Inclusivity in Music Education

As part of a professional development course I am currently undertaking, I was asked to consider what I could do personally to challenge discrimination and promote inclusive practice in the musical learning of my students. It got me thinking not just about what I can do in my current role but also how my experiences across my career have helped me take steps towards my goal of inclusivity in music education.

As a white, middle-aged male, it could be argued that I belong to the group that needs to most understand diversity, inclusion and discrimination yet understands the least. However, an important step is to recognise the need to change. I am also part of the international teaching scene and the schools that I have worked in are definitely ‘Anglo-centric’. However, again, I have seen changes in curriculum since I started teaching. At the beginning of my career, I was a classroom teacher and we were still teaching the ‘Victorian Britain’ topic- in Germany and Kuala Lumpur! Thankfully, we worked to change that curriculum to make it more relevant to the situation of the students in those schools.

As a music educator, I believe that Music should be a subject that is available for all. Many cultures, throughout the world, have a rich heritage of music but in schools, historically speaking, the ‘masters’ are still European males such as Beethoven and Mozart. At the younger age groups, where I specialise, this is less of an issue because we tend to learn musical skills rather than knowledge. In my department we try and encourage multiculturalism through the skills taught. For example, the Year 1 children were improvising on a given rhythm using specific Indian raags in the run up to Deepavali and then did a similar task based upon the pentatonic scale in the Lunar New Year composition.

During my time in Cairo, I had a student approach me to join the choir for the Christmas concert. The population of Egypt is predominantly Muslim but there is a significant minority of Coptic Christians. The school’s policy at the time was to only allow the Christian children to perform in the Christmas Concert. When the student approached me (this child was a member of the KS2 choir, which was different to the choir for Christmas) and expressed interest I was keen to get them involved. I looked at the programme that I was considering and adapted it by making it more secular and submitted the idea to the school’s management. Unfortunately, this idea did not come to fruition because it happened in the aftermath of the Arab Spring (2011) and so the school had to consider culturally sensitive issues that were bigger than just the Music curriculum.

COVID-19 has brought many difficulties to teaching music in Singapore, not least the ban on singing. However, the guidelines for teachers to sanitise every instrument at the end of each lesson has meant that we have had some extra time for listening activities for the students. We have linked these activities to specific units such as Deepavali and Lunar New Year (both mentioned earlier), where we have looked at various instruments from around the world and famous musicians from different genres but also ‘stand alone’ activities such as lullabies from around the world, where we concentrated on similarities in style.

Pre-COVID, when we could sing, and even now (when I set families projects at home), I have tried to move away from the ‘Western-centric’ repertoire that I am most knowledgeable about and comfortable with. I have taught songs in Arabic, Mandarin, Malay and most recently, in a bid to include all elements of the school community, Tagalog. One issue that I have struggled with is the uptake of boys singing in choirs. Many of the boys enjoy the singing sessions but do not want to be involved in extra choir sessions. I have had many conversations with my peers about how to include boys. One idea was to start a ‘boys’ choir’. However, then there is the debate about whether that is exclusive or inclusive and how do I make that choir appealing to boys. What is a ‘boys’ choir song’? In the end we decided that the choirs were inclusive because they offered the opportunities to join but that there were other issues that meant that they chose not to join.

It was International Women’s Day recently and my colleague and I designed some activities for Year 2 children to highlight some of the discriminatory issues that female performers have had to deal with. I chose Ivy Benson as the focal point of the activity and the issue that she had with male arrangers who were deliberately writing ‘mistakes’ into the scores so that her all-girl big band would sound bad. We turned it around and deliberately wrote our ‘ errors’ into the parts that we gave to the boys. This then led to a discussion about why it was done and whether it was fair.

As with most teachers, I strive to make sure my lessons and activities are inclusive and that the curriculum is diverse but it is an ongoing issue that needs to be reviewed and re-evaluated regularly. However, I do think that I have benefited from teaching overseas because I have learnt about other cultures and having such a broad community at the schools I have worked at has also meant that there is a constant reminder about the importance of diversity. The experience of teaching across three continents and working with colleagues from all over the world has enriched my understanding beyond, what I believe, I would have achieved if I stayed in the UK. Furthermore, the transient nature of teaching overseas (so far I have moved country every six years) forces me to re-examine and learn about the country that I am settling into and the community in which I am working.

Adam Briggs is currently the Head of Infant Music and the Y5/6 Brass teacher at Dulwich College ( S i n g a p o r e ) . H e h a s b e e n t e a c h i n g internationally, across 3 continents, for over 20 years. During this time he has been a primary class teacher, Head of Key Stage and Head of Department.