Music is a powerful tool for the expression of ideologies, especially when it comes from respected and popular artists. During the 1960s, considerably the most widely known were the Beatles, with their sales at over 500 million records worldwide. At the same time as the rise of the Beatles, the 1960’s brought about the escalation of the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was arguably the most controversial in America. And many different artists voiced their opposition to it, including the Beatles. Through their music, the Beatles forwarded an ideology of peace, togetherness, and love, and opposed the war.
However, music is not the most effective vehicle for protest. While music can bring people together, it alone does not educate as thoroughly as a combination of visual and auditory mediums. When music is adapted to combine a visual aspect as well, the message and facts are more effectively processed and remembered. Learning is easier when the ideas are presented in a multimedia form. In addition, adding in visuals benefits memory due to the picture superiority effect, which dictates that due to the strong symbolism connected with images, humans are more likely to remember pictures than they are words.
Fortunately for the Beatles, they did not only further their message of peace through music, but through visuals as well. Two examples of visual adaptations. That successfully used the music of the Beatles’ to further their message. Are Yellow Submarine, made at the time of the Beatles’ popularity, and Across The Universe, a more modern creation. Looking at these two examples is vital due to the Beatles far reaching messages. They were the most wildly known and influential, but what made them so? Why did their art and the messages of their art cause so much stir? It is not just due to the Beatles themselves, but how their music was used. By utilizing certain cognitive structures, adaptations of their music successfully furthered the ideas the Beatles were attempting to promote. These movies used powerful visual techniques that left the ideas memorable and easy to recall. In addition, the ideology and peaceful protest and the reasoning behind why the Vietnam war was wrong was not always easily understood, and the usage of multimedia facilitated the education.
The idea of the “visual learner” and “auditory learner” is one that has exploded over the last 10 years, however research is now beginning to counter this by focusing on the universal techniques which help learning regardless of supposed learning style (Pashler et al., 106). A study conducted at the University of Haifa explored how a multiple representation model (a sheet explaining concepts using visuals and words) could better teach students than a single representation model (a sheet only using words). The study found that the effect of the MR models significantly helped students.
The article states, “The diverse, distinct MRS seemed to afford students the ability to easily notice and identify certain bits of information within the whole display, thus facilitating these students’ usage and manipulation of larger amounts and more varied types of information, as compared with the SR group students who noticed less information based on the unitary text-only display to which they were exposed” (Eilam & Poyas, 376). The conclusion of this study was that multiple representations using visuals and words helped the students see and pick out more information, allowing them to use the information more effectively. In addition, the study found that the students who were exposed to the MR models performed better on tests of the material.
One might question the reliability of the study due to the topic of “learning styles” from earlier, and suggest that the students who were assigned to the conditions that had visual representations were more likely to perform better on the test, and vice versa.
