Neuropathways, Dissonance, and Multicultural Competence

Why Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training is important in the field of music education

When my children were babies, I wanted to take them to a music class that provided a rich musical experience that would develop neuropathways in their brains, which would aid them in understanding complicated musical structures later in life. My oldest children, who are now playing saxophone in marching band and performing in musicals in high school, were exposed to mixed measure and dissonance as babies. Now, they are capable of marching to intricate music in the marching band and can act, sing, and dance with ease. As a proponent of early childhood music education, I have to believe that their early childhood experience is a reason for their enjoyment in music programs now.

Neuropathways are complex routes of neurons that form in our brains when we are exposed to stimuli and respond to those stimuli. Therapists say, “Neurons that fire together wire together.” When we perform a task for the first time, one neuron fires to the other, forming a neuro-connection. The more we are exposed to the stimuli, the bigger the pathway becomes. Once we have performed a function many, many times, neuropathways become highways of information traveling through our brains. The reverse is true as well, if we have never been exposed to something, the pathway is not there.

I’ll give you an example of how developing neuropathways plays out in music education. In a middle school orchestra, if a student has never heard triplets before, they need to be exposed to the rhythm repeatedly so their brains can form the necessary neuropathway to perform the function. Once their brain makes the connection of dividing a note by thirds instead of halves, they need to divide the note by thirds several times before they have a successful, dependable neuropathway. It will be an added skill to then put the bow to the string and pull it across in the new rhythm pattern. Sure, we all have biological abilities that make music easier or harder, but neuropathways are perhaps the biggest ingredient to success in this recipe.

Many people in our culture have a hard time understanding why they are required to attend things like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training. Those of us who are part of the dominant culture struggle to understand why we need to change what we are doing. Things have worked well for us for so long that it feels like an unnecessary intrusion to require trainings and changes. The reason this feels so unnatural to us is tied to neuropathways. We all grow up being exposed primarily to the culture of our family of origin. Our neuropathways understand and are wired to make sense of the world through the lens of our individual primary culture. This is why, when we see people from other cultures doing things differently than us, it feels interesting, foreign, and sometimes even odd or incorrect. We automatically function through the neuropathways we have. The food we eat, the level of our voices in public, the way we treat elders, how we establish partnerships like marriage, and the music we listen to, are all informed and functioned through neuropathways we have developed through the years we have been alive. When something deviates from the super highway neuropathways in our brains, it feels odd and uncomfortable. It sometimes even makes us angry.

As adults, especially as educators, we have a responsibility to wire our brains to be in tuned to hear and make room for perspectives and cultural experiences (such as music) that are different from what we heard when our brains were developing. Just as many of us in the United States have been exposed to and learned to comprehend Bach chorales from a young age, similarly, those of us who grew up in the dominant culture in the U.S. have been naturally attuned from childhood to understand the viewpoints of that majority culture. This is why we feel out of place when we teach in a classroom where the kids are in a culture different from ours. It's why it feels off-putting when we see something on TV that we would handle differently in our homes or neighborhoods. In the same way, if you grew up listening to music built on the diatonic scale, comprised of chromatic harmonious intervals, it probably felt different and confusing when you first heard a composition built on a byzantine scale.

For example, in order to begin understanding and eventually performing in mixed meter or semitones, we had to spend hours learning about it. We had to expose ourselves to the sound and feel of something that initially felt and sounded “odd” to us. Hours in the classroom had to be committed to relearning our patterns and instincts that eventually allowed us to, clumsily at first, perform this music. New neuropathways had to be built before they felt “normal” or “natural.” In some instances, we even had to build new exit ramps off the neuropathways that wanted to take us down old lanes that were comfortable to us.

This is what the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion movement is encouraging us to do—to expose ourselves to social scenarios that may not feel “normal” or “natural” now. The hope is that if we are open and allow our brains to be pliable, new neuropathways in our brains will form, allowing us to become more comfortable in the world that has developed around us, which once felt uncomfortable. As we do this, we are creating a world with our students that is much more deep, complex, and fulfilling. This world has proven itself to be as colorful, beautiful, and more extraordinary than our wildest, previously monochromatic dreams.