| While exposure to music of diverse origins can promote cross-cultural understanding and ethnically "plural" identities, such exposure can also reify racially coded hierarchies and undermine critical thinking in the educational process. In the Czech Republic, mainstream discourse about ethnic minority musics often instills exaggerated ideas of how groups diverge in terms of intellectual output, emotional stability, work ethic, and other value-laden characteristics. I label this brand of discourse "the dogma of difference," focusing in particular on relations between ethnic Czechs and Roma (Gypsies). I deconstruct the Czech term temperament and its connotations of essential difference while also employing this concept as an ethnotheoretical framework. Following (and modifying) the discipline of Whiteness studies, I propose that a necessary academic counterweight to such a dogma is Gadjology, the practice of analyzing the behavior of Gadje (Whites/non-Roma) using some of the same standards that are deployed by the majority group when constructing minority "deviance." The subjective beliefs, emotions, and special needs of White educators and students should thus be considered as a separate analytical category, ultimately allowing the scholar to stop perseverating on ideas of difference and to theorize fundamental human sameness across ethnic groups.;Through content analysis, interviews with teachers, multifaceted work in schools, and observations of alternative, "multicultural" programs, my field research assessed the possibilities for intercultural music education in Central/East Europe, namely the Czech Republic. Most authors and instructors in the sample were reluctant to include positive, theoretically and factually meaningful musical information about Asian immigrants, Roma or other minorities. Those who were open to intercultural education tended to have the rare benefit of productive personal experiences with minority agents, or had minority heritage themselves, but they did not necessarily eschew educationally debilitating cliches. Furthermore, students showed limited engagement in music classes overall, suggesting the need for greater cultural relevance of instructional material and methods. The government's implied assumption that curricular reforms will usher in an era of interethnic openness in schools thus cannot be realized until teacher training is overhauled to move away from unexamined nationalism and toward intellectually stimulating musical and social analysis. |
