“For years (the Scotts have) been using folk songs in the classroom to show children what a wonderfully diverse country we have, and to draw them in, heart and soul to its subtleties and complexities. Go through this book slowly! ... It will be a classic for forty years.”
John A. Scott
Tony is a veteran of World War II, has advanced degrees from Oxford and Columbia Universities. He was an editor for Alfred A. Knopf from 1964 to 1974, and for Facts on File from 1982 to 1992. His published works include, The Story of America, an illustrated geography, published by the National Geographic Society. Dr. Scott provided the definitive edition of Frances Ann Kemble’s, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation 1838-39, published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1963. The work was reissued as a paperback by the University of Georgia Press in 1984; it has been in print from 1963 to the present.
Laurence I. Seidman
Laurie taught in elementary schools in New York City and Long Island in the 1950s and 60s, where he recognized how useful folk songs could be in the classroom. A 619 page thesis on the subject resulted from his studies at New York University, where he received a Doctorate in Education in 1968. He taught Education at The C. W. Post Center, Long Island University, New York and retired as professor emeritus in the early 90s. Laurie authored, The Fools of ‘49: The California Gold Rush – 1848-165, and, Once in the Saddle: The Cowboy’s Frontier 1866-1896, for the Living History Library series, published by Alfred A. Knopf. He was an avid singer and very strong proponent of a Capella singing in and out of the classroom. He never learned to play a musical instrument, and was an inspiration to teachers who couldn’t.
Jim Douglas
For more than 30 years Jim collected and researched traditional and topical New England folk song and brought his knowledge and songs to more than 1,000 schools and dozens of historical societies and libraries throughout the region as a performer/visiting artist. He has half a dozen recordings and published anthologies of New England songs (Contentment: Or the Compleat Nutmeg-State Songster, From Farm to Factory: The Story of the New England Textile Industry Through Song. Two more publications were geared specifically for teachers: New England Songs, A Source Book for Teachers and Music in Every Classroom: A Resource Guide for Integrating Music Across the Curriculum, Grades K-8 (Libraries Unlimited). He still performs with long-time music partner, Tim Van Egmond as Yankee Notions, and they released an album of traditional and contemporary folk songs, Bridges. Jim holds a master’s degree in History and a master’s degree Library Science.
John W. Scott
John W Scott has been chief editor and Publisher of Folksong in the Classroom since 1990. He studied classical guitar at Mannes College of Music in New York City in the early 1970s, and worked under the late Kent Sidon at the Guitar Workshop in Roslyn, New York during the same period. He received a Bachelors from the New York State University system, and a Masters in Clinical Psychology from American International College, in Springfield Massachusetts. John has taught all ages in a variety of institutions. For over 30 years he taught History in the Springfield’s Public High Schools and was awarded a Sabbatical Year in 1998-99 to compile, A Ballad of America – 3d Edition.
Richard Haller
Richard Haller was an elementary school teacher for thirty years working in grades second, third, fourth, and fifth. At every level he incorporated folk song into his instruction. Now retired, he still makes appearances in local classrooms.
Charlotte A. Haller
Charlotte Haller is a Professor of History at Worcester State University and Chair of the History and Political Science Department there. She earned her Ph.D. in American History and US History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with a dissertation on free African Americans in North Carolina during the Revolutionary era. At Wisconsin, she also wrote a masters thesis, “‘Ain’t Gonna Play No Second Fiddle, I’m Used to Playing Lead’: Gender, Black Migration, and the Blues, 1920-1930.” Charlotte was a guest curator for the Worcester Historical Museum’s award-winning 2021-22 exhibit “Pretty Powerful: 100 Years of Voting and Style,” and co-authored the catalog. She teaches introductory courses in American history, historical methods courses, American constitutional and legal history, American women’s history, the history of gender and sexuality, the history of the American South, the American Revolution, and Civil War and Reconstruction. Throughout her teaching, she uses music and song to engage students and give them the tools to think critically about the past.
Sarah Swift
Sarah Swift is a retired school librarian with a focus on teaching media literacy and research skills. She has a background in museum public relations, including four years with Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, Massachusetts.
Diana Palmer
Mrs. Palmer attended Elmira College In upstate New York graduating with a Bachelors in English and History. She was certified to teach both English and History at the junior and High School levels and substituted at schools in southern Massachusetts from 1972 until 1978. She was then offered a teaching position with Southern Worcester County Educational Collaborative (SWCEC), where she taught at the Project Grow School for 23 years. She taught creative learning to students while collaborating with collages to provide a well rounded flexible approach to education, art/music, and academic skills. Diana enjoyed her work immensely throughout her tenure and continues to pass on critical thinking and essential works.
Linda Racine
Linda has spent many hours learning different and now useless programs for us, in order to edit, re-edit, and re-re-edit the FITC materials. This mammoth work (which surely no longer can be called a labor of love) has taken place before some one else then has decided to make numerous re-writes, and re-re writes. Therefore, any and all editing mistakes herein are errors she has never actually seen.
Thank you so much Linda
Pete Seeger
The History of Folksong in the Classroom Inc.
In the late 1970s, Lauri Seidman and Tony Scott started publishing, Folksong in the
Classroom, A Newsletter. Four times a year they would meet over a kitchen table with scotch Tape,
scissors and glue, and cut and past the latest issue.
Their passion, their mission, was to further a small but insistent revolution in the teaching of
American History on the primary and secondary levels. Their ultimate goal was to ‘bring History
alive’- to make the teaching and learning of History dynamic, exciting. This would be accomplished
by replacing the notoriously boring, expensive, heavy and often inaccurate text book, with eye
witness historical materials – Primary Sources – speeches, letters, diaries, drawings, paintings,
maps, physical artifacts, and products of oral traditions like stories, music and song.
Through much of the 1980s, Lauri and Tony churned out three issues a year. Subscriptions hovered
around 1000. Newsletter materials included, essays, letters to the editors, and song materials
covering a range of topics: Songs of Colonial Times, Cowboys, The Civil War, Whaling, Lullabies,
Women’s Songs, Slavery, Lumbermen, Living Creatures, Rail Roads, Farming, and others, listed on
our Donations page.
In the late 1980s, Lauri retired, and was replaced by John W Scott, Tony’s son, a High School
teacher. The publishing process began to be digitized.
In the 1960s, Tony had published, The Ballad of America: The History of the United States in Song
and Story, (Grosset & Dunlap, New York). The volume covered the span of United States History.
It was a financial success and was well reviewed.
John received a Sabbatical Year from Springfield Massachusetts Public Schools (1999-2000) to
produced a totally revised 3d Edition of, A Ballad of America. For the first time songs were typeset
in the 8 1⁄2 x 11 inch format specifically for ease of reproduction and use in the classroom.
The Ballad of America:
The History of the United States in
Song and Story, by John Anthony Scott.
Grosset & Dunlap, New York 1960.
Bill and Jean Bonyun
It all started for the Scott family with the Bonyuns, late of Wiscasset Maine, the first people we
knew of who made a study of folk songs for classroom use.
Bill Bonyun gave school presenta- tions for decades, first in Long Island, and later in Maine.
Kent Sidon and the Guitar Workshop
Kent Sidon and the Guitar Workshop. A worthy proponent of our mission from long before the Scotts met him, and tireless support afterwards, late of Waverley Place, New York City, and founder of the Guitar Workshop, in Roslyn Heights Long Island. Perhaps most of all, Kent was a lover and proponent of the guitar. John taught under Kent at The Guitar Workshop for seven years starting in the late 1960, and it was where he first received musicians’ training. Kent also spent countless hours assisting Tony in transcribing folk song turns.
Kent Sidon
Founder of the Guitar Workshop, Roslyn Heights
New York. Late of Waverly Place, New York City
The Warner Family
Our organization has been greatly influenced from contact over the decades with the Warner family, Frank, Anne, Jeff and Garret. The Warners started collecting traditional Application Mountain folk songs in the 1930s, and Jeff worked at The Guitar Workshop for many years. He performs professionally, and gives school presentations on traditional American music. You can visit his site here.
Bill Bonyun on the Old Sturbridge Village green.
Three of the boys with him will eventually become members of the Folksong in the Classroom Board of Directors; the fourth, the Board’s Legal advisor.
Some of the Heirloom Records
Each album weaves dialogue with the song, creating dramatic chronologies of a Historical period. The Civil War, was made in partnership with the Anne and
Frank Warner Family. The second row are LP recordings of assembly presentations written by Tony Scott and performed by his students at the Ethical
Culture Fieldston High school Bronx New Yorke Folksong in the Classroom Board of