Schoolbag as a Mirror: The Transformation of Chinese Children’s Schooling Experiences in Songs over the Past 70 Years

The practice of integrating songs into educational research is seen as an emerging phenomenon, focusing on students’ existential situation from the perspective of culture. This paper explores the connections between the songs selected and children’s life experiences in different periods between the 1950s and the present. There exist numerous songs involving the theme of schoolbags over the past 70 years. In 14 typical popular songs, the cultural implications of schoolbags roughly fall into four categories, namely political, emotional, playful, and visionary, each respectively reflecting different degrees of weight captured by the song originators. Accompanied by the diversity of musical rhythms and melodies, the musical images of schoolbags may vary in terms of phenomenology and schooling culture. The nature of schoolbags in songs keeps changing, closely related to the micro-political experiences of the singers. Therefore, as a teaching resource outside the classroom, popular songs exert a greater influence on students’ spiritual cultivation than formal knowledge.