"Dissonance Is the Music of Democracy": Folk Songs, Curriculum, and Civic Community

• In Event: The Politics of Curriculum: Sociocultural Contexts for Teaching and Learning

Abstract

This paper reports findings from an exploratory study on the use of music in K-12 teaching to foster democratic engagement and commitment to civic and community life. The study sought to position teachers’ creative work using music in their teaching about democracy in the contexts of (a) diminishing support for democratic norms and commitments among young people, and (b) increasingly narrow school policy concern with coverage in the curriculum (exacerbated by post-pandemic worries of “learning loss”). Against the backdrop of these interrelated phenomena, these teachers offer a window into the possibilities for transformative curriculum that can reassert the primacy of a Deweyan notion of democratic community in curriculum.

Author

• Joel Westheimer, University of Ottawa
  Presenting Author