Humor and Education

            For my final project, I wrote a 7 page paper on the humor as a educational tool in the standard classroom as well as humor's place in music.  On Tuesday I posted about 4 videos which I would have shown the class while presenting my project, so please check that out.  Here is the link:
https://genderandhumor.blogspot.com/2020/04/major-project-post.html
            As a future educator, I am always looking for ways to make students enjoy learning.  Now more than ever, students need constant stimulus to stay engaged in the classroom.  There are so many things which pull students away from focusing in the classroom, be it the distraction or cell phones or external worries which plague the minds of many.  A valuable tool for engaging students is humor.  In this class we've explored the other ways humor can be used to address larger issues such as in Hannah Gadsby's Nanette, Ali Wong's Baby Cobra and much more.  Humor has the power to stick with us and boost our memory, which is what makes it such a powerful tool in education.
            The first link I shared was to a brief interview with the 2018 Louisiana Teacher of the Year, Kimberly Eckert.  Eckert explains that teaching is not easy, but the best thing you can do as a teacher is to have fun.  Make it enjoyable, and LAUGH! Laughter is notoriously contagious...almost as contagious as a yawn.  When teachers and students alike are having a good time in the classroom, students are more likely to attend classes regularly, engage in the class, and perform better in classroom assessments (Appleby). The magic of humor comes from the brain's dopamine reward system.  When we laugh, we are creating dopamine in the brain which our brain likes.  The brain says, "Oh yes, I like this.  MORE! MORE! MORE!" which in turn leads to goal oriented motivation.  If the brain associates learning with humor and dopamine, then students are much more likely to engage and come back for more (Henderson).
            David Tarvin is a professor at Texas A&M University who vouches for the value of humor in the classroom.  In 2018, Tarvin gave a speech for Humor That Works in which he explained how he uses humor to engage students in his college courses.  One of the key elements to humor is that it is age appropriate and relevant to what is being taught in the classroom (Powers).  Of course, because of the inevitable class clown, humor won't always be relevant but I will touch on that more later. David Tarvin explains that he uses humor in one of three ways: association, applied improv, or personal stories. In the case of association, what makes it work is by teaching about one thing through another which students may be more familiar with.  The example Tarvin uses is that he teaches about Sophist rhetoric, Tarvin associates Gorgias' defense of Helen and Palemides with a defense of Scar from The Lion King. While neither Sophists or The Lion King are inherently funny, what makes this humorous is imagine: you walk into your college classroom knowing that according to the syllabus you're going to have to listen to your professor drone on about Sophist rhetoric and the tale of Gorgias for like 50 minutes, and all of a sudden, your professor just starts talking about Scar from The Lion King out of the blue, defending him and why he maybe wasn't all that bad. Imagine the confusion in the classroom, yet the enjoyment of debating something familiar that all of the students in the classroom are familiar with.  At the end of class, the professor removes the cloak from the purpose of the discussion and relates your entire debate back to Sophist rhetoric and the story of Gorgias and his defense of Helen and Palemides.  All of a sudden it makes sense but you enjoyed learning about something old through something new.
       This technique can be used when managing the class clown.  Maybe your class clown is constantly chiming in with unnecessary comments about something completely unrelated, or maybe a prank was played.  In that moment, the teacher has two options: discipline the inappropriate behavior and create tension in the classroom, or find a way to roll with it and create a lighthearted and humorous energy in the classroom.  While both are going to be a disruption to the normal flow of the class, finding a way to roll with the distraction offers a way for the teacher to engage the students and get them back on track without majorly disrupting the energy of the class.
        So what about the music class? Well, in many ways the music classroom isn't actually all that different that standard classroom. Students are still students; they still goof off and they still respond to humor.  As with humor in the normal classroom, humor in the music classroom should be relevant. Music isn't inherently funny, but there is a history between music and satire which I will touch on later.  Humor in the music class can be more than just jokes about instrument stereotypes.
        "How many trumpet players does it take to change a light bulb? 5. One to change the light bulb            and 4 to tell them how much better they could have done it."
Instrument jokes aside, parodies are a great way to integrate music into the standard classroom as well as the music classroom.  Parodies in the music classroom hold a special opportunity that parodies out side of the music classroom don't have: music-related parodies can teach about the music to the song they are sung to.  My favorite example of this is The Music Theory Song by David Swenson, which I liked in my previous post.  While most of it probably won't make sense to you if you aren't familiar with music theory, this song explains the music theory of the song to the tune of the original melody.  This technique is actually used rather often especially when familiarizing students with intervals.  I remember when I took music theory in high school that I learned intervals through songs.  The wedding song that goes "here comes the bride" is a perfect fourth, the beginning of the Star Wars opening theme is a perfect fifth... I digress. 
        As I mentioned before music and satire have a history.  John Gay, the composer of The Beggar's Opera wrote the opera in the 18th century and the sole purpose of the opera was to make fun of Italian opera.  People loved The Beggar's Opera so much that they stopped going to see Italian operas and these composers started to really financially struggle.  The Beggar's Opera makes fun of the Prime Minister of Great Britain at the time.  The opera makes fun of the socio-economic inequity of the upper class aristocrats and the lower class thieves and whores.  Music may have a reputation for being elitist and serious, but there is humor in music. 
        Using humor in the music class and standard classroom alike should always be relevant and  appropriate.  The song I linked from The Beggar's Opera in my previous post is "Our Polly is a Sad Slut" which would MOST CERTAINLY not be appropriate to share with elementary or middle school students.  The same goes for the relevancy of jokes.  If I am teaching about math, I probably shouldn't just break out jokes about instrument stereotypes, but jokes about math? Those would certainly be more relevant.  What it all truly comes down to is whether or not using humor would improve the class or take away from it, as with any joke and with any educational methods.  If you aren't a naturally funny person and trying to be funny is like pulling teeth, don't try to be funny in the classroom because it just wouldn't help you or the students.  If you have a sick, dark, twisted sense of humor, maybe telling those dark jokes and being twisted towards your students isn't the place for that.  If you just happen to have one of those senses of humor where you can turn everything into a joke, don't hold back! Just make sure it is appropriate and relevant.  Maybe it even is used as a Segway between two topics.  Who knows.  Humor is powerful and can turn a whole day around.  It even boosts memory and retention! It is a very valuable tool to use in the modern classroom because it engages students and improves the mood of the classroom.