Why teach pop music?

	Blackalicious - Chemical Calisthenics
	Found at skreemr.com

Music is seen as a very powerful tool. However, the use of pop music as a tool for meeting educational goals within the classroom is a touchy subject when presented to those in control of the curriculum used within a school. The use of a standard, regimented curriculum is viewed as an efficient way to present the needed knowledge to students, so the students can be productive members of society. The setting of a particular kind of curriculum and the standards to be achieved is formulated by many parties from outside the classroom, either at the administrative level or through an elected office. The need for efficiency in presenting information within a limited amount of time and funding gives the feeling that what a teacher presents in the classroom needs to always have a clear and direct relationship to the designed curriculum and the standards that are met.

Moving to a “back to basics” model of curriculum can be looked at as further limiting what is taught in the classroom. The first impression of “back to basics” in conjunction with school is a model of teaching that involves lots of memorization and quick recall of facts. With the increased speed and recall, facts are only bits and pieces of information held in the student’s head, to be spit out at the right time. There is a loss of context to the facts. The lack of a context for the facts limits the connection, personal or emotional, possibly forged by the student. This does not even address the time needed by the student to critically look at the absorbed material. While pedagogical strategies have changed and developed throughout the years, the wording of “back to basics” brings up images of call-and-response, choral reading, and rote memorization.

For a teacher to design a series of lessons that include the use of pop music while addressing the curriculum standards, a number of positive interactions can happen. Pop music can be used in number of different ways to help support and present the information and skills stated in the curriculum standards while also giving a personal reaction to the information. The content presented in pop music can provide a looking glass into the various social issues that are being faced currently or were being faced when a particular song was produced or recorded. This can provide insight into to what was going from a historical, political, societal, or a personal perspective. While from a curricular and efficient stand point, I would say that provides more than enough reason to include pop music, the true factor that pop music speaks to for students is the personal factor.

Without the personal factor or personal connection, the facts that are learned in the classroom have no bearing on the lives of the student. When a personal response is evoked, learning takes a turn from just absorbing and repeating to exploring and understanding. Music, especially pop music, produces an emotional response from students. Using this response as a jumping board, a teacher can draw students into the various facts and perspectives presented around and through the music. Providing that opportunity to dig deeper into what was going on, through the lyric, instrumentation, arrangement, or even album artwork. Even if pop music is simply only a hook to bring in students to a topic, pop music can help to bridge the gap between a stone, cold fact to be memorized and regurgitated and a personal, emotional experience that wants to continue to move forward and onward.