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GWS :: nine

vbs 047Today we think of music, especially classical music, violins, pianos, etc. as being for the middle and even upper middle class, wholly out of the reach of the poor…

J.B. Priestley, in one of his books, describes the lives of working-class poor people in the wool district in Yorkshire…

It was not at all uncommon for these families, living on the edge of bitter poverty, to have a piano in the house on which at least one member of the family could and did play some of the great classics.

Miners, factory workers, mill workers, sang in great choruses of hundreds of voices.

–John Holt in Growing Without Schooling Issue 10

archived here.

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