Nancy Shankman: World Music (1 min)
It behooves a music teacher to really become familiar with world music. In fact, in the document we just published, that was one of our major objectives and one of the most difficult challenges because much world music is not written. Some music from South Africa and music from other places in the world, the tradition is more oral so it’s really a challenge to find repertoire that teachers can use with their students. But I think it’s an absolute necessity for every music teacher to teach world music. In New York City, in one school alone there could be 55 different ethnicities. Why should we just teach Western music? That’s not to say that we shouldn’t teach Western music, it’s just that we need to teach music that addresses the diverse cultures that are in our schools, as well as the music that they don’t know. We’re not there to teach them only what they know, but if all the students bring what they know to the classroom, what a rich classroom that would be. IN addition to that they would learn Western music and whatever else the teacher feels is appropriate.