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Keyword: decolonization

Faculty-alumni collaboration explores decolonizing music education in the classroom

Monday, July 4, 2022 @ 10:52 AM

Studying music education means learning scales and chord progressions, practicing how to move your hands while conducting, and planning out class schedules. But sometimes it also involves examining and re-evaluating the entire education system at its core.

This is what a group of CMU students did every week last semester, when they gathered for one of CMU's newest courses: Decolonizing Music Education, guided by Associate Professor of Music Janet Brenneman. Through listening, reading, discussing, and creating, students learned about the history and current forms of colonialism present in Canadian music education classrooms, and explored how to put the concepts of decolonization and indigenization into action.