What is equality and musical equality?

Responding from Dani’s blog, in my perspective, what Woodford brought up in the book, the meaning of “equality” is the freedom of right to do and to be a fair teacher who treats everyone equally. I think this is what “democracy” is about and what Woodford talks about in his book.

However, I thought that what Dani talked about “musical equality” is a pretty interesting topic. Dani stated, “Everyone should be able to appreciate all types of music in some way”. Everyone has their favor of different genre of music. In my case, I grew up listening to classical and opera music. I want the students to appreciate classical and opera music. However, I cannot force the students in elementary or middle school to listen to these genres of music and learn about it every single day. Like the Critical Pedagogy’s lesson, “Honoring their world” is the key. As a music educator, we should appreciate what the students listen to, even though; it is a totally opposite genre of music. In order to make that happen, in my opinion, we should appreciate their music first, and then, we can step by step introduce classical music. Therefore, maybe they will at least have a bit of open mind about classical genres.