Any music connects to equity and the activity of contex- tualizing all musics helps situate them in relation to the past and the present. Taking the time away from so-called official music activities to place the music in a context helps students understand that everything they encounter is socially situated. Working with students to learn a spiri- tual, for example, presents an opportunity to talk about plantation life and enslavement in U.S. history. What stu- dents can then bring to their performance of the spiritual is infinitely deeper and richer than their performance of the same song without any contextual knowledge.


We might also consider the manner in which we explore these issues with students of different ages. In doing so, we must not discount the experiences and knowledge of young children. Young children can have experiences of marginalization in ways that their teacher never has. It is possible to talk about very serious and important issues with young children, but it is also important to keep a balance. Many of these issues are issues of trauma, so as teachers/facilitators, if we don’t keep that in mind, we risk retraumatizing marginalized students or traumatizing students who have not had this type of life experience and we need to be prepared that the possibility is there. How- ever, to not acknowledge these issues is to underserve our population and that non-recognition is also a trauma. It is a delicate balance.


Seizing the “teachable moment”


It is important to recognize that we teach people. As such, issues will enter the classroom that do not relate in particular to the subject matter. There are moments in class when the events of the world both personally and more globally need to be the topic for the day. When that occurs, focusing on the issues critically and thinking about marginalization and oppression at the center of the discussion can be the very most important thing you could do on a given day. In the wake of the Orlando shootings, how might we support our LGBTQQIA youth and enact the classroom as a safe space? Can we allow students to dictate the form of this safe space? What might that look like in our classrooms?


What can music do?


As we think about what music might offer to issues of social justice and injustice, we might think about the ways that music can serve as a medium for students to speak back to the conditions that affect them, perhaps through creating their own music. Students may use music to speak to issues that they worry about, much in the way that Michele Kaschub (2009) suggests in her article,


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“Critical pedagogy for creative artists: Inviting young composers to engage in artistic social action.” Students all have issues that concern them, and allowing them the space to create music that addresses the issues they care about and that affect them is potentially very powerful.


Keeping it critical


When working through issues of equity, maintaining a critical orientation is crucial. A critical focus encourages students (and teacher) to be critical of information pre- sented and to ask thoughtful questions about what they experience in the world. Much social justice work that takes place has to do with conversations. The activities that I have seen not work as well are those activities in which the teacher as facilitator did not approach the issues from a critical framework. Returning to the discussion at the beginning of this article about systems vs. individuals, it is easy to allow conversations about issues of racism to become about individuals. A critical orientation allows a teacher to redirect the conversation about a person who said something racist to a discussion of what may have influenced that individual to say such a thing. This discus- sion might lead to a conversation about the way movies and the media portray different groups and the way that creates stereotypes. When, as educators, we stay critical, we can focus the discussion on systemic issues rather than on questions of the individuals. We may also engage students in ways we might be able to make some changes in the system.


Teaching critically is doing the work toward a more just world. When we do equity work, we understand that the world is profoundly unequal. In the classroom, we can attempt to enact work that levels the playing field within our classroom space, acknowledging that an even playing field is not always a possibility. Modeling equity work for the next generation, however, could potentially have profound effects. When we create the space in our music classes for students to explore systems that promote ineq- uity, rather than situating inequity as an individual prob- lem, we create the conditions for our future generations to create seismic systemic changes.


References


Collins, P. H. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.


Goldberg, D. T. (1993). Racist culture: Philosophy and the politics of meaning. Cambridge, UK: Blackwell.


Hooks, b. (1992). Black looks: Race and representation. Boston, MA: South End Press.


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