Eight years ago, I bought six erhus for my third grade classes.
At the time, it was a modest idea: breaking down the idea that the violin, viola, cello, and bass are “the string instruments”. It’s an idea that is so entrenched in music education that no one even thinks to question it.
Music education has long perpetuated a hierarchy of what is considered “core” musical knowledge. Some traditions are positioned at the centre of the curriculum, while others are brought in occasionally as a cultural experience, a special event, or an interesting taster. These “others” get a lesson or two dedicated to them in the form of a world music unit, a Día de los Muertos celebration, or AAPI Heritage Month. And then learning returns to its core content: Western European classical music from the 17th–19th centuries.
After ten-plus years of education, our students grow into adults who have absorbed the idea that “serious”, sophisticated, or technically demanding music is synonymous with what they call “classical music.”
I want my students to think differently.
I want them to be excited, curious, and proud of the diversity all around them. I want them to have musical “mirrors” in my classroom—not just opportunities to learn about cultures, but opportunities to participate as musicians themselves. One such opportunity was playing the erhu, an instrument that occupies a significant space in our host country’s diverse musical landscape.
Fast forward to today. Today my students can choose from a number of Chinese orchestra opportunities at our school, from beginner classes to a full Chinese orchestra. For some of our students, it is a way to connect to their home culture; for all our students, it creates a meaningful connection between the international community we are building at school and the country in which we live and learn.
There has been something particularly rewarding about watching a program develop over time—not just in numbers or instruments, but in what the program represents. It is an example of what can happen when we begin to decolonize our curriculum—by questioning the assumptions that have made some musical traditions seem like the default and others like the exception.
What happens when we stop treating cultural diversity as something to be added to the curriculum, and start considering it in how we redefine the curriculum itself?
What happens when we stop assuming which musical traditions are “important enough” to belong at the center of the curriculum? And what might we discover if we move that center?
I’m incredibly proud of what our students and community have built together. I’m even more excited to see where we take it next.