Recently, Oxford University’s “activist” students and professors came to the conclusion that teaching music in the way it is taught today is nowhere near current demands for ”political correctness.”
As written in the Telegraph British newspaper, music teachings, according to these activists, are entirely based on music from “white Europe during the colonial period,” and this offends non-white students.
The participants in the movement to “decolonize” the teaching of music believe that piano lessons, as well as the teaching of European compositions, will cause suffering to people of color.
That absurd theory forced me to think of the saying, “Everything is beautiful in moderation,” as well as one historical truth: the superficial, dogmatic application of any lofty and radiant idea can fundamentally discredit that idea by distorting its meaning by 180 degrees, turning it into the exact opposite.
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Our modern history is a prime example of that. Equality and social justice are, of course, wonderful ideas. But what our parents and ancestors saw in the country as it was supposedly trying to implement those ideas was brutal repression, and what I saw was a feast of a corrupt bureaucracy that, as George Orwell puts it, was far more “equal” than us “equals.”
“Fundamentalist” liberals even used totalitarian methods to govern people’s private lives: don’t ask about people’s religion or sexual orientation, don’t imply that this person gained or lost weight, don’t give up your spot on public transportation to a woman so she doesn’t think that you don’t see her as an equal. In art, if there is a criminal who is black or Muslim, then there also must be a police officer who is black or Muslim. This pluralism propaganda, let’s agree, is quite similar to the “instructions” of the Central Committee.
But when people live in a world of dogmas, convincing them otherwise is useless. Will I be able to explain to Oxford professors that Beethoven’s and Mozart’s music has nothing to do with “white colonialism?”
Aram Abrahamyan
