An Empirical Study of Using Music Education to Connect Young Children with Chinese Culture and Chinese Language

In the United States, large numbers of American families are adopting and raising children from mainland China. These parents, who are a very motivated and devoted group – actively look for ways to maintain their children’s linguistic and cultural connections to their homeland. However, the breadth and depth of Chinese culture, with which most Americans’ are largely unfamiliar, has created a strong need for innovative approaches to helping these families to build bridges to a distant culture. As an educator my studies in the field of music education led me to see music as an innovative tool for building cultural connections to China for these children. With this in mind, I created and then implemented a music-based curriculum to use music and music activities to expose American children to the beauty, richness, and complexity of Chinese culture and language. The curriculum was implemented during weekly, one-hour sessions in a Parent/Child Learning Program, which comprised of an ongoing cohort of 10 parents and their children. Over the course of one year of instruction, results, based on teacher and parent evaluation, demonstrated that in general, children benefited significantly from the program, gaining new levels of understanding and connection with both traditional and contemporary Chinese culture.