The Afterlives of Radio

[COLD OPEN]

Ben: Disclaimer: The voices of English Journal authors featured in this audio segment are provided by voice actors, and are included for purposes of dramatic reenactment. However, the voices of the hosts—for better or for worse—are entirely their own.

[Montage of cassette noises, followed by main theme music]

[SEGMENT ONE]

Ben: Welcome back, intrepid listeners! This is Ben.

Jason: And this is Jason.

Ben: And you’re listening to “The Afterlives of Radio,” our follow-up to “English via the Airwaves.” And, if you’ve read our case study of mid-century audio pedagogies, you know that after those halcyon days of radio production in the 1930s, we saw the joy and life get sucked right out of that movement by a bunch of corporate technologies of control and surveillance [ragtime piano music in background, followed by whooshing sound effect].

Jason: And that made us sad . . . so very sad [violin in background]. But then we got to the seventies, and all of a sudden things started getting groovy again [sitar in background]. It was less “Let me correct your speech,” and more “Let us tune in together to the rock n’ roll revolution!”

Ben: What is it with you and your far-out seventies pedagogies? Didn’t you get this out of your system with your last book?

Jason: The early seventies were just so cool. I’ll never be done writing about them! Never!

Ben: Fair enough.

Jason: You know, after reading all those buzzkill articles about speech correction, I just got so excited when the noisy chords of political rock n’ roll started bursting forth on the pages of English Journal.

Ben: Yeah, dude! Rock and effing rooooooooll! [guitar riff]

Jason: Peace, man, Peace. Anyway, we can see in this era, young people were increasingly defining their identities and their politics through music . . . and English teachers were struggling to keep up. The beloved “Ode on a Grecian Urn” just couldn’t capture the attention of a generation that had been left “Blowin in the Wind” [“Blowin’ in the Wind” in background]. But, English teachers didn’t give up on poetry, they just worked hard to convince their students that poetry was much more rock n’ roll than they ever could have imagined.

Ben: Yeah, It’s kind of like hiding peas in your kid’s mashed potatoes.

Jason: Or hiding medicine in your cat’s tuna [cat meowing in background].

Ben: Yeah, I’m reminded of Helen English’s article from 1970,  “Rock Poetry, Relevance, and Revelation”—

Jason: Wait, wait a minute [cartoonish double-take sound effect]. She was an English teacher writing in English Journal whose last name was English? By Jove, it’s English all the way down!

Ben: I know, it’s all very confusing. Anyway, English made the case that the old “lecture and literature” model no longer worked with the rock n’ roll generation. She went on to describe the stultifying effects of droning lectures on students raised on rock n’ roll [voice actor’s delivery accompanied by specific theme music and cassette player sound effects]:

They rush to open the windows so that they can feel the fresh air and hear the noise of the traffic to liberate them from the confining, oppressive atmosphere of Cell 14 and the droning voice of the teacher. (1122)

Jason: Ouch that is bleak.

Ben: Brutal AF.

Jason: As an alternative to droning lectures, English would turn down the lights and have students listen to contemporary songs paired with audio-recorded poems on similar political themes. Students would listen eagerly to the powerful voices of such luminaries as Bob Dylan, Claude McKay, Nina Simone, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Country Joe and the Fish [“I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die” in background]. After listening, students would journal about their reactions and then share their insights with their  classmates.

Ben: Yeah, and this pedagogy provoked what might the best student evaluation comment ever. The article quotes one particularly enthusiastic student who summed up the rock poetry unit this way [voice actor’s delivery accompanied by specific theme music and cassette player sound effects]:

“This is the Rock Age and we are Rock children. Let us understand and learn about ourselves and our Music.” (1123)

Jason: Classic. And the rock children didn’t just want to listen to music, they wanted to make it, too. While English’s article focused on teaching students to analyze popular music, some teachers in this period went farther by integrating actual music production into their classes. In 1970, a hip English teacher by the name of LaVerne Coffin—

Ben: Woah, woah, woah . . . [cartoonish double-take sound effect] Stop the clock! What is it with these names?

Jason: Anyway, Coffin (that’s C-O-F-F-I-N, by the way) argued that having students write and perform songs could be a great way to surreptitiously ignite their interest in the seemingly . . . dead . . . genre of poetry.

Ben: I see what you did there.

Jason: The jokes, they write themselves, they really do! So, after critically analyzing the lyrics of songs chosen by the class, Coffin’s students would write their own song lyrics, set them to popular melodies, and produce their own cassette singles.

Ben: And for Coffin, the major point of this assignment was to teach students more about reading and writing poetry. She wasn’t trying to get them to make it in the music biz.  In fact, she admitted that she herself had a “Gravel Gertie contralto voice” that wasn’t meant for radio. But that didn’t stop her from exploring how song composing could make the teaching of poetry more engaging and meaningful.

Jason: Right on. You know, I’d like make the case that LaVerne Coffin was punk rock, and additionally that “Gravel Gertie” would be a great name for a riot grrrl band [“Rebel Girl” plays in background]. Coffin understood that punk pedagogy means not giving a fuck about professional production values—just pressing record and telling your truth.

Ben: So, Anarchy in the K-12?

Jason: Anarchy in the K-12! [Generic punk riff transition cues end of segment]

[SEGMENT TWO]

Jason: And we’re back. So, rock music was clearly the exciting new kid on the block in seventies English classes, but the radio drama in this period was the surprising comeback kid, helped along by an unlikely ally: the audio tape. The 1970s saw a proliferation of classic radio programs preserved and distributed on audio tapes—bringing back into circulation radio shows that had been withering away in dusty archives.

Ben: These radio shows were no longer seen as hip youth media, but rather as an important part of our cultural history that students needed to learn. English teachers like Bernard Hollister and Douglas Alley treated the audiotaped, radio drama as just another classic work of literature for students to analyze.

Jason: Yes . . . but, it wasn’t all analysis. The audio tape, after all, was a read/write medium. As cassette recorders proliferated in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, we saw a resurgence of radio production pedagogies in English Journal—though at eight articles in total, it was a much smaller boom than what we saw in the late thirties. And even though the radio was no longer a cool new thing in this era, students still found collaborative radio production to be meaningful because the cassettes they made had a real audience both within and potentially beyond the classroom.

Ben: Absolutely. Let’s consider Janet Cushman’s 1973 article, “Old Radio in the English class. It Can’t Miss!”

Jason: It really can’t. It just can’t.

Ben: I love that title. While making the case that radio production was a great way to engage students in reflecting on rhetorical choices, she recounted that [voice actor’s delivery accompanied by specific theme music and cassette player sound effects]:

one group of girls producing a “Suspense” episode took five class periods perfecting their script. They argued about changing single words. One girl liked the sound of one word better than the other! Imagine their doing as poets do! So “overshoes” became “galoshes.” (246)

Jason: Not the most radical revision, admittedly, but I’d go to the mat for it—“galoshes” is waaaay better than “overshoes.”

Ben: Totally agree. And we imagine that in those five class periods they likely debated some bigger rhetorical choices, too. It’s clear that Cushman’s students had fun making radio—so much fun, in fact, that Cushman reported that school administrators were worried about all the noise [construction sound effects].

Jason: Always a good sign, I say.

Ben: In addition to looking back to old radio, some teachers like Alice Hibbard started to imagine audio-centered English classes, in which students composed with cassette recorders in a wide range of sonic genres—radio dramas, yes, but also oral histories, audio documentaries, presentations, and so on. Writing in 1976, Hibbard made a powerful case that portable cassette recorders were essential equipment for English classes. Here, Hibbard wrote [voice actor’s delivery accompanied by specific theme music and cassette player sound effects]:

When I play the game of designing the ideal school (with unlimited funds, of course) I always provide a cassette recorder for every student. [. . .] To begin with, the recorders themselves, even the sturdy ones needed in most classrooms, are relatively inexpensive, as are the tapes that go with them. [. . .] Perhaps the most important characteristic of these recorders, though, is their familiarity to our students. For years now, many of our students have gone around with these recorders plugged into their ears, a fact to which teachers who have found themselves competing with the Top 40 [. . .] can testify. (65)

Jason: Here we really see how the portable cassette recorder opened up different kinds of sound writing possibilities. Students in Hibbard’s class were able to take their recorders on location to conduct interviews of multiple people—creating audio essays that were inspired more by the aesthetics of public radio than by the golden age of radio drama. I think Hibbard is very much an unrecognized forerunner of many of the documentary-centered, digital audio pedagogies that we see today.

[Main theme cues end of segment]

[SEGMENT THREE]

Ben: And students weren’t the only ones making audio cassette content. Teachers got into the act too.

Jason: Yeah, I’m reminded of that 1973 article by Danielson, Burrows, and Rosenberg. This group of teachers found commercial instructional tapes to be too expensive, so they collaborated to create their own in-house collection of taped lectures on a variety of literary and writing topics. In the Danielson article, the students listened to audio tapes, but they never made their own audio content. The tapes were simply a way to enable students to work at their own pace (and with some degree of choice) on completing traditional reading and writing assignments.

Ben: So, this is basically the flipped or inverted classroom, right?

Jason: Exactly . . . as I keep telling you, this shit ain’t new [cartoonish double-take sound effect]! And, just like many of the flipped classrooms of our time, the cassette-lecture pedagogies of the past were less innovative than they initially seemed.

Ben: Agreed, but these teachers actively resisted the audio “course in a box” model that companies were promoting at the time—they made their own collaborative content in dialogue with their students’ unique interests and needs.

Jason: Oh sure, that’s totally cool. And I agree that today’s homegrown flipped classrooms are much better than anything Pearson will ever come up with. I’m just pointing out that recording lectures in new media formats is definitely not the revolution.

[“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” cues end of segment]

[SEGMENT FOUR]

Ben: Okay, Jason. Calm down! I mean we only found one article that was lecture-focused like this. There were still some cool things happening with radio production in the eighties and nineties.

Jason: Okay, you’re right . . . I’m reminded of a different and more student-focused Danielson article—this one by Henry Danielson, not Earl.

Ben: Let’s just say goodbye to Earl, shall we [“Goodbye Earl” plays in background]?

Jason: Okay, Wanda. Anyway, Henry Danielson wrote an awesome article in 1981 about how collaborative radio production was a way to engage students in writing for real audiences. And, he made the case that students could create robust audio texts with everyday, inexpensive equipment. Henry wrote [voice actor’s delivery accompanied by specific theme music and cassette player sound effects]:

I’ve been told that one needs an electronic mixer to blend sound, music, and words. Nonsense! With a little practice and two tape recorders, or a recorder and a record player, students can mix sound and script beautifully. (85)

Ben: Damn right! That’s how we did it in the eighties. And I love too how Henry is emphasizing audio production as a complex layering of words, music, and sound effects—his students weren’t just reading papers out loud!

Jason: Exactly. And let’s not forget the exciting burst of three whole radio production articles that we found unexpectedly in the mid nineties.

Ben: Man, I love the nineties! [“I Love the 90s” intro in background]

Jason: Right? Right?

Ben: But, the tone of these articles was much different than what came before. There was less excitement about new developments like cassette tapes, and more nostalgia for returning to a simpler time of wholesome media represented by the Golden Age of Radio. Not only were the authors mourning how radio had been eclipsed by television and computers, they were also saddened by the rise of talk radio formats that were (how shall we say it?) not exactly good models of civil discourse. Here’s Bill Oates in 1994 [voice actor’s delivery accompanied by specific theme music and cassette player sound effects]:

There was a time when radio did not have to be loud and confrontational but rather the family focal point and main source of entertainment in the home. Having students interview those of older generations about the role that radio played in their homes can be a language-arts exercise itself. Issuing the notion of a different type of radio to teens and pre-teens in the 1990s may be as tough a sell as getting some veterans of the language-arts department to keep abreast of the latest in electronic recording equipment, [. . .] yet once the students become involved in a production, the prospects are as limitless as the funds in old radio star Jack Benny’s vault. (51)

Jason: Gotta love Jack Benny . . . Gotta love him. [Jack Benny theme in background]! But I have to admit that I question Oates’ narrative of a simpler time. It’s not like Rush Limbaugh was the first fascist demagogue on U.S. radio . . . what about Father Coughlin?

Ben: Absolutely, but I love the idea of students preparing for audio production not just by listening to old radio programs, but also by interviewing older people about their media experiences. In this way, we can see Oates offering an inspiring vision of a media archaeology pedagogy that engages students in researching radio histories, and then drawing on that research to compose creative multimodal texts.

Jason: Absolutely. I’d take a more critical approach to radio history than Oates did, but I love the idea of students researching and revivifying forgotten, nearly dead, media genres such as the radio drama.

Ben: Yes, but let’s keep in mind the radio play was not entirely dead in the 1990s. It was just placed on that life support device otherwise known as National Public Radio [Morning Edition theme in background].

Jason: Oh right! There was that 1994 article by Tim McShane that was all about a youth radio playwriting competition sponsored by a local NPR affiliate. Students in McShane’s class wrote radio plays for the competition, and one of them was even professionally produced and put on the air!

Ben: Right, I remember being particularly moved by the story of Jenny, an otherwise average student who became super-motivated to write and revise multiple drafts of a radio play for the competition. Jenny’s hard work paid off and her play was performed live during the pledge drive of her local NPR affiliate. Let’s let McShane tell us what happened when the play reached its dramatic conclusion [voice actor’s delivery accompanied by specific theme music and cassette player sound effects]:
There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Then the phones started ringing. The radio audience, spread over seventeen counties of north-central Florida . . . was blown away. So was Jenny. It was overwhelming. She had loved the production. But now it was like a thing apart from herself. It had a life of its own. Radio drama forces the playwright to concentrate on the essentials of the story. The essential drama is then revealed in the minds of the audience. That is where the play really takes place. Its tradition as an art form is entwined with the story told around the fire, which is to say, the tradition is as old as humanity. (54)

Jason: This I believe: radio is powerful. [snidely laughs]

Ben: Stop it, you! You’re just jealous that none of your plays ended up on the radio.

Jason: Damn right. In 1994, I was finishing high school just a few hours south of that NPR station area—working hard on some very earnest plays that never had a chance to be broadcast. If only I had been in McShane’s class . . . what might have been.

Ben: Well, at least, this book has given you an excuse to write fake radio plays in your middle age.

Jason: Yes, that’s some consolation, I reckon.

Ben: I notice too that McShane’s account is punctuated with the treacly nostalgia of Lake Wobegon. Writing for radio returns us to the wholesome days of families telling stories by the fire. It seems we’ve gotten pretty far away from the 1930s worries about how radio was causing the youth to turn to crime.

Jason: Yeah, I think in this chapter we’ve been finding when media are young, the culture projects onto to them a variety of exaggerated fears and hopes about how they will turn out. But, when media grow old, the culture either forgets them or turns them into objects of nostalgia.

Ben: We might say that, over time, the lifespan of a medium slowly moves from sensationalism to sentimentality.

Jason: Indeed. And, just as we should be wary of the exaggerated sensational claims that are often made about media when they are new, we should also guard against nostalgic visions of older media that freeze them in an idealized past and thereby limit our ability to engage them in critical, transformative ways.

Ben: Perhaps the best days of radio are yet to come [“The Best is Yet to Come” in background]. And, we can only imagine better radio futures if we have a complex, multivalent understanding of radio’s past.

Jason: And it’s important as well to consider how the arrival of new audio composing technologies has often breathed new life into radio pedagogies over time. The cassette tape (and now digital audio tools) have reignited interest in radio production pedagogies by expanding access both to archival audio materials and to the means of audio production.

Ben: Yes, no medium is an island. All media are complexly interconnected in ever-shifting cultural ecologies, to use Hawisher’s and Selfe’s term.

Jason: Right on.

[Main theme cues end of segment]

[SEGMENT FIVE]

Ben: Well Jason, we’re just about out of time. But before we go, would you like to bring up any parting thoughts?

Jason: Kind of off topic, but I just came across a 2013 article in English Journal that was all about having students analyze classic radio dramas and then produce their own dramatic podcasts. It’s after our cut-off date for coding, but I think it’s worth a read. I was so heartened to see a fellow English teacher drawing on the histories of radio pedagogy in English Journal to reinvent digital audio teaching—even giving nods to some of our favorite people from the thirties. In this article,  Roxanne Farwick Owens really drops the mic about why radio still matters. Take it away Roxanne [voice actor’s delivery accompanied by specific theme music and cassette player sound effects]:

Radio has had a profound impact on the social and cultural history of the nation. Its popularity was based on several factors including immediacy, entertainment value, and educational merit. There was something for everyone. There still is something for everyone. Old-time radio for new-time podcasting offers a way to rediscover an old medium in a new century. (70)

Ben: Wow. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Well, my precious little Rock Children, we’ve come to the end of yet another episode [main theme music cues outro]. We’d like to thank you for listening. And once again, if you like what you’ve heard, please be sure to check out the Pedagogical Inspirations section of this chapter, which features assignment descriptions based upon many of the English Journal articles we’ve mentioned here. Special thanks goes out to the voice actors used in this segment: Erin Brock Carlson [as Alice Hibbard], Abby Dubisar [as Janet Cushman], Ellen Cecil Lemkin [as Anonymous Student], Chris Maggio [as Tim McShane], Patrick Murphy [as Bill Oates], and Danica Schieber [as Helen English]. And an extra-special thanks to the real-life, actual, honest-to-goodness Roxanne Farwick Owens [as herself]. The sound effects you’ve heard here came from freesound.org, a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sound effects and music, as well as other places. This episode was recorded, edited, and mixed using GarageBand 10.3.1 in Columbus, Ohio.

Media assets used in this production listed in Production Notes.