Music Education: Don’t They Already Teach This?

Here is a post at Legal Insurrection about the music department at Meredith College. They have made the following declaration:

European tonal scales/intervals will be compared with other cultural tonal systems in the theory classes, and be further investigated in the global music course, including harmonies, tones, rhythms, and notation not used in western music.

I sat in on a music appreciation class way back in 1974. That was before there was much talk of multiculturalism and diversity, but I seem to recall talk of nonstandard tonal scales/intervals. It is true that it was ordinary Westerners who were doing this, but it is hard to believe that nothing has changed since then and that music departments today haven’t already incorporated these changes in their classes (especially a global music class).