Improving Education with Lessons Learned from School House Rock

Even those adults who did not experience School House rock in its original format can appreciate the memory of a song stuck in their head that just will not leave. It haunts them, preventing them from focusing on other matters. Some song writer or team of writers has managed to get into your head and imprint their message into your cerebellum for a period of time. The same occurs with strong marketing campaigns. That jingle that will not be exercised from the brain is an experience we have all shared. The minute we hear the first few notes of the commercial, we can name that product faster than we can remember our pin number for our ATM card. There is a strong connection between music and memory.

School House Rock capitalized on that in the 1970's. Unfortunately, the marketing did not reach a cooperative relationship with public education until much later. In fact many teachers had no idea that there was this intellectual imprinting going on during Saturday morning cartoons. Little was done to reinforce this powerful recollection tool, thus increasing the learning. However, those memory imprints were still happening. Just consider the number of times we heard those songs.

An example of the long term memory development that occurred from this repeated exposure is how well people can recall the lyrics to these songs. When a college professor required us to write the Preamble to the United States Constitution during an exam, he noticed a mild humming broke and he became alarmed. Contrary to his belief it was not some massive cheating plot. What he was hearing was a long dormant awakening of a Saturday morning habit emerging. We were in fact singing the lyrics to the song, "Preamble." While it had been many years since any of us had seen the show, it had no yet been released to VCR, we remembered. That was the power of marrying solid curriculum, to experienced creative musicians.

Years later, as a teacher, I was excited to find they had produced software. A valuable lesson was learned that a brand does not learning make. While the original marriage of video and music had been powerful, the software was not well designed. It never tied the power of the music and the lyrics to software. Without the focus on learning first and product second, they missed out on what made their original design such an amazing learning tool.

There are other examples of the power of music tied to curriculum challenges. One of the most well known is attributed to Ray Charles. The song, "Fifty Nifty United States" is still used in many classrooms, around the country to help children learn the names of the states in alphabetical order. While not the newest product on the market, it is still being produced and used because adults still remember the tune. When their children come home singing it, there are adults who join in.

What surprises me is how little educational music is on the market. There are pockets of it, but most of it is geared towards primary children and it is challenging to find high quality. We know the power of the music, we have seen the results. Yet, it is still marketed mostly to primary classrooms, when we know that even as adults we can remember things we hear musically long after we long to forget them. However, as I learned with the software, it is not merely a matter of getting people to write music. You do need to marry those who understand curriculum needs and those who write music well. It is not often the case that you find both in the same person. Often you have a great creative team musically, but need input on what material would be most useful if put to music. Those who understand the curriculum are not always the best inclined to do the music production.

However, the need is there, it is merely a matter of finding good quality materials that will meet it. We don't need more products like the School House Rock software that sound like a great opportunity for learning, but end up not helping us achieve our goal. There is a growing market though, for those who can produce educational music that can reach the memory of our kids. Hopefully we will see more of it in the years to come.

Resources:

Newell, George, and Tom Yohe. Schoolhouse Rock the Official Guide. New York: Hyperion, 1996.

"Ray Charles Fifty Nifty United States", Shawnee Press
http://www.shawneepress.com/producttitle.asp?title=Fifty%20Nifty%20United%20States