We Don’t Need No Education: A Textual Analysis of Anglo-American Popular Music Lyrics about School

This paper investigates how popular music lyrics over the past century have described the nature and dynamics of Anglo-American student experience in formal schooling contexts. Using data from a cross-section of music streaming service databases, we identified 131 popular songs whose lyrics specific...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Education sciences 2024-01, Vol.14 (1), p.4
Main Authors: Barnes, Avery, Calvert, Isaac
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescents
Analysis
Audiences
Child development
Cooper, Alice
Education
Educational Experience
Educational Legislation
Emotional Intelligence
Genre
Influence
Listening
Lyrics
Musical performances
Musicians
Musicians & conductors
Poetry
Popular music
popular music lyrics
Psychological Studies
Rap music
Resistance (Psychology)
school and society
school experience
School Policy
Self Actualization
Semantics
Singing
Social aspects
Social psychology
Society
Sociology
Streaming media
Teachers
Text analysis
Young adults
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper investigates how popular music lyrics over the past century have described the nature and dynamics of Anglo-American student experience in formal schooling contexts. Using data from a cross-section of music streaming service databases, we identified 131 popular songs whose lyrics specifically discuss dimensions of formal school experience, especially from a student perspective. After three rounds of inductive thematic textual analysis, 7 major themes with 28 associated sub-themes emerged. These themes include school environment, situated feelings about school, negative results of school, school and society, conformity, negative view of teachers and the sexualization of teachers. Based on the assumption that a song owes at least some of its popularity to the appeal and relatability of its lyrical content to its audience, we hope that an in-depth, thematic analysis of such lyrics will give educationalists new insight into Anglo-American school experience through the salient societal medium of popular music. We further hope that these lyrical themes will shed new light on the lived experiences of school-age students and thereby deepen educationalists’ understanding of student experiences, perceptions and dispositions toward school more generally.
ISSN:2227-7102
2227-7102
DOI:10.3390/educsci14010004