In the midst of slumping album sales, a collection of innovative national recording artists have found a new way to promote and market their music. By positioning their material as an intentional teaching tool to be used in the classroom, they are not only securing new fans, but also assisting educators across the country in their efforts to effectively teach and influence.

Using music to teach is nothing new. Multitudes of Boomers and Generation Xers learned about the process of how a bill became a law and how three was a magic number thanks to Schoolhouse Rock—a catchy assortment of educational musical shorts that aired Saturday mornings on ABC between 1973 and 1986. But while using music to teach is fairly commonplace when it comes to children, many classrooms throughout the US are now using songs as their teaching outlines to educate teens and young adults.

Bruce Gust is the Creative Director of Big Shiny Planet, a multimedia production house headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. They recently created a DVD resource that includes a host of artists providing educational commentary about their music as it relates to the Bible. “Most people who grew up in church learned the story of a tax collector named Zacchaeus from a catchy little song associated with it,” said Gust. “The lessons we’re teaching are obviously
distinct from things that are more academic in nature, but regardless of the subject matter, I can tell you that this is an extremely effective approach and the response has been extraordinary.”

Lenn Millbower is the author of a book titled, “Training With a Beat.” He says, “Music, by its very familiarity, does not draw attention to itself. Instead it works much as coffee comforts the morning, popcorn anticipates the movie, and as baking bread remembers home; it awakens the recesses of learners' minds, it calls the emotion to attention, it parallels the pulse of everyday life. For life has a rhythm, music has a meter, and learning, if done properly, has a beat.”

CeCe Heil, manager for SONICFLOOd, a Grammy award nominated band, appreciates using music the platform that music provides to teach truth. “By getting in front of your audience in a teaching environment, your art and your personality is now being absorbed and appreciated far more intentionally than what it would be otherwise,” said Heil. “The end result is a win-win for everyone on several levels. The teacher has taught, the student has learned and the band has been distinguished in a way that hopefully makes their music more relevant and personal.”

The result of education is typically measured in terms of retention and application. Test scores and report cards are needed and necessary in order to gauge progress, but in the end it's what is remembered and applied years after the fact that represents the best indicator of success. That being the case, perhaps a student's iPod and its contents need to be re-evaluated. Instead of it being perceived as a distraction, let it be used as a vehicle because it's not only where your student lives, it's also where they can, and will, learn.