Presenter: Avery Barnes
Authors: Avery Barnes, Isaac Calvert
Faculty Advisor: Isaac Calvert
Institution: Brigham Young University
Various forms of media in popular culture have long been theorized to convey salient and fundamental dimensions of society, popular music not least among them. One instantiation of this principle is what pop music lyrics have said about education in contemporary Anglo-American culture. To this end, this study enumerates and categorizes specific themes from a rigorous qualitative analysis of popular song lyrics between the years 1947-2019 that mention school and Anglo-American school experience. We systematically coded the lyrics of 83 songs looking for noteworthy themes about the experiences and conceptualizations of schooling. To select these songs, we conducted a keyword search over a cross-section of several musical databases. We further searched by consulting similar research articles and song compilations previously made on the topic of education and popular music, both of which are underdeveloped. Following established methods of textual analysis, we found 29 specific themes across seven major categories, including school environment, situated feelings about school, negative results of school, school and society, conformity, negative view of teachers, and the sexualization of teachers Overall findings from these themes suggest, in as far as these lyrics reflect lived student experience, that there are significant social-emotional, cultural, and psychological issues at the heart of Anglo-American school experience whose effects are at odds with intended teacher/administrator outcomes. Further research could build upon this study by surveying contemporary students to explore the relationship between these themes in popular music and their situated school experience. It is our hope that this research will add to a scholarly discussion regarding the cultural significance of schooling and the discrepancy between what schooling is imagined to be and the reactions of students and society to that system.