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Multicultural Education: USA Music Students’ Attitudes toward their Diverse Peers


Teachers will need to challenge their beliefs in order to create a learning environment where students from diverse cultures can succeed.


As an educator in the United States’ public school system, have you ever noticed your students’ attitudes toward their diverse peers? Students can acquire negative and positive attitudes from their teacher, community, or home (Carlyle, 2008). Because music students’ attitudes can be learned prior to entering a music program, teachers will need to have positive attitudes and utilize teaching practices that will benefit every student that is enrolled in their classes. Utilizing culturally diverse content and speaking positively about diverse cultural groups are aspects of teaching from a multicultural standpoint. By teaching from a multicultural approach to education, music teachers can redirect their instruction to positively impact a culture that is influenced by the negative biases of society. This article discusses the development of students’ attitudes toward cultural diversity in the United States and, how teaching from a multicultural standpoint is an opportunity for teachers to address students’ attitudes toward diverse pupils in music programs. It criticizes viewpoints about multicultural education, and discusses how teachers can challenge their beliefs.


How do Students Acquire Negative Attitudes Toward their Diverse Peers? As music educators, it is important that we are creating a learning environment that addresses students’ negative beliefs about diverse cultures. However, music educators neglect to understand how students acquire negative beliefs about cultures that are not like their own. Once music teachers understand how students acquire negative viewpoints about culturally diverse students, they will be able to create various musical activities that can help students to speak positively about diverse cultures. According to Johnson and Darrow (2003), students’ attitudes toward diverse cultures are learned “early in life from cultural influences such as school, literature, visual and print media, and our language” (p. 33). That is, students’ attitudes are acquired through “observational learning,” thereby students in the United States’ music programs acquire beliefs and assumptions about diverse cultures


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by Krista Edwards


from the society in which they live (p. 34). For example, if a music student heard someone say that children from Moscow are very smart in math, then the student will have the belief that every pupil from Moscow has high intelligence in subjects such as math. The student’s belief in this instance is positive, however, some students in the United States’ music programs have acquired negative attitudes about students from diverse cultures. According to Mantle-Bromley (as cited in Campbell, 2008), many students come to music classes with preconceived attitudes toward diverse cultures that can “affect their learning process about different cultures” (p. 24). That is, negative remarks can adversely affect a child’s learning experience and “cognitive skills” (Haynes, 2012, p. 27). Furthermore, if the students’ attitudes are acquired from home or the community in which they live, then those students are possibly unaware of their negative attitudes toward their diverse peers. If students are unaware of their negative attitudes toward their diverse peers, then it is the teachers’ responsibility to address the issue during class periods. Vang (2010) believes that students are prejudiced when they have negative attitudes about diverse cultural groups, although they may not know it. “[P]rejudice is any unjustified negative attitudes or expressions toward a group of people solely on the basis of their membership in a group different from that of the prejudiced” (p. 36). In other words, the negative attitudes of some music students in the United States are not supported by facts or evidence, but by beliefs and stereotypes of a diverse cultural group.


Although music students’ negative attitudes toward other cultures are usually learned from their home or community in which they live, they can also be acquired from the music teacher. According to Gay (as cited in Carlyle, 2008), there are many music teachers who enter the classroom with negative attitudes toward “cultural diversity” (p. 31). Some teachers have low expectations for certain cultural groups and are not thrilled about implementing culturally relevant pedagogy


February/March 2017


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