Bringing Soundscapes Into the Everyday Classroom

Abstract

Every day the twenty-first century student is bombarded with noise—from the media, the environment, technology and far beyond that of even the later twentieth century. In the small-town Canadian classroom where I currently teach music to 300 middle-school students I see these societal trends resulting in poor listening skills. Students, and indeed all of us, need help in deepening our ability to listen and to hear. In my own classroom I accomplish this using soundscape education, sound ecology and the teachings of R. Murray Schafer. It should be noted that although this paper focuses on experiences with the eleven to fourteen year-old age groups, these methods have been used with success from early elementary years to later high-school age years.