One of the most effective ways of communicating a message is through song and music. It breaks down barriers held by language, can evoke strong emotions and internal reflection, and also opens avenues for collaboration.
For Arthur Schopenhauer, music is the highest art form because of the ineffable and pure form of its expression. Unlike plastic art, music has no materiality; it breathes a miraculous existence into being from sound vibrations, so mysterious a phenomenon that it features as a central part of trance and prayer across many cultures: it speaks to the unconscious, the subliminal, the spiritual dimension of our being.
For years as an English teacher, whenever we discussed the Romantic movement, I would play Wagner for the students and ask them to share what they heard. I found the experience of hearing the music brought across some of the emotions and key concepts in Romanticism much more than a verbal explanation would.
A workshop leader I know plays music at the beginning of each session as people are coming in, to create an atmosphere and get people to connect with the environment emotionally. I started doing the same in my philosophy classes, playing something related to the philosophy we were studying as students came into each lesson (a Raga for Buddhism, Chinese Guoyue for Confucius, South African choral music for our lesson on Ubuntu, Mozart for Kant, and so on). This creates a unique setting for the lesson, contextualising the learning culturally and historically.
Then there is songwriting, a form of poetry that can distill a message powerfully and musically, not only connecting with students in an emotional fashion but allowing for the whole class to sing together. What a wonderful act of pedagogy, harmonising the same message together.
Recently, I did a string of assemblies for our Primary students across the different campuses of the International School of Los Angeles. I wanted us to reflect together on some educational questions. So, instead of making a speech or doing a PowerPoint, I took my guitar and we sang Bob Dylan’s timeless “Blowin’ in the Wind.” The song is full of questions and only one answer, which we don’t know, for it is blowing in the wind.
I started with the lyrics, asking the students what they thought they meant. What do you think Dylan means when he says, “How many times must the white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?” And what might he mean when he asks, “How many times must a man look up before he can see the sky?” The students gave various responses, ranging from the literal to the symbolic. Everyone had an idea of what the lyrics might mean since the allegorical structure of the song makes it at once accessible and challenging, as any elegant pedagogic structure should.
Then we sang the song, with the students joining me for the chorus: “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind; the answer is blowin’ in the wind.”
Music and song together bring joy and emotion into learning; they bring communities together and allow us to enter the world of ideas through some other avenue than the logical and exclusively linguistic framework that dominates so much of what we do in education.
What music do you play with your students?
