Balanced Teaching in the Music Classroom

The art of balanced teaching in education should be a desire of all teachers. Sadly, most students graduate with a perspective only as wide as their teachers. As we look specifically at the music classroom, I believe that if we are honest about our past musical teaching, each of us, at some point in time, have taught music from our own understanding and perhaps avoided teaching on material that we either do not have formal training in, or that we do not find of personal interest.

That being said, as music teachers, it is our job to educate our students about music. This broad subject category called music covers the world over – both large and small cultural groups. Building on our knowledge as pedagogues, we can see that the music classroom crosses into many other subjects such as mathematics, geography, art, history, and social studies. By coordinating other subject disciplines with the music classroom, the burden of teaching students such a vast amount of knowledge can be lightened – and even making it easier for the different learner-types to understand. Using the resources of cross-classroom teaching will permit the music classroom to engage students in learning about the more specific music aspects of a music genre while still permitting the student to gain adequate knowledge about his or her instrument.

By cultivating and incorporating a balanced ethnomusicologist understanding in the music classroom, we will be leading our students, by example, of how we are each responsible to respect individuals, and cultures, outside of the classroom walls. The next generation of a country’s leadership is formed by the values and ethics that are taught, or neglected, in the education classroom.