religious music and a multicultural education
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Religious Music and Multicultural EducationAuthor(s): Iris M. Yob
Source: Philosophy of Music Education Review , Vol. 3, No. 2 (Fall, 1995), pp. 69-82
Published by: Indiana University Press
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Religious Music and Multicultural Education
Iris M. Yob
Bloomington, Indiana
That the religions and the arts are closely
associated is evidenced by the architecture,
paintings, drawings, sculptures, the many forms
of liturgical music, costumes, symbolic artifacts,
floor and wall coverings, landscaping, illuminat-
ed manuscripts, sacred literature, or dance that
are part of many religious occasions and places.
So interpenetrated are they, that music and art
teachers have a difficult time avoiding works
with religious subject matter, function, or
meaning, in their programs of study and course
offerings.
While some argument may be mounted
against dealing with religious art works in the
avowedly secular public school arts education
programs, this close affinity between religion
and the arts has also been the very grounds for
a number of arguments in favor of including
them for study in the curriculum. I shall exam-
ine one of these arguments to discover some-
thing of its strengths and limitations, and pro-
pose some guiding principles for its application
to classroom practice- the argument that deals
with the use of religious art works for the
purposes of multicultural education.
In this context, multicultural education
may be substituted by the more modest term,
cultural sensitivity. It is more modest be-
cause it does not promise on the face of it to
plumb the depths of many different cultures (an
unrealistic expectation) but, rather, suggests that
learners will be exposed to the existence of
profound differences between people and learn
to deal with those differences in ways that are
enriching, equitable, and community-building.
Its focus is not only on knowing about different
cultural world views but developing appropriate
feelings toward them of appreciation, respect,
and empathy. Both terms, multicultural educa-
tion and cultural sensitivity, however, imply
an ongoing critique of institutions and their
systemic inequity in matters of race, gender,
and class. For both, the underlying motive is to
encapsulate the values and aspirations of a
democracy, like that of the U.S.A., which
embodies new and diverse groups of people,
and in a world like ours which we increasingly
recognize to be interdependent and whose
prospering and even survival depends in large
part on being able to negotiate the differences
among peoples in caring and just ways.
I
We shall begin with an illustration, one
which may on first blush even seem to be a
counter-example. In March of 1995, three
Jewish students, who were members of the
Swarthmore College Chorus, announced their
intention to refuse to sing Bach's St John
Passion during parents' weekend the following
month. They were objecting, they claimed, to
participating in a work that has been put to anti-
Semitic uses in its recounting and interpretation
of the crucifixion of Christ. One of the singers
described her reaction to the work in an essay
she wrote for the student newspaper in these
words: After I read the text, my heart told me
® Philosophy of Music Education Review 3, no. 2 (Fall 1995): 69-82.
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7 Philosophy of Music Education Review
that I could never utter those words. Another
member of the chorus elaborated: I remem-
bered from history books how Passion plays
have been used sometimes to inspire anti- Jew-
ish feeling, and I knew how they were revived
by the Nazis and used as propaganda.
Among the offending passages, according
to the report of this event in The Chronicle of
Higher Education, are the following:
Evangelist: The body of soldiers with
their captain, who were sent by the
Jews, laid hold of Jesus, and bound Him
fast and led Him away at first unto
Annas for he was Caiphas' father-in-law,
which was high priest that same year.
Now it had been Caiphas who had told
the Jews that it was expedient that one
man should die, should die for all. (from
Parti)
Evangelist: That so might be fulfilled
the word of Jesus, which He had spoken,
and had signified by what manner of
death He should die. Then Pilate en-
tered into the Hall, and again he called
in Jesus, and said to Him: Art thou the
King of the Jews then? Jesus then
answered him: Sayest thou this thing of
thyself or did these others tell it thee to
say of me? And Pilate thus answered
Him: Am I a Jew? Thy nation and Thy
Chief Priests have brought Thee here for
judgment before me. What then hast
Thou done? And Jesus answered him:
My kingdom is not of this World, for
were my kingdom of this World, then
my servants all would fight, yea, battle,
that I be not delivered unto the Jews.
Nay then, for not from hence is my
kingdom. (from Part II)1
Allowing, valuing and even being enriched
by cultural diversity is not always a natural
response to different others. Religio-cultural
tensions, in particular, are among the most
divisive and destructive forces within communi-
ties and between peoples, because most reli-
gions have traditionally believed they are right
and others outside the faith are wrong.2 I
suspect, however, that positive and productive
attitudes and approaches can be taught, or at
least their possibility is something to which I
would hope to expose my students. Coming to
allow, appreciate and even be enriched by
cultural diversity is a life-long learning process
given the changing complexity of today's world
and the dynamic character of culture develop-
ment, but the schools are ideally situated to
undertake this education formally in planned
and purposeful ways and informally in bringing
together a cultural mix in both the faculty and
student body in many schools.
Cultural differences have been presented to
learners in studies of different foods, festivals,
housing, geographic regions, languages, dress,
governments, and works of art. Too often,
however, the temptation has been to keep the
examination of cultural diversity at the level of
these phenomena and to overlook or ignore the
deeper significances and understandings they
might represent.3 Teachers do not always ask
what meaning these phenomena have for the
people who exhibit them, to what ultimate
values do they relate, or even why things are as
they are. For instance, to tell students that the
people of Tonga wrap a floor mat around
themselves before leaving home is merely to
exhibit a curiosity. To explain further that, in
the Tongan view, there is a hierarchy of powers
in the world: God is supreme, the ruling mon-
arch is second and the Tongan people come
somewhere below that, and, therefore, to appear
in public better attired than members of the
royal family is not only a mark of disrespect
but also a blasphemous act, a usurping of
position that is not rightfully theirs. To explain
this is to reveal the meaning of the curious
behavior. At these deeper levels, the apparent
differences between peoples are rooted and it is
here that one must look for fundamental cultur-
al differences, resolve cultural tensions where
possible and engage in cultural interchanges.
The kinds of understandings that give rise
to observable behaviors and customs make up
a people's world view, and often these world
views are constructed and expressed through
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rY b
religious (manifested at times as religio-political
or religio-social) beliefs. That is to say, reli-
gion is a primary source of answers to the
questions of What is real? What is the nature
of things? and What is of ultimate worth? To
understand a people then, one needs to include
a consideration of the religious underpinnings
of that people's historical development and
cultural expressions.
n
Numerous appeals have been made for
including the study of religion in education. In
the post- World War II period, the American
Association of Colleges of Teacher Education
opened its 1959 report on teacher education and
religion with the words:
In recent years there has been an accel-
erated interest and concern by educators
in public education on the place and role
of religion ... in the curriculum. From
an examination of current literature in
higher education, it is evident that many
of the national associations, representing
various segments of higher education
regard this area as one of great challenge
and opportunity.4
One of the paradoxes in education in the ensu-
ing thirty-plus years is the relative paucity of
attention in curriculum developments to reli-
gious studies5 on the one hand and yet the
continuing and even renewed interest in and
support for this field of study on the other.6
Of course, there have been some notewor-
thy developments over this period, including
projects undertaken by university departments,
school districts and interested individuals work-
ing independently or together,7 and some im-
provements in the social studies textbook treat-
ments of world religions.8 Yet, Mary Hatwood
Futrell, president of the National Education
Association, still found it necessary to urge, As
religion has been an integral part of the history
of civilization-its arts and sciences, its lan-
guage and literature, its politics- so it should be
included as an integral subject for classroom
instruction. 9 Albert Shanker, president of the
American Federation of Teachers, was also
compelled to state, In omitting religion from
school studies we are omitting an extremely
important force acting on the institutions that
we examine. 10 In a later editorial he wrote:
If students don't know anything about
the religions that helped shape our cul-
tural heritage, they'll have a very limited
appreciation of that heritage. And if
they're ignorant about the religions
practiced in our multicultural society, it
will be difficult for them to understand-
or live harmoniously with-the people
who practice them. Most important, if
students don't get a chance to discuss
religion in their American history class-
es, they won't learn about our unique
tradition of religious freedom or how
and why the separation of church and
state was established and maintained-
and they won't find out about the role
they must play in carrying on these
essential forms of our democracy.11
Incidentally, in this statement Shanker covers a
wide range of purposes to be served by the
study of religion in a multicultural curriculum-
the personal (an appreciation of one's own
cultural heritage), the social (learning to live
harmoniously with people of different faiths),
and the political (participation in a democracy
that is characterized by religious freedom).
A notable impetus was given religious
studies by the publication of the Williamsburg
Charter, a ten-point affirmation of religious
liberty, issued at the bicentennial of Virginia's
call for the Bill of Rights.12 Among the
Charter's significant spin-offs was the publica-
tion by the First Liberty Institute of George
Mason University and Learning Connections of
Boulder, CO, of a three volume curriculum,
Living With Our Deepest Differences. Howev-
er, the concerted study of the religions for their
influence on cultural development and diversity
remains spotty at best in schools across the
country, and regrettably large numbers of
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7
students in schools in the U.S.A. graduate with
little or no knowledge of the various world
religions which characterize not only the world-
out-there but also the world-here-at-home.13
m
The challenge and responsibility to devel-
op cultural sensitivity through the study of
different others does not rest solely with the
social studies programs. Apart from incidental
opportunities both formal and informal in many
subject areas and school activities, teachers of
the arts have a particularly significant role
because of the close affinity between religion
and the arts. This affinity is apparent whether
one considers the sacred sand drawings of
Australian aboriginal dreamings, Jewish
biblical literature, the paintings, sculptures and
music of Christianity, the clean lines yet stun-
ning majesty of many Islamic mosques, the
carvings of Jainism, magnificent Hindu temples,
the Buddhas of stone or pure gold, Balinese
masks or Japanese Zen garden sanctuaries.14
The affinity of religion and the arts has not
always been welcomed by religion as the Jew-
ish prohibition against graven images, the early
Buddhist ban on representations of the Buddha,
the iconoclasm of the Protestant Reformation
and the Puritan restraint in sensual activity all
illustrate, yet even under these convictions an
alternative aesthetic expression often arose-
when sculpture and painting were proscribed,
architecture, music or literature could some-
times flourish, though it may have possessed a
beauty that was stark and simple. Even reli-
gious prohibitions against the aesthetic are
evidence that the religions have been sensitive
to the arts.
This close tie between religion and art can
be explained in a number of ways. Foremost,
a great deal of extant art has been produced at
times when religious understandings have
dominated human thinking. Representations or
expressions of human experience would natural-
ly be done in religious terms or with religious
symbols, even more so when the patrons of the
arts were also religious authorities. We do not
know whether Bach would have composed
cantatas and passions had he lived in a different
time and not depended on the church for his
livelihood or whether Michelangelo would have
sculptured a Moses if he had had other clear
choices of subject matter, but they produced the
art works that they did as their response within
and to the religious contexts and understandings
of their time and place.
Furthermore, art provides apt symbolic
material for religious expression. In their
separate studies of world religions, Rudolf Otto
and Walter Kaufman identify some of the ways
religions have employed aesthetic symbols.
They note, among other things, how the erec-
tion of huge monoliths, obelisks, and pyramids
expressed the feeling for the solemn and impos-
ing magnitude of the Holy, the single magnifi-
cent dome of the mosque reflected the mono-
theism of Islam, the silence and darkness in
western religious works and the empty distances
in eastern works produce a strong impression of
the numinous, the bronzes and buildings of
southern India are uniquely Hindu, the art of
China, Japan and Tibet is influenced by Taoism
and Buddhism, and the Jewish passion for
literature has been nurtured in religious under-
standings and vice-versa. 15
Music and the other arts, being highly
suggestive, figurative, and in their most funda-
mental manifestations more non-discursive than
verbal, employing significant gestures, move-
ments, colors, shapes, figures of speech, tones,
timbres, rhythms, rhymes, and textures, are
often the only language appropriate to religious
insights and expression. As Mendelssohn
explained, A piece of music, which I love,
expresses thoughts to me which are not too
imprecise to be framed in words, but too pre-
cise. So I find that attempts to express such
thoughts in words may have some point to
them, but they are also unsatisfying. 16 Artis-
tic symbols have often expressed, explored and
instructed religious experience and the esoteric
and intuited objects of religious thought because
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74 Philosophy of Music Education Review
found, representations of a culture.
In developing his theology of culture,
Tillich was selective about what he regarded as
noteworthy art. He was drawn to Expression-
ism and considered the avant garde to be genu-
inely revealing but was inclined to overlook
other schools of art and dismissed a great deal
of popular culture as kitsch. As some have
pointed out, [w]hile Tillich formally made all
cultural artifacts material for analysis, in prac-
tice ... he avoids popular culture . . . [and]
privileges the self-interpretation of the cultural
elite . . . 25 Several reasons have been offered
for his exclusivism on this matter of what art
works count, but whatever the reason, his
written argument on the one hand and his
personal preferences on the other raise compel-
ling questions for music and art educators
seeking to raise the level of multicultural awar-
eness. Whose musics and art works should be
included, and which sacred musics and art
works are genuinely religious and, therefore,
authentically reveal a people's ultimate con-
cerns?
In defense of a selective view, it could be
said that good music is more thoughtful, more
creative, more penetrating, more revolutionary,
more idealistic than bad music. As such, this
is the kind of music that is the proper study for
schools and is likely to give more accurate
insights into the lives and meanings of a people.
Popular musics are usually regarded as bad
music because they are seen to be little more
than mass produced commodities designed by
the economically powerful and substitute for the
hard work of culture building by failing to
penetrate below the surface of things to where
meanings are truly constructed. In essence, this
is a restatement and expansion of Tillich's basic
position.
Set out in these simple terms, the argu-
ment prompts several questions- questions
which are raised several degrees of difficulty
for those who wish to reach beyond the west-
ern, classical tradition to study the musics (and
other art works) of different others. First, how
precisely is good music to be differentiated
from bad ? While there is this sense in which
Tillich's preference for good art seems rea-
sonable, because surely the better the work, the
more expressive it will be of significant mean-
ings, the criteria for judging musics are to a
considerable extent determined within a culture
or a genre. Tillich's case being typical of a
widespread attitude, the music of one's particu-
lar cultural elite tends to provide the standard
for judging all musics. This kind of cultural
hegemony is one of the bogeys to be dismantled
in education for cultural sensitivity.
Second, is popular culture accurately
portrayed as a commodity which is passively
accepted by the masses? Kelton Cobb's re-
sponse to Tillich (and the Frankfurt School of
Social Research which helped shape Tillich's
thought) follows the line laid down by John
Fiske: popular culture is not merely consump-
tion, but indeed culture. It is what a people
or class do with the products that come off the
assembly lines of the culture industry. People
may accept or reject these products, usurp,
transform or rework them. They become then,
in effect, their own cultural expressions.
Third, does popular culture not embody
the ultimate concerns and religious meanings
of the large numbers of people who participate
in it in these ways? Isn't the very existence of
a particular popular culture a manifestation of
ultimate concerns? Cobb answers: Read from
below, as it were, the appropriated texts [of
popular culture] will disclose an ongoing wran-
gling of ultimate concerns and genuine erup-
tions of ultimacy demanding that cultural forces
be reordered and moral injustices rectified. 26
Whether or not the themes of popular culture
are an outworking of ultimate concerns for the
reordering of the social order, the important
point is that popular culture can indeed also
disclose ultimate concerns.
One may argue that what is expressed as
ultimate in popular culture is not ultimate
enough, or falls short of genuine ultimacy.
Tillich identified a number of concerns which
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are taken as ultimate but which eventually
prove too shallow in this role- he mentions, for
example, success in social standing or economic
power, one's own mother or father, the nation,
an ideology such as nationalism or socialism or
the American way, as well as many of the
lesser concerns of religion, or even the God of
religion poorly understood.27 They do what
every ultimate concern must do - demand
unconditional surrender to them in return for
the promise of fulfillment of one's being - but
the promise they offer is not only indefinite
but in the long run also empty. 28 Misguided
though they may be, however, these lesser
concerns are nevertheless taken to be ultimate
by those who embrace them- and so their
examination in popular culture still has the
potential to reveal their espousers' deepest
meanings and yearnings.
In effect, for music educators who choose
to contribute to multicultural education through
the music program, there emerges from the
discussion of the three questions above three
corresponding invitations: 1) to make judgments
of worth more culture-specific in selecting
works to be studied; 2) to broaden their defini-
tion of what counts as culture and what
Tillich identifies as cultural style to include
popular as well as classical productions and the
uses to which they are put; and 3) to look for
expressions of ultimate concern in all cultural
styles.
Some music educators have recognized the
role of religious music in promoting cultural
sensitivity. Abraham Schwadron, for instance,
who knew firsthand what it was like to be
Jewish in Christian settings, opened his discus-
sion of this topic with this observation: It is
both strange and unfortunate that the subject of
religion and music, as applied to public educa-
tion, has not attracted the proper research it
warrants. In his opinion, this is particularly
strange and unfortunate given that we now seek
a greater tolerance of religious ideas and a
deeper understanding of others' positions.
Estelle Jorgensen concurs in suggesting that
music education ought to explore the diversity
of religious experiences expressed through
music and provide opportunities for students to
come to grips with the religious ideas of text,
program, title and the implied liturgical function
of a variety of religious works.29
Both these writers have in essence reflect-
ed the 1987 position of the Music Educators'
National Conference Ad Hoc Committee on
Religious Music in the Schools:
It is the position of the MENC that the
study of religious music is a vital and
appropriate part of the total music expe-
rience in both performance and listening.
To omit sacred music from the repertoire
or study of music would present an
incorrect and incomplete concept of the
comprehensive nature of the art.30
In elaborating on the intent of this statement,
the chairman of the committee, Alex B. Camp-
bell, noted that such study should be conducted
in a religiously neutral context in which musics
for study were chosen for their musical and
. educational value, not their religious content per
se in order to share different traditions with
students and lead to a respect for them.31 It is
not clear why religious content should be
downplayed in or even excluded from consider-
ation when choosing music for study especially
in multicultural studies, because it often is the
religious content itself that determines the
nature, function and style of the different music
traditions.
While not wanting to speak for the com-
mittee members, I suspect that in an attempt to
avoid criticism that they were supporting any
form of religious indoctrination, they intended
by religious content to refer less to subject
matter and more to the injudicious use of that
subject matter in teaching religious faiths to
public school students. If this was their intent,
here is another instance of the common confu-
sion between teaching about religion and reli-
gious traditions and teaching for religion and
induction into that religion which commonly
appears in discourses on this topic in many
educational circles.
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76 Phlosophy of Music Education Review
There is also an unrealistic interpretation
of religious neutrality in a great deal of
educational thought. When this concept indi-
cates that no particular religious faith is accord-
ed a privileged position, that teachers are not to
advocate in the classroom specific religious
commitments, and that all religious traditions
can be equally explored for their educational
and aesthetic values, a realistic and attainable
standard for the study of religions and religious
art works in schools is being indicated. How-
ever, if religious neutrality further means that
no religious responses will be permitted in
teaching/learning episodes, it is in effect de-
manding the impossible-it is asking students to
check their personal history at the school gate.
Returning briefly to our case in point, to
what has been dubbed the Swarthmore Pas-
sion, the fact that some Jewish students were
offended by the work and that some Christian
students were possibly inspired by the same
work together do not provide reasonable
grounds for disallowing its study and perfor-
mance in the school. Nobody would argue that
one exclude from one's teaching any subject
matter that could arouse responses in students,
either positive or negative- in fact, the reverse
is usually true, one is delighted when students
do respond personally and passionately to what
is being taught. This is true whether the re-
sponses are labelled cognitive, aesthetic, moral,
emotional, or behavioral, as long as they are
appropriate within the school setting. Why
would one seek to eliminate, then, those re-
sponses that are spiritual or religious? If one's
view of the learner is holistic and one's concept
of community is multicultural awrfmulti-faithed,
different personal responses to specific religious
objects are part of the picture of who we are
and what we are dealing with. The establish-
ment clause of the First Amendment ( Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion ) which has undergirded the public-
ness of the public schools is counterbalanced by
úítfree exercise clause ( . . . or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof), which protects the right
of individuals for religious expression.32
IV
In light of the role of religion and of
religious works of art in multicultural education,
then, can support be found for the inclusion of,
for example, the St John Passion on the pro-
gram for parents' day at Swarthmore? (Swarth-
more, of course, is a private school and, there-
fore, exempt from some of the strictures regard-
ing religious teaching binding on public
schools, but because its student body is diverse
it does serve as a case in point for our present
needs.) In the light of the discussion so far, I
am inclined to answer affirmatively. However,
I also reserve the right to add a caveat.
This has to do with the whole educational
package in which a religious music work is
presented. Teachers may rightly expect that
any item, and particularly a religious art object,
can be studied provided it has sound education-
al purposes to serve, is presented in a context of
acceptable learnings and this is clear to all
parties concerned (including teachers, adminis-
trators, students, parents and the wider commu-
nity supporting the school). In the report of the
Swarthmore case, it is apparent that this became
increasingly the case. The St John Passion had
not been randomly chosen for performance.
The chorus director selected this particular work
to coincide with a seminar on Bach being
taught in another class-it was part of a larger
program of study of one artist's oeuvre.
At the forum that accompanied the Jewish
student protest, which incidentally drew 250
students from across campus, religion and
music professors spoke to the concerns that had
been raised and presumably addressed the
historical and musical complexities of the work.
Without knowing the details of the forum
discussion, we may assume from the Chronicle
report that the protesting students could explain
how they had been able to perform Vivaldi's
and also Poulenc's Glorias the previous semes-
ter, but balked at the Passion not because it was
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Christian in sentiment but because it was
against who they were as Jews.
Music professors could show how Bach's
Passion was different from the anti-Semitic
Passion plays of the medieval era and how
Bach had drawn on works other than the Book
of John, notably, the writings of 18th Century
poet Barthold Heinrich Brockes and commen-
tary from 16th-, 17th- and 18th-century hymns
while avoiding their more egregious anti-Semit-
ic references, especially those in Brockes'
poetry. The words Bach selected, they could
add, were intended to make Christian listeners
uncomfortable by stressing the sins of the
followers of Christ- they were not intended to
focus on who killed Jesus. The religion profes-
sor could explain how the gospel account of
John was written later than the other three
gospels and at a time of internecine strife in the
building of the Christian community. Identify-
ing the Jews as responsible for the death of
Christ created a distinction between the believ-
ers and the larger Jewish populace and provided
a common enemy, two elements in strengthen-
ing identity and bonding in the fledgling com-
m unity.33
Certainly, such discussions to accompany
the performance of the work build greater
understanding not only of the contribution of
Bach, but of the cultural understandings of both
Christians and Jews. While all this was implicit
in the educational package, the protest of the
Jewish students brought it out into the open
where the educational possibilities of the work
could be clarified and shared. Admittedly,
much of the contextual learning took place after
the fact of the student protest and by then, some
complained about the oversimplifications and
hype that the debate had generated. However,
education, like life, is a messy business-curric-
ulum evolves as it is applied, strategies improve
with hindsight, and responses are tempered with
experience- and Swarthmore, it would appear,
eventually got it as right as it could be made
under the circumstances.
Even so, what should be our stance regard-
ing those works of religious music that carry
the possibility of being controversial? Some
have argued that it is best not to introduce
anything that could prove religiously controver-
sial. In a way reminiscent of this, Horace
Mann offered strong advice to teachers on that
other hot potato -political dissent in schools.
In his Twelfth Annual Report (1848) to the
Board appointed to examine the cause of com-
mon schools in Massachusetts, Mann urged
teachers to include political education for
teaching about the nature and functions of a
republic and the responsibilities of its citizens.
In undertaking this education, he advised teach-
ers to take a middle course between banishing
all political teaching from the schools and
becoming consumed with political debate.
Teach those articles in the creed of republican-
ism that all sensible and judicious men, all
patriots, and all genuine republicans accept and
believe in, he suggested. They form the basis
of our political faith and should be taught to
all. (The religious terms he has employed in
this argument- creed and faith in particular-
-further manifest the parallel challenges in
teaching about politics and about religion.)
Then he added:
But when the teacher, in the course of
his [or her] lessons or lectures on the
fundamental law, arrives at a controvert-
ed text, he [or she] is either to read it
without comment or remark; or at most,
he [or she] is only to say that the pas-
sage is the subject of disputation, and
that the schoolroom is neither the tribu-
nal to adjudicate, nor the forum to dis-
cuss it.34
In a similar vein, Paul Farber35 makes a
case for dealing with controversial religious
matters in schools. In a recent article, he
identifies a deeply problematic fissure in
liberalism where religion is concerned. This
fissure is illustrated by putting side by side two
recent works on the subject: Nel Noddings'
Educating for Intelligent Belief or Unbelief and
Stephen Carter's The Culture of Disbelief In
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78 Philosophy of Music Education Review
the first, Noddings urges teachers to overcome
the taboo against religion in the schools by
critically, openly, and intelligently engaging
religious thought in dialogue. In essence, she
argues for a program of life-affirming inqui-
ry. In the second, Carter takes up the case of
those who would regard education less as
endless critical discourse and more as a
process of coming to know rightly. He
argues for vigilance in resisting the overarching
secularism that fails to respect the integrity of
diverse religious cultures ~even in their funda-
mentalist or absolutist stances.
In the light of these opposite views, Farber
asks When . . . should teachers forge ahead,
and when demonstrate restraint, where the
interests of individual group members seem to
be at stake? He believes some rapprochement
between the two views is possible and should
inform future discussion; however, he proposes
that drawing together religiously and culturally
diverse students would better come from do-
mains other than religion (environmental studies
or studies of power and political economy)
which may in fact subsume religious interests to
some extent. He concludes:
Fostering inquiry, teachers must recog-
nize that not every taboo must topple.
At times (but when?) the wisdom of
practice says dampen the brush fires of
hostility and change the subject. There
are other topics to talk about, matters
that might more readily engage broad
bands of common concern and foster the
recognition of dimensions of solidarity
and interdependence that we surely need
despite, and in view of, our religious
differences.36
Where Mann tended to distance schools from
political dissent altogether, Carter is more
inclined to acknowledge the significance of
religious differences but to seek alternatives to
fostering multicultural awareness within diversi-
ty; but they both prefer that teachers focus
instead on areas of agreement and both shrink
from the prospect of debate, especially heated
debate, in the classroom.
There is of course some wisdom to this
approach. Dissent can be divisive in deeply
disturbing and irresolvable ways, as well as
distracting from other legitimate learning out-
comes. One difficulty with this solution to the
problem of difference, however, is that not all
areas of dissent are predictable. Jews in Israel,
for instance, justify their singing of the St John
Passion, not as worship but as performance
with an appreciation of Bach's work as part of
a cultural heritage37-a position some Jewish
students at Swarthmore did not choose to adopt.
The choral director could not be reasonably
expected to know beforehand what his students
would do in this instance (although as a general
rule teachers should be culturally sensitive in
the presentation of all works).
Conflict being predictable or not, however,
the Mann-Farber approach of retreat-avoidance
rather than engagement with dissent in the
classroom seriously fails in the context of
multicultural education in a number of ways
which we can only briefly note here. In es-
sence, avoiding dissent represents a retreat from
the kind of learning opportunities that dissent
can afford. The preparation for citizenship in a
democracy to which Mann devoted his educa-
tional energies was undermined to the extent
that he overlooked the role of protest among
free peoples. Preparation for citizenship in a
democracy with heightened awareness of its
multicultural and multi-faithed constituency to
an even greater extent depends on admitting
tensions between peoples and learning how to
deal with them in productive ways.
At the very least, to avoid dissent may
amount to losing the opportunity to discover
what cultural difference can really mean.
Cultural and religious differences are more than
merely a fact of life to be cognitively encoun-
tered, empirically measured, and systematically
recorded; they are also a matter of the heart-of
commitment, of self-esteem, of cherishment, of
passion, or of threat, or fear, or even disgust,
depending on which side of a cultural divide
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r
one happens to be. Ignoring these issues and
passionate involvements may leave out of
consideration a great deal of what is significant
to individual learners and what sets them apart
from other cultural groups. Allowing dissenting
views to be expressed can be an experience in
learning that cultural differences are a fact of
communal life as we now know it and that they
do matter to those who hold them.
In this respect, becoming culturally sensi-
tized is part of the learning process not only for
the disenfranchised or the minority but also for
the dominant cultural group. The protest over
the Passion at Swarthmore was not only a good
learning experience for the Jewish students but
also for the Christian students who may never
have been confronted before with the impact
their art works have had on different others.
Cultural sensitivity may very well have devel-
oped in both groups as a consequence.
Beyond that, cultural sensitivity is more
than affect- it is praxis. What does it mean to
be culturally sensitive? Minimally, it means
allowing difference, our own or others, in life-
affirming ways. Martin Marty suggests that in
a constitutional republic, public institutions
cannot satisfy everyone in all respects. In this
regard, he adds, we are inclined to overlook a
time-honored strategy-finding it a mark of
nobility to teach [the] young that the surround-
ing culture might in many ways not be conge-
nial and might even, indeed, be hostile to some
of their familial, tribal, or confessional val-
ues. 38 Coming to this acceptance is a useful
initial accomplishment and one which has
enormous benefits for the one who is different-
in sustaining self esteem, in learning to main-
tain personal integrity even ki the face of social
pressure, and importantly in experiencing a
sense of personal freedom. It also has signifi-
cant benefits for those from whom one has
differed. Coming up against difference can be
a experienced as corrective or at least as a
resistance to the flaws, limitations and blind
spots within the status quo or at least, its paro-
chialism and hegemonic tendencies. Expressed
in more positive terms, confronting differences
can enrich a culture's vision of itself and widen
its perspective on its place in the world.
Beyond merely becoming aware of differ-
ences in their cognitive and affective reality and
learning to live with them in positive and
affirming ways when they are irresolvable, is
learning how to negotiate differences between
groups of people. In a democratic society, this
is an ultimate objective of multicultural educa-
tion. Negotiation depends on listening and
communicating skills, the ability to compromise
where appropriate, and the formulation of just
codes of behavior that give due respect to all.
It is a set of skills to be learned, and in a world
that seems so easily tempted to protest in vio-
lent and controlling ways, teaching these skills
is an important objective. Schools traditionally
have been hesitant in developing policies for
the expression of dissent or indicating how
dissenters may appropriately respond. In fact,
schools have been slow in developing policies
for introducing controversial topics or activities
in the first place. This has left teachers feeling
insecure in their roles and students feeling
relatively powerless in maintaining appropriate
competing interests and in redressing inequi-
ties.39
In this instance, Swarthmore provides a
model for consideration. There, dissenters
formed a coalition among themselves to present
specific requests to the faculty of the music
school, they had access to student newspapers
and eventually involved TV and other news
media, and an open forum in which students
and faculty from across the college could
participate. Because these avenues for the
expression of dissent were ad hoc and because
both teachers and students were ill-equipped to
deal with dissent before it arose, the difficulties
escalated and tensions mounted. Taking a cue
from this episode, one may conclude that stud-
ies of models for offering and responding to
dissent and the opening of channels for commu-
nication among students, teachers, and other
educational policy makers should be part of a
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8 Phlosophy of Music Education Review
program for developing cultural sensitivity.
V
Among the purposes of multicultural
education is the development of a knowledge of
and the skills in responding to different others
in a democratic society. Religious studies in
general and cross-cultural studies of religious
art works in particular are among the most
significant means for developing cultural sensi-
tivity, because religion is likely the most impor-
tant expression of a group's ultimate concerns,
its grounding meanings, and its most profound
self-understandings and because religious music
and other religious art works are usually the
most representative and expressive articulations
of those concerns, meanings and self-under-
standings.
A study of religious expressions- music,
paintings, sacred places, worship practices,
beliefs, and so on- in public schools can be
controversial, but as part of well developed
educational programs they can also make con-
siderable contributions to understanding one's
own personal meaning-making and cultural
history and those of different others. Music and
other works of art to be studied for their in-
sights into diverse cultural groups need to be
selected on the basis of a wider set of criteria
than usually pertains in the study of art works
within one's own classical tradition, viz., their
role, place and value within the cultural group
which gives rise to them in the first place.
Dissent may arise in an education program
which engages the religious expressions of
others. Rather than choosing to avoid or ignore
the possibility of conflict and tension of this
kind, the experience of passionate dissent can
provide useful learnings for all students. It may
afford an occasion for coming to a realization
of what differences among peoples really mean
emotionally as well as cognitively; for develop-
ing a sense of the nobility or value of differ-
ence, even irresolvable difference, in a multicul-
tural and multi-faithed society, and for learning
how to negotiate dissent in ways that are pro-
ductive and community building.
NOTES
1. Reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education,
March 3, 1995: A33.
2. There is an amelioration of this attitude in some
circles. Diana Eck provides a model and a personal
sketch of interfaith dialogue in Encountering God:
A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Bañaras
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1993). See also John Hick,
God Has Many Names (Philadelphia: Westminster
Press, 1980) and Huston Smith, Forgotten Truth:
The Common Vision of the World's Religions (San
Francisco: Harper Torch Books, 1992). These kind
of texts are useful in designing multicultural
education programs.
3. Estelle R. Jorgensen addresses this problem in an as
yet unpublished paper, Musical Multiculturalism
Revisited: Attic Vases, Elgin Marbles and Musical
Artifacts, to be presented at the Music Educators
National Conference, Kansas City, MO (Spring
1996).
4. A. L. Selby, ed., Teacher Education and Religion
(Oneonta, NY: American Association of Colleges of
Teacher Education, 1959). Also quoted by Charles
Knicker, Teacher Education and Religion: The
Role of Foundations Courses in Preparing Students
to Teach About Religions, Religion and Public
Education 17 no. 2 (Spring/Summer 1990): 203-219
which traces the lack of practical applications of
these sentiments in teacher education curriculum
developments since then.
5. See for instance, Thomas Hunt, Religion, Moral
Education and Public Schools: A Tale of Tempest,
Religion and Public Education 13 no. 2 (Spring
1986): 25-40; Warren Nord, Religious Literacy,
Textbooks, and Religious Neutrality, Religion and
Public Education 16 no. 1 (Winter 1989): 111-122;
Dan Fleming, Religion in American Textbooks:
Were the 'Good Old Days' of Textbooks Really So
Good, Religion and Public Education 18 no. 1
(1991): 79-102; Richard Jones and Rebecca Glover,
Teaching About Religion: A Study of Attitudes,
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rs Y b
Religion and Public Education 18 no. 1 (1991):
141-148; Iris M. Yob, Reflections on an Experi-
mental Course: Religion and the Public Schools,
Phi Delta Kappan 16 no. 3 (November 1994): 234-
238.
6. See for instance, J. B. Morris, Moral and Spiritual
Values in Public Education, Religion and Public
Education 11 no. 4 (Fall 1984): 48-51; Thomas
Goodhue, What Should Public Schools Say About
Religion? Religion and Public Education 13 no. 2
(Spring 1986): 15-17; Charles Glen, What Public
Schools Can Do to Accommodate Religious Diver-
sity, Religion and Public Education 13 no. 4 (Fall
1986): 92-98; David Owens, Recent Textbook
Cases and Children's Rights, Religion and Public
Education 15 no. 3 (Summer 1988): 286-291;
Stephen Oates, The Holistic Paradigm and the
Supreme Court's Search for a New Definition of
Religion, Religion and Public Education 18 no. 1
(1991): 161-175; Theresa McCormick, Teaching
About Religious Diversity as a Multicultural Issue,
Religion and Public Education 18 no. 1 (1991):
117-128; Ronald Jensen, Social Change and the
Changing Meaning of Religion in a Pluralistic
Society: Implications for the Public Schools,
Religion and Public Education 18 no. 1 (1991):
103-115; Gary Brock, The Academic Study of
Religion in Missouri Secondary Social Studies
Classes, Religion and Public Education 18 no. 1
(1991): 129-140.
7. These projects include but are not limited to the
Idaho Humanities Council and Boise State Universi-
ty project, Teaching About Religion in Public
Schools, the North Carolina Humanities Council
and Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation with the Univer-
sity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill seminar series
on religion and the public schools, Western Illinois
University's Religious Contours of Illinois Pro-
ject, Connecticut's Comparative Religions
Course in high schools, the Indiana Religious
Studies Project, the Gladstone, Oregon high school
project, and so on.
8. For instance, see the reports by Margaret Trautman,
The Reformation as Presented in Six 1990 High
School World History Textbooks and World
Religions as Found in Six 1990 World History
Textbooks in Religion and Public Education 17 no.
1 (Winter 1990): 35-41 and 17 no. 2
(Spring/Summer 1990): 196-200, respectively.
9. Mary Hatwood Futrell, Education About Religions:
A Public School Responsibility, Religion and
Public Education 13 no. 4 (Fall 1986): 78-80.
10. In an interview with Patricia A. Lines reported in
Religion and Public Education 13 no. 4 (Fall 1986):
81-84.
11. Albert Shanker, Why We Should Teach About
Religion in On Campus (December 1990/January
1991): 5.
12. The text of the Charter is given in Charles C.
Haynes and Oliver Thomas, eds., Finding Common
Ground: A First Amendment Guide to Religion and
Public Education (Nashville, TN: The Freedom
Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt
University, 1994), Appendix A.
13. Eck, The Pluralism Project: A New View of the
World s Religions in America, cd rom in produc-
tion, Harvard University Divinity School provides
some recent information on the growth of non-
Judeo-Christian religions in North America.
14. Mircea Eliade, Symbolism, the Sacred, and the Arts,
ed. Diane Apostolos-Cappadona (New York: Cross-
road, 1986), and Walter Kaufman, Religions in Four
Dimensions (New York: Reader's Digest Press,
1976), especially chaps. XIII and XTV draw on the
history of religions to demonstrate the interrela-
tionships between religion and the arts across times
and cultures.
15. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W.
Harvey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923),
chap. IX, Means of Expression of the Numinous,
and Kaufman, Religions in Four Dimensions, chaps.
XIII and XIV. Kaufman is less inclined to regard
Christian art as particularly Christian for, he
argues, it does not represent a new ethos or a new
understanding of humanity, nor does it have its own
distinctiveness from Greek, Hellenistic or Roman
features (336-369), but Margaret Miles' more
sympathetic analysis of Medieval and Reformation
art in Image as Insight: Visual Understanding in
Western Christianity and Secular Culture (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1985) shows how indispensable the
visual arts were in Christian religious understanding.
16. Quoted by Aaron Ridley in Musical Sympathies:
The Experience of Expressive Music in The Jour-
nal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53 no. 1 (Winter
1995): 49.
17. See Iris M. Yob, Religious Emotion in the Arts,
Journal of Aesthetic Education (Winter 1995), in
press.
18. William James, Varieties of Religious Experience,
ed. and intro Martin Marty (Middlesex, England:
Penguin Books, [1902] 1982), 458-461.
19. Horace Bushnell, Preliminary Dissertation on the
Nature of Language as Related to Thought and
Spirit, in God In Christ (Hartford, CT: Brown and
Parsons, 1849), 74-77.
20. Otto, The Idea of the Holy, 59.
21. On this point, David J. Loomis, Imagination and
Faith Development, Religious Education 83 no. 2
(Spring 1988): 251-263 describes his research on
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82 Philosophy of Music Education Review
the role of poetic imagination in faith development.
22. John and Jane Dillenberger, eds., Paul Tillich: On
Art and Architecture (New York: Crossroad, 1989),
9 2.
23. Ihid.. 21-31.
24. Ibid., 32.
25. Kelton Cobb, Reconsidering the Status of Popular
Culture in Tillich's Theology of Culture in Journal
of the American Academy of Religion LXIII no. 1
(Spring 1995): 53-54. See also John P. Clayton,
The Concept of Correlation: Paul Tillich and the
Possibility of a Mediating Theology (Berlin: Walter
de Gruvter. 1980V
26. Cobb, Popular Culture, 78.
27. Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper
Torchbooks, 1957), 2-4; Ultimate Concern: Tillich
in Dialogue, ed. D. MacKenzie Brown (New York:
Harper and Row, 1965), 29, 183; Religious Sym-
bols and our Knowledge of God, Christian Scholar
38 (September 1955): 192.
28. Tillich, Dynamics of Faith, 3, 4.
29. Jorgensen, Religious Music in Education, Philos-
ophy of Music Education Review 1 no. 2 (Fall
1993): 109.
30. Reported in Religion and Public Education 15 no.
4 (Fall 1988): 435-440.
ÓÌ. IDia. 433.
32. In late August, 1995, Secretary of Education,
Richard Riley, at the request of President Bill
Clinton, began distributing to schools a directive
that outlines what religious activities are allowed in
schools. These include permitting students to read
Scriptures, pray, talk about their religious commit-
ments, express religious beliefs in class assignments
and homework, distribute religious literature, excuse
themselves from lessons that they find objection-
able, and wear religious garb.
33. Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan (New York:
Random House, 1995) traces how the concept of the
devil originated in the efforts of early Christians to
define themselves by demonizing their enemies-
especially Jews, pagans, and heretics.
34. Lawrence A. Cremin, ed., The Republic and the
School: Horace Mann on the Education of the Free
Man (New York: Teachers College Press, 1957), 97.
35. Paul Farber, Tongue-tied: On Taking Religion
Seriously in Schools, Educational Theory 45 no. 1
(Winter 1995): 85-100.
36. Ibid., 100.
37. Martin Marty makes this point in an article written
before the Swarthmore incident, Around Religion,
About Religion, Of Religion, and Religion: The
Issues of Public School Teaching Today, Religion
and Public Education 15 no. 4 (Fall 1988): 400.
38. Ibid., 390.
39. Block, The Academic Study of Religion, reports
this lack of clarity in policies regarding controver-
sial subjects to be one of the reasons why teachers
are hesitant about dealing with the academic study
of religion in schools.