Singing Together

That's all I remember of schools radio broadcasting in my own primary school days. I've no idea whether we listened 'live' or just used the printed song booklets in place of scores. Perhaps the teachers listened, learned, & thus acquired the confidence to get an overcrowded class of scruffy uncultured youngsters 'singing together'. I do recall that when I left for secondary school, I begged copies of some out-of-date books so that I could learn to play the songs on my recorder: The British Grenadiers, The Minstrel Boy, The Oak and the Ash and the Bonny Rowan Tree* - all good rousing traditional stuff for the 50s!

Some reminiscences fom others here:
Singing Together
SINGING TOGETHER on schools radio in the 60s

What intrigues me, looking back, is how little I remember of the shared classroom experience, yet how clearly I recall the titles I taught myself to play, from illustrated black & white booklets (still on my bookshelf!) alone in my room at home.

I'm not sure what H800 lessons to draw from this reflection. Week 2 sees us touring the world, considering audio-enhanced education  from early Canadian experiments in the 1920s (George H. Buck (2006) 'The First Wave: The Beginnings of Radio In Canadian Distance Education') to a more recent initiative in post-apartheid South Africa using radio in the drive for universal literacy (Potter & Naidoo (2006) 'Using interactive radio to enhance classroom learning and reach schools, classrooms, teachers, and learners’ - only available to students, but some findings incorporated into this chapter). We're also debating John Seely Brown's claims about groupwork:

'one of the few deeply robust result in most educational theory today is, in fact, the best indicator of success in college has to do with whether or not you know how to form, join, participate in study groups bar none.' (OpenLearn 2007 webcast)

an orthodoxy to which H800, it seems, wholeheartedly subscribes. My own experience with schools radio suggests I would have been just as happy with a tape-recorder & a booklet. But then I always was anti-social!

*Pedantic footnote: all the versions I sampled on YouTube had the chorus lyric as 'the oak and the ash and the bonny ivy tree' but my memory is corroborated by this entry in the folkinfo archives.