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MUSIC constitutes the greatest portion of adolescent media consumption.
According to Media Scope, “Music is extremely prominent in adolescent lives: teenagers spend between 4 and 5 hours a day listening to music and watching music videos, and name music listening as their preferred non-school activity.” Music is found everywhere—stores, restaurants, schools, churches, etc. Some of the music kids are listening to is positively exceptional in content and form, but some of it is just positively filthy.
Below are some statistics from a USA Weekend poll of 60,000 teens concerning their music listening habits: from (What Kids Can Do.org 2003.) Whether kids are listening for entertainment purposes or simply out of boredom, there is always a message being conveyed to them.
MTV: Marriage of Music and Television Music is a powerful means of message communication. Music can excite our imagination; stir our emotions; help us to learn more efficiently and even help us when we have trouble sleeping. It is also an outlet for producers and writers to relate to their audience in a meaningful way about life.
On August 1st, 1981, MTV launched an attack on our senses that will live in entertainment infamy. Music and video were combined into one medium and the influence on our imagination and emotions became exponentially multiplied. According to cultural analysts, this has produced a generation of young people that listens with their eyes and thinks with their feelings. This media marriage is neither necessarily good nor bad, but students should be reminded that every musical score or video production is a wholesale projection of a particular worldview from someone’s perspective. You may also remind students that images that are driven by a musical score are a compound influence on their senses in much the same way that advertisements target their senses with the same combination.
The Debate If you have ever found yourself debating with kids about their music and media interests, you are certainly not alone. Unfortunately, these issues do not resolve as quickly and easily as those in a night time drama or a half-hour sitcom. In today’s hi-tech world of cell phones, mp3 players and ipods, teachers, as well as parents, have to deal with teen music choices. These issues require perseverance and diligence as you pursue relationships with students. |
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Minding their Music By George Palombo Executive Director, American Center for Character and Cultural Education (ACE)
Discussing the Influence of Today’s Music with Students! |
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Teacher: “Young man, turn that blasted music down right this instant…….. For crying out loud…….How can you attempt to do schoolwork and listen to that polluted garbage? How can you even hear yourself think? What is that nonsense you are listening to anyway? It sounds like a bunch of noise…You’re gonna’ go deaf!”
The hoped for response is not usually forthcoming!
Student: “You are SO RIGHT, teach! I will turn the music down immediately. Thank you so much for your adult concern!!! All of the loud and disturbing music must have completely damaged the sensibilities in my little teenage mind. What ever was I thinking? I am so lucky to have you to look out for my best interests until I am mature enough to completely understand your adult wisdom. Thank you for saving me until that happens! Now that you so gently and lovingly pointed out the error of my ways, we can all just get along!
And they all lived happily ever after…….Didn’t they?
Conflicting Messages “Give me the makings of the songs of a nation and I care not who makes its laws,” said eighteenth-century Scottish political thinker, Andrew Fletcher. These words may very well be truer today as today’s songs and lyrics seem to influence the convictions and moods of today’s kids and adults like never before. Kids have always been influenced by the music that reaches their ears. Educators have long recognized the value of music in the arena of learning. MTV’s marketers and producers also understood the value of this relationship and capitalized on this fundamental principle when it revealed one of its early slogans, “Watch and learn.” And they watched….and they learned!
A later adaptation of an MTV slogan stated, “They don’t just watch it, they live it.” Suddenly, kids were no longer just teenagers. They had an identity of their own. The MTV generation was born. It was a watershed moment in pop-culture history. For the first time, an entire generation could be defined not so much by their common beliefs and attitudes, but by the type of TV they watched.
Speaking on the power and influence of music almost twenty-five hundred years ago, Plato stated that, “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.” Powerful words concerning a powerful medium!
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