly “don’t know.”
Another way to examine the depth of the misunderstanding between a notation culture and an oral tradition culture might be via what is known as the Johari Window (Luft & Ingham, 1961). This is a widely used method (used in diverse fields, including business, psychology, nursing, and military strategy) for analyzing the shared knowledge of a group to reach a better working consensus. Consensus and understanding are approached by analyzing four windows: (1) what an individual knows about himself/herself and of which the group is aware, (2) what others know about the individual that the individual does not know, (3) what the individual knows about himself that the group does not know, and finally and perhaps most important, (4) what neither the individual nor the group knows. And it is in this fourth area that unexamined assumptions can cause misunderstandings.
So if each of us knows how we ourselves originally learned music, do we also assume we know how the other members of a group learned music? To what extent do we assume that we know what others think, when in fact we don’t? How much time do we spend in the fourth window, in which neither the individual nor the group knows what they don’t know?
During a North Atlantic Treaty Organization conference, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (2002), certainly familiar with tense situations ripe with potential misunderstandings, famously stated, There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.
My point is that an encounter with a bright, articulate person of another culture whose opinions and knowledge are respected would allow us to examine what it is we don’t know we don’t know. Without that structured encounter (which no doubt would not occur quickly), we would not know that there was something we did not know regarding how humans learn music. It was an epiphany for me, and hopefully for my students. And to my mind, it is the most impactful reason why structured, long-term, open-minded, closely observed contact with international students is potentially of immense value to our understanding of music education.
I urge further in-depth contact in international settings, all approached with as open a mind as possible. In a similar sense, may we seek out structured and extended contact with diversities of whatever type (race, economic, gender, sexual identification, and culture, to name but a few). May we all begin to find understandings that we did not know we did not know. And may we all recognize the continuing possibilities in the fact that there are things we do not know and do not realize we do not know.