Fumbling Towards Vulnerability Response

This article is interesting to me, purely because there is so much good information that is not necessarily contradictory to what we have previously experienced as music students and educators. I find Dawe’s opinions and ideals to not only push myself and my opinions based on my past experience; but they are somewhat inspirational.


Clearly there is a lack of creativity in most music education practices, which does create a level of vulnerability when we are asked to be creative. In my life, I can really only think of one opportunity where my teachers said ‘I want you to be creative’ and actually meant it in the full sense of the word.


It was in senior vocal music, and we had been discussing four-chord songs that day. She suggested that we all take a four chord backing track and compose a medley of songs composed of the same chord progression. That was all the instruction we were given, and honestly it was probably the most fun group work project I had ever worked on. Every group had a completely different medley of songs, some had a story line, some just sounded really cool. Frankly, I’m glad I got to experience what it could be like to be creative in music, because before that moment I’m sure I didn’t know that being truly creative was an option in the classroom.


I really resonate with the thought of being given more opportunities to be creative, and how it may decrease the level of vulnerability we feel when we are the teachers who are creating our teaching styles and practices. Up until the moment we begin teaching, we are given the criteria we are to meet and told precisely how to do everything, but there is nobody telling each individual music teacher how they should be teaching their class. There’s no voice saying “so you must do activity x before activity y, and this is the full manual on how to teach those subjects.” There is definitely some level of creativity in teaching.


We must embrace the idea of being creative in creating our future curriculums, and be open to creative ideas provided by our students.


Dawe, Lesley (2016) Fumbling Towards Vulnerability: Moving Out of the Familiar for Music Education's Sake. In: Canadian Music Educator, Vol. 57, No. 2, pp. 22-24. Available at http://openmusiclibrary.org/article/52795/.