Children's perceptions about, attitudes toward, and understandings of multicultural music education

This study investigates children's perceptions about, attitudes toward, and understandings of cultures other than their own as they encountered music from various cultures during their general music classes. The study occurred in two elementary schools in suburban communities in the southwestern United States. Over three months, I observed music classes that the teachers described as including multicultural music. One group of 33 fourth-grade students received instruction in which they experienced African drumming during most class sessions. The other group of 27 children learned songs and moved to listening examples from a variety of cultures. Data collection included open-ended questionnaires from all 60 children---31 girls and 29 boys---and in-depth interviews with 13 students at the beginning and the end of a three-month observation period. The children's responses reflected generally positive attitudes toward multicultural music instruction and positive feelings toward multicultural music. Students stated that they liked multicultural songs just because they liked music or because the music sounded different and interesting to them. Students reported difficulty in learning new languages; language difficulty was sometimes associated with negative attitudes and/or rejection of multicultural literature. As songs became familiar, the children reported feeling more comfortable with new languages. The children whose music instruction consisted primarily of singing in new languages focused on language more than the students whose learning experiences were more varied. Some non-Caucasian students reported liking to learn music and languages from their own or other cultures because they thought their peers would "learn to respect" their music, language, and culture. Children demonstrated cultural awareness and sensitivity, but few demonstrated cultural valuing. Findings suggest that embedding multicultural music into the curriculum may aim at minimizing biased views, but a supermarket approach may limit cultural understanding. Further, students may develop negative impressions or instructional attitudes if they perceive that songs from other cultures are hard to learn, particularly when multiple languages are introduced within relatively short time frames. More in-depth and carefully-guided study of fewer cultures may help students develop understanding of cultures.