Assignment #1 June 4, 2009: Why Teach Popular Music in Classrooms

As a student, one of the best ways to study information presented in class is to apply the information to real world situations and to find a genuine interest in the information the student is attempting to learn. As teachers, we can help this process along by choosing to present information that is relevant to the students that we teach and that sparks real interest within our students. Professor White argues in her article, “Integrating Music in History Education”, that this sparking of students’ interests can be accomplished through using popular music as a medium through which to teach traditional academic lessons in a modern and relevant format for students. Popular music plays a very large role in many young people today and thus would serve as a culturally relevant mode of presenting information.

One way to teach using popular music could be simply teaching the background and formulation of popular music itself. Wikipedia lays out a quite extensive and involved history of how popular music came to be, a history that teaches about important figures of the past as well as the implications of various historical events and eras of the past. Another way to utilize popular music in classroom lessons is to incorporate this theme into examples to exemplify points in the teachers’ lessons. For example, if the class is learning about revolutionaries in history, they may examine how hip-hop was formed.

Through this use of popular music, the goal would be to enhance classroom experiences by making students feel as though the information they are learning is meaningful to who they are as well as to society as a whole. Gerald Graff, author of “Clouding the Issue”, explains that one of the problems with learning in academia is the lack of learning about meaningful or worthwhile subject matter. Students learn about subjects and in turn discuss subjects that are not important or applicable to many people outside of academia. Perhaps learning through the lens of popular music may remedy this lack of relevance. Perhaps it could even further incite students to be more concerned with contributing to the betterment of society as a whole versus solely to the betterment of themselves as an individual. By this I mean that learning about real people and events in modern societies may make students feel more connected to their society and may make them feel as though they are truly a part of this society that they are learning about.

Throughout this course, I hope to learn more about what exactly it means to teach using popular music and/or popular culture. I currently teach infants and toddlers at an early childhood center where it is vital that we teach in ways that are culturally and developmentally relevant to our children. Not only is this important, but it is a requirement for us to maintain our accreditation status at my childcare center. It would only seem natural that this requirement carry over into teaching older youth and even into teaching adults. I feel that I have a pretty good grasp of how to cater lessons to my little ones, but since most popular music is not allowed in our classrooms and because we do not teach information type lessons as would be done with older students, I am quite unaware of how one would actually incorporate popular music into a lesson plan.

I look forward to also learning to be a more well informed and effective teacher in general from this course. Although the class may be catered to the teaching of how to use popular media in classroom instruction, I look forward to learning about various teaching experiences from my colleagues and instructor.