The purpose of this study is to investigate multi-cultural elements for the elementary school textbook, especially the 6th grade in Singapore. Tune In is the name of text book employed analyzing in this study. Singapore is the country where a lot of r...
The purpose of this study is to investigate multi-cultural elements for the elementary school textbook, especially the 6th grade in Singapore. Tune In is the name of text book employed analyzing in this study. Singapore is the country where a lot of races are mixed together and uses English as an official language, but also the three languages, such as Chinese, Malay and Tamil are widely used. Therefore, the text book was mostly written in English; however, two songs were written in Malay and one song with Malay title. One song was written in chinese. Among 20 songs, 13 songs were foreign folk songs. Most of folk songs were from Europe such as England, German, France and so on. Three Japanese music and one Chinese song were included. None of African music was found. Most of music was selected for teaching western music elements, not for teaching multi-cultural approaches. However, the two units, Electric Music and Narrative and Dramatic Music provides multi-cultural contents by introducing other country s puppet show, dance, opera and musical along with other country s instrument and songs. Teaching strategies also focuses on experiencing other country s songs rhythms by playing and creating their own music. Multi-cultural music education is an important topic in current education. To understand our identity and other culture, it is necessary to develope multi-cultural music contents and teaching strategies.