Songs for learning: learning from song

Mae Shaw and Ian Martin, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

Paper presented at SCUTREA, 33rd annual conference, University of Wales, Bangor,

1-3 July, 2003

As in every other society and culture that has suffered oppression, we kept our history alive through song and poetry while the history books were in other hands. (Joni Buchanan)

Breaking the silence
These days, it seems to be quite difficult to talk about certain things in adult education - and the dominant discourse of lifelong learning, which is overwhelmingly instrumental and economistic, certainly does not help! Increasingly, we choose to remain silent about the things that really matter: things like truth and truthfulness, right and wrong, justice and equality, solidarity and common purpose, learning from history, and playing our part of the wider struggle to make the world a better place for most of its inhabitants to live in. There may - or may not - be good philosophical, theoretical and epistemological reasons for this coyness and timidity about addressing the big questions of principle and purpose. And, of course, there are seldom any 'right' or 'wrong' answers in any simple sense. The question, rather, is whether we are willing and equipped to make the arguments. Meantime, as we prevaricate or turn to less prickly pastures, a lot is happening, and something important is in danger of being lost - something central to that particular tradition of adult education understood as a process of learning through social and political engagement in and with the world. What we wish to argue in this paper is that we urgently need to find new ways - and perhaps to revive some old ways - of helping us to think and talk about such things. Given the world we live in, it can hardly be that this no longer matters.

In a sense, the search is for a more universal, and qualitatively different, language which allows adults to come together to learn from each other by sharing their own common understandings as well as confronting their differences about what they think citizenship and democracy mean in the kind of changing, pluralistic and volatile societies we live in today. This seems to be a vital task in a globalised world in which learning to live together in some kind of peace, harmony and mutual respect, however provisional and precarious, is the only viable alternative to endemic suspicion, hatred and violence. Adult education and adult learning must, once again, become part of the broader social and political process of learning to do something about this. In this respect, we would argue that it is not enough for us simply to try to understand theoretically, in yet more clever and complicated ways, why this task has become so difficult and demanding, if not impossible.

It is important to say at the outset that we see our work as being informed by what may loosely be described as the social purpose tradition of adult education. There now seems to be some disagreement about what this means and whether it still has any relevance to the kind of world we live in. So it is as well to be clear about what we mean. We see this way of thinking about and doing our work as adult educators in the following terms:

  • Adult students/learners are citizens and social actors, i.e. agents in their own right
  • Curriculum reflects shared social and political interests
  • Knowledge is actively and purposefully constructed to advance these interests
  • Pedagogy is based on dialogue rather than transmission
  • Critical understanding leads to social action and political engagement
  • Education is always a key resource in the struggle to extend citizenship and democracy.

This is what explains our interest in the notion of 'songs for learning: learning from song', i.e. as a way of pursuing social purpose learning at a time when it seems increasingly difficult to do so. Song - particularly the song of the common people - is a universal form of popular expression in all cultures. It tells the story of ordinary people's lives: their instincts and feelings, their beliefs and identities, their hopes and fears, and their shared sense of the problems and possibilities of the human condition. In short, it makes sense of their collective experience in their own terms. Moreover, the people's songs carry within them, in a uniquely authentic and accessible way, the dangerous memory of past struggles and the lessons to be learned from them. Thus it is that, 'Songs and protest went together, as Burns said about whisky and freedom' (Buchan, 1980).

In introducing his last CD Coda, the English folk singer Roy Bailey (2000) makes two points about the politics of the kind of songs he sings which are important for our argument: first, folk songs are the carriers of a people's account of their own history; second, they therefore give us a direct and unmediated expression of that collective experience - from 'bottom-up', as it were. There is something distinctively raw and authentic about this account:

More than 90% of what we know we have been told. …. Very little comes from direct, first hand experience. The institutions that carry this 'culture' have been referred to as the cultural apparatus. Whoever wields power within this apparatus has immense power over our lives. Folk songs are an important antidote to this. The carriers of the people's news offer an alternative view of the world - a sort of worm's eye view. (Bailey 2000)

Learning from song

There is a living tradition of political and protest song which has always been a rich resource for a particular kind of education and learning (Shaw, 2003). Socially and politically committed singers and songwriters have seen their work as popular, not in the self-seeking way promoted by the music industry, but in ways which arise from and seek to support popular struggles for human rights, justice, democracy and equality. Times change, of course. Woody Guthrie claimed that 'when people are on the march, they must have songs to sing'. It may also be that when people are not on the march - when they are complacent, resigned or worn out - they need songs too.

Songs move people in a particular and peculiar way. This opens up the possibilities of a unique kind of learning which stems, initially at any rate, from how people feel rather than what they think or what they can do. Songs make people happy and sad, hopeful and angry. Most of all, perhaps, they communicate people's hopes and fears in ways which politics today seems almost wilfully to neglect and education struggles to achieve. Songs help to create and sustain the visions which people need to keep going against the odds. A song like 'Bread and roses', for instance, which came out of a strike by women mill workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912, still expresses something about the longing and the languishing of the human spirit which transcends time and space. This is because the struggle for the 'bread' of human survival and the 'roses' of human flourishing is a universal struggle which carries on down the ages - and we intuitively recognise this.

The best songs of this kind illuminate the universal through the particular, the political through the personal, the present through the past - working with the grain of what people already know from their own experience. For example, in 'The moving on song', which is about the oppression and exploitation of travelling people, Ewan McColl cuts straight to the point: 'You'd better get born some place else'. These words have a powerful resonance with the experience of today's refugees and asylum seekers in many different parts of the world, connecting their plight with past generations of people who had no place to stay, nowhere to call home. In this way, song can help to build solidarities vertically, across generations, and horizontally, between people of different countries and cultures.

Songs of protest and struggle can be both aspirational and inspirational, lifting our sights from the seeming inevitability and intractability of things as they are. They turn things round, renewing our confidence in our own collective capacity to act as agents of change - to make a difference. They encourage us to see things differently. Take, for instance, this verse from a contemporary song by Ms Dynamite about the growing problem of violence among young black people:

You g'wan like yer brave

That's an illusion

Brave man wouldn't kill his own

Would start a revolution.

Or think about Si Kahn's challenge to conventional wisdom about what 'success' means:

It's not just what you're born with

It's what you do with what you got.

The metaphors of song can also provide the images and insights which help us to keep our eyes up. The vision of a better world conveyed in song has long inspired and sustained the human spirit, even in the worst of times: in the American Civil Rights Movement; in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa; in Chile, where the great singer and songwriter Victor Jara was tortured and killed because of the revolutionary power of his songs; in Ireland, and so many other places. Certain songs express a simple internationalism which speaks powerfully across differences of nation and culture. Some fine examples are Hamish Henderson's 'Freedom come all ye', which some would have as the national anthem of the 'new' Scotland, the Australian songwriter Judy Small's 'Mothers, daughters, wives' and, of course, 'The Internationale'. Other songs are right for almost any occasion and have been creatively adapted to suits the needs of the times. 'We shall overcome' and 'We shall not be moved' are obvious examples; so, too, is Florence Reece's uncompromising 'Which side are you on?'.

Songs bring people together, physically and metaphorically, to discover and celebrate their common interests and collective identities which have been systematically suppressed, marginalised and silenced. They speak to the human spirit and its yearning for a more just, equal and sustainable world. In doing so, they often transcend the differences of nationality, age, culture and 'race' and express a common sense of solidarity - an 'us' and 'them'. What is more, singing together has often given people the courage to stand up and be counted. The labour movement, the women's movement, the disability movement, the gay and lesbian movement have all produced their own musical advocates and their own distinctive music and song. And some, like Tom Robinson's exuberant 'Sing if you're glad to be gay', enter into mainstream culture - and help to change it. Over time, perhaps it is the peace movement that has generated the largest body of songs - and they always seem to be needed, not least right now!

Perhaps one of the most striking and under-estimated things about the use of song in adult education is its capacity to engage the active side of people - through feeling, thinking, singing along or turning our own experiences into song. Most of us simply enjoy music and song - even (or especially?) when we cannot play or sing ourselves. Music and song help to make the vision of a different and better world accessible to adult learners in a unique way: they simultaneously engage heart, mind and soul. Perhaps it is this kind of educational engagement which can help to transform lifelong learning from a vague aspiration, capable of being hijacked in all sorts of different directions, into an active process of human flourishing. But what this also means is recognising how our ways of thinking about learning, especially in the West, have been impoverished by a predominantly psychologistic and individualised focus on cognitive processes.

Song for social purpose

Freedom lost or freedom gained - nothing proclaims it more than singing. To sing is to celebrate an identity, to announce defiance, to reclaim the most fundamental of rights. Most freedom songs are statements of intent, a reminder to the oppressor that although he may have briefly triumphed, the loss of liberty is temporary: it shall be regained. (Linklater, 2002)

Part of our argument is that song helps to embody the notion of social purpose in adult learning in a distinctive way - at a time when those of us who identify with this tradition seem to find it increasingly difficult to express it in our work. We therefore conclude with six particular themes, consonant with this tradition, which, we suggest, song can help us to develop as a basis for curriculum in adult education.

Learning from experience:Song, particularly the 'folk song', expresses very simply and directly the experience of ordinary people - as workers, mothers, lovers. Most of us - teachers or learners - find it easy to identify with this, i.e. to find ourselves and our own lives in the lyrics. This means that the general can be established through the particular, the abstract through the concrete. The educational 'stretch' is facilitated because it goes with the grain of the learner's experience and capacity for empathy and identification.

Reasserting human agency: A key concern must always be to show that we do have choices, and that we can choose to act in ways which make a difference. There is never 'no alternative'. Political and protest song, in particular, has always insisted on making this claim - and often helped to resource the struggle to articulate and assert it. But this does mean trying to establish what our common interests are and to understand the need for collective action in pursuing them.

Personalising the political - politicising the personal: Feminist theory and practice, in particular, have taught us the importance of relating the personal to the political, of understanding how structure is inscribed in culture and individual experience is always embedded in a socio-political context. It is also essential, however, to understand and address the consequences of this in the way we choose to live our lives. In this sense, having connected the personal with the political, we need to turn political consciousness back into the personal in our own behaviour and relationships. This loop from the personal to the political and back is often most clearly expressed in the simple complexities of song.

Putting it all together: We begin to make sense of the world when we learn how to relate biographical experience to historical and structural change. This requires, however, that the pervasive ideology of individualism is systematically challenged in and through learning. In particular, as the globalisation of the market system proceeds apace, it is essential to see how the same basic processes are at work in the lives of ordinary people in what are otherwise quite different cultures and contexts. The universality of song is a key resource for developing an international 'sociological imagination' in this way.

Building solidarity - celebrating difference: Globalisation simultaneously unites and divides people. It brings people across the world into common structural relations as the class system is exported and reproduced elsewhere. At the same time, it destabilises and undermines (and sometimes reinforces) traditional forms of affiliation and identity in the sudden confrontation with the stranger, the alien 'other'. Song - carefully selected and skilfully used, of course - can help people to make sense of what's happening to them and to think about the problems and possibilities of both solidarity and difference.

Dreaming to make a better world: The metaphorical language of song encourages us to remember that, ultimately, learning must also be about dreaming. This helps us to see ourselves in history - and, potentially, as the makers of history. In the end, the language of song is an optimistic language because it insists that we make the history of tomorrow in the struggles of today. For every generation, the future begins now, in each person's head and heart. That is why yearning should always be part of learning. And this is precisely what we, as adult educators, should recognise: that it is impossible to suppress people's capacity to imagine a better world, and to nurture that dream in others. As the theme of the Third World Social Forum, held in Porto Alegre, Brazil in January 2003, reminded us, 'Another world is possible.' Songs for learning and learning from song help us to remember this and to understand it more clearly - and perhaps to do something about it!

Finally, and above all perhaps, song is one way of re-rooting adult education in progressive politics - the continuing human struggle to make a better world. Movements of protest and change - and we need them as much today as ever - flower in particular places at particular times, but they teach us through a promiscuous and transgressive pedagogy. Norman Buchan (1980) provides an inspiring example, starting in Scotland:

Hamish [Henderson] wrote a song of protest against the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. He used a Spanish Republican song for his tune, 'Viva la Quince Brigata'. From Spain to Scotland to South Africa. For the song was taken up by the Africans and absorbed: