Day Fourteen: The Bible and the Formation of the Gospels, Part Three

                It sounds lame and cheesy, but students do, in fact, learn a lot by putting information into song. It is basic mnemonic device. But there is more going on than just memorizing the facts or the level-one information that a song can help us know. I used to have my students memorize the books of the Bible. There are dozens of different ways I could have shown them, mostly songs, and it is probably still something that they could use if they wanted to memorize this particular bit on knowledge. I am not sure if it is necessary anymore. All my students can literally ask their phone to tell them this information; does it matter anymore? Probably. But not for why we think.

St. Augustine Chapel at the Augustine Institute in Greenwood Village, Colorado. For the longest time and still in some places, the Catholic Mass was sung. Eastern Rites still sing the Mass, regularly. There is something mysterious and sacred about music. (photo P. Smith)

                What I do know is that as teenagers and kids, music is part of their language. It is part of their cultural context. So, using music in class to at least introduce ideas or concepts to my students can be vital. For example, I play any number of “Bible Songs” that are out there. They know that music is important. It is part of human culture; their culture is no different. So just listening to a song, even if it is about the Bible, psychologically and pedagogically brackets or connects that knowledge to a category of relative importance. As my students are listening to the song, I am not that interested in them memorizing the song or even being able to tell me what the song was all about; that would be nice. But I am more interested in just introducing the topics of which we will soon speak within the context of something important to their culture…their language. I want to start the conversation about Scripture by associating it to music. Combined with the previous part of the class where we discussed how we tell someone good news, my students are almost ready to begin discussing the purpose of Sacred Scripture and how it was formed.