There were no readers in print for adult illiterates, so a little
weekly newspaper was published as a reading text.
Can we win?
Can we win what?
Can we win the prize?
Yes, we can win.
See us try.
And see us win!
This was the first lesson. It consisted of simple words, much
repetition and a content that related to the activity of the reader,
all of which, in a first lesson are essential. The lesson referred to
a contest between the moonlight schools, and the element of rivalry
thus introduced heightened the interest and produced a style of
reading that rang with the emphasis of a challenge. There was attained
immediately what had been striven for in the day schools with only
indifferent success--natural expression in reading.
In the later lessons there was a sentence which read, “The best people
on earth live in Rowan County.” Provincial though this may seem to
some and flattery to others, it had the desired effect of keeping the
interest at white heat, as perhaps a sentence like--“Foreign birds wear
pretty feathers” could not have done. One old man read the sentence and
openly expressed his approval. He leaned back in his seat and with a
hearty laugh exclaimed, “That’s the truth!”
Continuing the lesson, he found a little further along a sentence that
read like this, “The man who does not learn to read and write is not a
good citizen and would not fight for his country if it needed him.”
This was published before the World War when a vast number of
illiterate soldiers were called into the American Army, and is a
statement disproved, of course; for illiterate soldiers are courageous
and as patriotic as their understanding will permit. But the sentence
provoked students to their best possible work. The old man who
had exulted in being one of those “best people on earth,” became
very thoughtful after reading it, and then resumed his study with
grim determination, for to a Kentuckian there is no accusation so
humiliating as the one that he, under any circumstances will not fight.
To a Kentucky mountaineer it is ignominy complete.
The little newspaper had a fourfold purpose: to enable adults to learn
to read without the humiliation of reading from a child’s primer with
its lessons on kittens, dolls and toys; to give them a sense of dignity
in being, from their very first lesson, readers of a newspaper; to
stimulate their curiosity through news of their neighbor’s movements
and community occurrences and compel them to complete in quick
succession the sentences that followed; to arouse them through news
of educational and civic improvements in other districts to make like
progress in their own.
News items such as “Bill Smith is building a new barn” and “John Brown
has moved to Kansas” caused them quickly to master the next sentence to
see what the next neighbor was doing and we found that curiosity was
not confined altogether to the women.
“They are building new steps to the school-house at Slab Camp and
putting up hemstitched curtains” was the item that caused Bull Fork
moonlight school to build new steps, put up hemstitched curtains and
paint the school-house besides.
Other elementary subjects were taught by the question and answer
method--sometimes called the Socratic method. Only the minimum
essentials were included in the course. For instance, the student might
not be able to master American history in one short session; he could
not learn the principal events of each President’s term, the dates of
battles, and the flounderings of the various political parties, but
he could at least learn a limited number of important facts that every
American citizen should know.
The ignorance of some people, even native-born Americans, about
American history, shows that a few basic facts taught them would be
a blessed act of enlightenment. An illiterate old man speaking at a
patriotic meeting was heard to say, “Uncle Sam, our President of the
United States, is a grand old man.” Another during the early stages of
the World War declared, “The United States ought to go over and help
France. He helped us when we needed it and now we ought to help him.”
The drills in history attempted nothing more ambitious in the beginning
session than to clear up such wrong impressions, to open up the subject
to the students, and to give them a few essential facts that would
stand out or, if further advancement were possible, might be the
skeleton on which a thorough course could be hung.
Drills in such facts as by whom America was discovered, by whom it
was inhabited and by whom settled; the story of how our independence
was won; the name and nature of our first President, may have been
history in homeopathic doses, but was eagerly swallowed and was
wholesome knowledge for people who knew nothing of the subject. Such
cluttering-up facts as the battles we have fought, the number we
have killed and mutilated, the traitors we have had, the mistakes we
have made in passing and then repealing bad laws, the long struggle
to overcome certain glaring evils and to secure certain needed
reforms, may well be omitted from a course which requires the utmost
condensation.
The drills were elective. Besides history they included civics,
English, health and sanitation, geography, home economics, agriculture,
horticulture and good roads. Four were to be chosen from these, the
four most suitable to the district’s needs.
[Illustration: Arithmetic was a popular study.]
English was one of the most popular drills, as well as one most
needed. The letter “g,” so often ignored by illiterates, in “ing” was
reinstated to its proper dignity and use through drills on such words
as “reading,” “writing,” “spelling,” “talking,” “singing,” “cooking,”
“sewing” and others with a similar ending. Words commonly mispronounced
in the community were made the subject of a drill. Such words as
“seed,” “crick,” “kiver,” “git,” “hit,” “hyeard,” “tuk,” “fust,”
“haint” and “skeered,” were pronounced repeatedly until the right habit
was formed, and the most glaring monstrosities of pronunciation were
weeded out. A language conscience was created where none had existed
before, and a beginning was thus made toward improving bad English--a
beginning which, though but a pathway blazed, was expected to lead out
into the broad highway of better, if not perfect, speech. This was long
before the crusade for better speech in America was inaugurated with
its “National Better Speech Week.”
It was surprising how readily these grown folk mastered certain
subjects. Despite the fears of some educators that violence was
being done to psychology in the attempt to teach them, the grown
folk learned, and learned with ease. One eminent psychologist, who
early gave encouragement to the movement, wrote me saying,--“In the
moonlight schools you are demonstrating what I have always believed,
that reading, writing and arithmetic are comparatively easy subjects
for the adult mind.” Some educators, however, declared preposterous
the claims we made that grown people were learning to read and write.
It was contrary to the principles of psychology, they said. While they
went around saying it couldn’t be done, we went on doing it. We asked
the doubters this question, “When a fact disputes a theory, is it not
time to discard the theory?” There was no reply.
The memory subjects were the most difficult for these adult students.
They had passed the “golden memory period,” most of them, many years
ago, and though they had memorized ballads, folk-lore and recipes to
some extent, nevertheless, memory was in them a thing practically
untrained.
They were taught only a few memory gems. The first one was from
Whittier’s poem, “Our State.” It was the motto at the head of the
little newspaper which they used for a reading text:
The riches of the Commonwealth
Are free, strong minds and hearts of health,
And dearer far than gold or grain
Are cunning hand and cultured brain.
The following lines from Longfellow’s “The Ladder of St. Augustine,”
were popular as a memory gem, comparing as it did with their own ladder
of enlightenment, of which they were just mounting the first round:
The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.
Another gem precious to them was this one taught them by a Louisville
club woman, who at the age of seventy-five came and traveled over the
hills at night, inspired by a desire to see and to help these men and
women who had heroically begun their education late in life:
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
Only one complete poem was to be memorized during the session. What
should it be? With the world so full of poet lore to choose from,
should it be Burns’ “To a Mountain Daisy,” Bryant’s “To a Waterfowl,”
Lanier’s “Ballad of Trees and the Master,” Wordsworth’s “The
Daffodils,” Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar” or should some other gem of
poetry be bestowed on those who possessed not even one? The one who
introduces the first poem to students like these stands on holy ground,
and should prayerfully make the choice. As literature, the selection
made might be criticised by some, but as the needed inspiration, the
choice was one that met the test.
A man who was for twenty-five years president of a normal school in the
mountains, visited the moonlight schools and on hearing the students
recite this poem, said, “If these men and women learn nothing else
besides this poem during the session it has been worth while for them
to attend.” It was Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life” and the sentiment
expressed in these two stanzas found an answering echo in their hearts:
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle,
Be a hero in the strife.
...
Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate,
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.