The second session surpassed the first in every particular. We
enrolled 1,600 students, and taught 350 to read and write. A man
aged eighty-seven entered and put to shame the record of the proud
school-girl of eighty-six of the year before.
There were many evidences of individual development and achievement.
One man, foreign born, who had been working at a lumber camp at
the meager wage of $1.50 per day entered the moonlight school and
specialized in mathematics--that part of it pertaining to his business,
and at the close of the six weeks’ session, was promoted at a salary
double that which he had received before. Some of the school trustees,
who were none too well educated, found in the moonlight school their
opportunity to advance, which many of them embraced. One school
trustee who went from the moonlight school into the day school sat
in the seat with his own twelve-year-old boy and studied in the same
books and recited in the same classes. Another accompanied his wife to
the moonlight school, she being the teacher, and he was so delighted
with his progress that he enrolled, also, in the day school--and his
deportment was good, so the problem of discipline did not enter in to
cause domestic infelicity.
[Illustration: A man aged 87 entered and put to shame the record of the
proud school girl of 86 of the year before.]
We taught two postmasters to read and write, and Uncle Sam still owes
for their tuition. How they received their commissions has never been
explained, but it is a well-known fact that while the fathers had
held the commissions, their daughters had performed the services.
When the fathers were emancipated from illiteracy, the daughters were
emancipated from the post-offices and were free to follow their own
inclinations. One of them entered High School and the other got married.
We taught four Baptist preachers to read and write. While this may seem
inconceivable to some, nevertheless it is a fact that there are men in
the mountains and an occasional one in the valleys of the South, who,
when they have felt the call to the ministry, have not even permitted
the fearful handicap of illiteracy to deter them from doing that which
they conceived to be their duty. Naturally these illiterate ministers
are much handicapped. “If the blind leads the blind both shall fall
into the ditch,” is a maxim very applicable here. Illiterate ministers
must depend entirely on others to read the Bible to them, and,
unfortunately some turned out by the day school are as poor readers as
those who attempted to read for the king, according to the story told
in one of McGuffey’s school books. A reader of this type, attempting
to read to an illiterate minister one day, read the sentence, “Paul
was an austere man,” like this, “Paul was an oyster man.” The preacher
declared to his congregation the next Sabbath that Peter was a
fisherman and Paul was an oyster man, thus giving his congregation an
unusual conception of Paul. Another heard the sentence, “Jacob made
booths for his cattle,” read, “Jacob made boots for his cattle,” and
discoursed from the pulpit on “Jacob, that humane man, would not even
permit his cattle to go barefooted, but made boots for them to protect
their tender feet as they walked over the stones.”
These men realized their disadvantages, and they knew the value of the
education offered them. They knew it by the best standard by which the
value of a thing may be measured--the need of it--a need that in their
case had been many times made painfully manifest. So, they accepted the
opportunity and used their influence, which was more powerful in the
community than might be supposed, among their followers to get them to
enroll in the schools. They did more; they gave a new support to the
day schools, working for them with zeal, visiting them, speaking in
their behalf, and sounding louder than any others the cry, “Everybody,
young and old--to the books!”
Nothing better was ever given to any crusader than the privilege which
was mine one Sabbath day, that of hearing a minister recently redeemed
from illiteracy read from the Bible for the first time and preach from
this text, which I thought strangely appropriate, “Who is this that
darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?”
I stood in the door of New Hope school-house one evening and watched
the throng come trooping through the moonlight to school. There were
farmers and farmers’ wives, and their grown sons and daughters; there
were former school teachers who had seized this opportunity to break
up the stagnation which had overtaken them; there was the community
carpenter, the district blacksmith, the postmaster and his wife, the
country doctor, the cross-roads merchant, the mill-owner with his
crew of illiterate men, all coming joyously, hopefully in quest of
knowledge. It was “new hope” indeed to them. Some came to learn, some
to teach, but all learned, for those who taught developed amazingly.
“Everybody in school” was the ideal, and it was caught and cherished
by children as well as parents. The children exerted a powerful
influence in getting their parents to school. The teachers would say
to them at the close of the day, “Now, children go home and send your
parents to school this evening,” and while it was a pleasantry, it was,
also, a request and one that they heeded. The children were wonderful
recruiting officers for the moonlight schools. They worked and reported
their success with the keen enthusiasm of childhood. One little fellow
listened to the others and said sorrowfully, “I talked moonlight
schools too but it didn’t do any good.” He persisted, however, and the
words, “A little child shall lead them” proved literally true, for the
following evening he came to school proudly leading his mother by one
hand and his father by the other.
A thousand seeds sown by teachers and school children this year did not
bear fruit until the next. Some who did not yield to persuasion and
come out to school were found learning in secret at home. However,
there were few who did not seek the school more earnestly than it
sought them. These few, from pride, and false pride it was, feared to
expose their illiteracy and thought to hide it by remaining at home.
For such as these and the stubborn, the decrepit and the disinclined,
a home department was established. Gladys Thompson, a blessed teacher,
gone to her reward, and whom these pages would memorialize, finding
two in her district who could not attend school at night, one because
of feebleness and the other because of defective sight, went to their
homes between the hours of her day school and moonlight school and
taught them to read and write. Her plan was adopted and proved a
valuable adjunct to the work of the moonlight school, especially in
dissolving the dregs of illiteracy, in teaching the last few or the
lone, difficult one.
Besides the incidents of individual development and individual
achievement, a new community spirit was born. A school trustee thus
describes the change in his community:
“I have lived in this district for fifty-five years, and I never saw
any such interest as we have here now. The school used to just drag
along and nobody seemed interested. We never had a gathering at the
school-house and nobody ever thought of visiting the school. We had
not had a night school but three weeks until we got together right. We
papered the house, put in new windows, purchased new stovepipe, made
new steps, contributed money, and bought the winter’s fuel.
“Now we have a live Sunday school, a singing school, prayer
meeting once each week, and preaching twice a month. People of all
denominations in the district meet and worship together in perfect
unity and harmony, aged people come regularly, and even people from the
adjoining county are beginning to come over to our little school-house.”
Good-roads clubs, fruit clubs, agricultural clubs, home economies
clubs and Sunday schools were organized. There was an awakened, if not
trained leadership, a whetted desire for co-operative activity where
individualism and stagnation had prevailed. Friction and factional
feeling melted away in districts where they had existed, and a new
spirit of harmony and brotherhood came to take their place. Men and
women who had hitherto been divided by contention and strife now worked
side by side in concord. They were schoolmates and that is a tie that
binds.
[Illustration: They were schoolmates and that is a tie that binds.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: LETTER FROM A HOME DEPARTMENT PUPIL]