Program music like you choose your menu for Thanksgiving.
This week, Americans will eat foods that they love not because of how it tastes.
Sure – they can taste good. But the foods I love at Thanksgiving, I love because of how they makes me feel. I eat pie recipes that my family has been baking since I was an infant, and a squash dumpling I learned from Alton Brown when my own kids were babies.
The point is, I make them because they taste like nostalgia. They taste like home and family and love.
Programming music for that reason is just as justifiable. In a world that pushes programming for educational value (nutritional value), choose music that creates feeling. Choose music that feels like home when your students sing it.