CHAPTER XI MOONLIGHT SCHOOLS IN RECONSTRUCTION DAYS

Soldiers returned from France talking education, urging a better school system, and a provision for everybody, young and old, to improve themselves. It was the burden of almost every soldier’s heart. Alvin York, acclaimed the greatest hero of the World War because of his remarkable feat of capturing 132 Germans single handed, came home and started raising money to build a school for the people of his native hills, and Sergeant Sandlin, the Kentucky mountaineer, whose record as a war hero was second only to that of York, returned to Kentucky, and, enlisting under the Illiteracy Commission, joined in the illiteracy crusade. None who listened to York’s earnest plea for the people of the mountains of Tennessee, or heard Sandlin tell of the army commissions offered him in France which, because of his limited education he could not accept, will forget the crude but eloquent appeal they made. Like other soldiers returned from overseas, they came back preaching the gospel of education. It was a universal feeling among soldiers of the Allies, even of those from India, a country where few women are taught to read and write. The illiterate soldier in Kipling’s story, “Eyes of Asia,” dictated this letter to be written home from France. “We must cause our children to be educated in the future. This is the opinion of all the regiment, for by education even women accomplish marvels, like the women of Franceville. Get the boys and girls taught to read and write well. Here teaching is done by government order.”

Most of the boys who came back wanted to enter school themselves. Theirs was a new dignity, as veterans of the War, and their illiteracy was more humiliating to them and more shocking to the spectator than before. To those who possessed some education, the colleges and universities opened wide their doors, but the illiterate and near-illiterate boys were subjects for the kindly ministrations of the moonlight schools.

Girls who had offered their services for patriotic duty of various kinds during the War and had been rejected because of their limited education, had not gone home to content themselves with their lot, but the rude awakening to their condition had sent them seeking opportunities to learn. Middle-aged men and women and older ones whose illiteracy had been revealed to them during the War in all its ugliness were nursing a divine discontent. These were ready, as never before, for school.

There was another reason for educating the illiterates which might well have been considered urgent from the Government’s point of view. The unrest following the War and the spread of radicalism, made a situation scarcely less critical than the War itself. The propaganda of these discontented ones found in the mass of illiterates, native and foreign-born, its most fertile soil. The day schools would instill their lessons of loyalty and patriotism, but the crisis to be met was one of the immediate future, and would be decided, not by the children, but by the adults.

Reconstruction gave a new motive and a new urge to the moonlight schools. There was much besides reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic to be taught in those days, and an unusual opportunity for correlation of those subjects with timely ones. There was the habit of waste and extravagance to be corrected, and the Nation’s war debt to be paid, which called for training in thrift, and intensive training at that; there were forests to be conserved, soil to be reclaimed; loyalty to the country to be instilled, the “Own your own home” movement to be emphasized, the better use of the English language to be secured, a higher appreciation developed of the benefits of American citizenship, disease to be stamped out and human life conserved. After the most destructive war in history all of these had their claim to importance in any school curriculum and in the one for adults could not be ignored. They had their place in the reconstruction course of study for the moonlight schools. They were taught in the reading, writing and composition lessons and in the drills.

The cover of the new course of study told its own story of what the moonlight schools would try to do in reconstruction days. The school-house pictured there in the moonlight with many roads running from it, with signboards pointing to “Education,” “Sanitation,” and “Health,” “Good Roads,” “Thrift,” “Better Speech” and “Better Citizenship,” would undertake, wherever it could spread its light, to meet the emergency which followed the War.

As the moonlight school session started the Governor of Kentucky issued this message:

While the countries of Europe rebuild their ruined cities and rehabilitate their industries, it is our privilege in the United States to rehabilitate the lives of our fellow citizens. One of the most necessary and most noble of reconstruction tasks is to teach all those who are unable to read and write. We must do this before the commonwealth and the nation can make great advancement.

The teachers and citizens of Kentucky are pioneers in the movement, which has now become nation-wide and has even been adopted in other countries. The movement which they have so unselfishly fostered demands the best that is in us all at this time when the last battle in the crusade against illiteracy in Kentucky is being waged.

I honor the moonlight school teachers and set a high value upon the service which they are volunteering to render to humanity and to the state. May that service enrich their own lives as much as it will their fellow-men and the great commonwealth of Kentucky.

JAMES D. BLACK, Governor.

The moonlight school teachers were aided and supervised by the county illiteracy agents. These field forces had gradually increased in number since the first experiment was tried out with them in three mountain counties in 1915. Kentucky meanwhile had made two appropriations, $10,000 in 1916, and this had been increased to $75,000 in 1918. The field agents of the Illiteracy Commission now numbered seventy-five. An institute was held for these county agents at the State Capitol, where they were gathered for training at the state’s expense. After a week’s deliberation and discussion of the problem of illiteracy and the methods of attack, they went into the field with an enthusiasm that was contagious and well-nigh irresistible. These county agents were men and women of professional training and high attainments. Many of them were college and university graduates. They were practically volunteers, their salaries being only about sufficient to cover their traveling expenses. What the teacher attempted in her district, they attempted in the county in a larger way. The story of the campaign made by these agents, their daily and nightly travel on horseback or afoot, their valiant efforts to reach illiterates, their ready arguments, their tact and diplomacy, their enthusiasm and pluck would fill a volume in itself. The spirit of these leaders and the scope of their operations are revealed in the following report of a young woman who was one of this corps of earnest workers:

I am sending you the final report of the work done in Pulaski County.

First, I desire to thank the Illiteracy Commission for extending me the privilege of serving the best cause in Kentucky, the effort to teach the illiterates, the most unfortunate people in the world, and to prevent illiteracy by enforcing the compulsory attendance law.

I am happy to report forty-eight moonlight schools organized and two hundred and fifty illiterates taught to read and write. Besides this, one hundred or more are being taught at home.

The people have shown a co-operative spirit and in many districts volunteered to teach in the moonlight schools. They are anxious to have this curse erased, as they realize it is a menace and prevents progress in every community where it exists.

The illiteracy work has had excellent results, many too numerous to mention, but,

First. It has shown the need of a new educational system where the unfortunates can be given a chance to learn and advance.

Second. It has increased community spirit, and a willingness to co-operate in any progressive movement.

Third. It has increased day school attendance by a large percent. School reports show an increase of twenty percent.

Fourth. Last, but not least, to those taught it means better sanitation and living conditions, better citizens to Pulaski County and the State of Kentucky.

The state had been districted and seven district agents were put in charge. These went from county to county aiding and spurring the county agents and organizing every class and group of citizens to co-operate. Among these seven were four war veterans just returned from France--three war heroes and a Red Cross nurse. The other three were veterans no less, for they had served for years in that great defense line--the public schools of the state. One page from their “Day by Day” Books with its record of conferences and meetings held, the calls on school people, editors, ministers, bankers, club women, public officials, fraternal organizations and commercial bodies would show something of their activities, but no mere record of daily duties could set forth the spirit of patriotism that animated them or the zeal with which they labored day and night.

This was a time for the rehabilitation of lives, as Governor Black had said in his message, and those misguided men and women who had chosen error’s way and were paying the penalty within prison walls could not be overlooked. Teaching prisoners began in the early days of the illiteracy crusade, but in this time of reconstruction, this part of the work was strengthened and extended. Often the teaching was done by the jailer and his wife, sometimes it was done by the jailer’s school-teacher daughter, sometimes it was by some other member of the official family, frequently the county school superintendent.

At one time classes and individuals were learning in about a hundred jails, and the letters that came out of these schools were filled with mingled gratitude and regret--gratitude for the belated chance and regret that it had not come sooner, when it might possibly have diverted them from the mistaken course which led them into prison walls.

The moonlight schools in the state reformatory and penitentiary found a rare opportunity. Here illiteracy was grouped. Hundreds of men had made their mark on the prison record and many had signed their names in scrawling, illegible letters but could do no more in the way of writing. Some of these had but a year or two to serve. They would soon go forth into their communities and whatever education they might acquire would doubtless serve as a deterrent from future crime and as an inspiration toward some worth-while achievement. These illiterates were easy to reach, for most of them preferred an evening in class to one spent in the cell. However, for those who might be indifferent, a spur was provided in this resolution passed by the State Prison Board:

WHEREAS, Kentucky is now engaged in an effort to stamp illiteracy out of the state, and INASMUCH, as instructors and facilities for teaching are now furnished the inmates of penal institutions under the control of this Board, and all are given the opportunity to read and write, it is therefore ordered by the State Board of Control, that one of the essential prerequisites to a parole should be that a prisoner shall be able to read and write, and the Board therefore adopts the rule that hereafter all inmates shall be able to read and write, before their application for parole will be considered.

This act making the prisoner’s ability to read and write a condition of parole, proved a great incentive to the illiterates to learn.

Some of the prisoners when their terms expired went back home and became educational evangelists in their communities. It was said of one man who had returned from the State reformatory and joined in the illiteracy crusade, “He talks like one who had returned from a university rather than from the ‘pen.’”

His conversation was all of teachers, schools, books and “everybody learning to read and write.”

The Warden of the Kentucky State Reformatory in his report at the close of 1919 made the following statement:

Many of our prisoners who were supposed to be able to read and write when they entered the institution were actually found to be illiterate. The total number taught to read and write during my three and a half years as Warden, is 1,300 as nearly as I can sum it up from the records. The improvement in the discipline of the men who learned to read and write was most noticeable. I gave the work my personal attention and feel that it was one of the most important duties of my office.

The Warden of the State Penitentiary reported to the Illiteracy Commission as follows:

It will always be a greater source of gratification to me that nearly 1,400 adults have been taught to read and write during my seven and a half years as the head of this Institution than everything else I have accomplished. I will state that every prisoner is permitted to come out to the school session and we have all illiterates attending except a few very old ones whose eyesight is too defective, possibly five or six.

According to these wardens’ reports, 2,700 prisoners in the State Reformatory and Penitentiary had been redeemed from illiteracy during a period of seven years, an average of about 385 each year. The prisoners had been provided with free books, had been encouraged by the wardens and others in official life, even the Governor appearing on occasion to present them with the diplomas which were conferred for the completion of the course in these schools.

Many of these men, by their own confession, had gone wrong simply because they had had so little to fill their lives. In a class of beginners one evening, the men were requested to stand and tell why they had not secured an education. When all had finished, the story they told could have been summed up in these few words, “I never had no chance.”

The illiteracy campaign was being waged for the removal of illiteracy which already existed but it was, also, creating sentiment for the prevention of illiteracy in the future. Those who led the fight to remove illiteracy had never doubted that “it is better to build a fence around the precipice than to wait with the ambulance below,” but so many had already gone over the precipice that in mercy’s name they must be succored. The very act of rescue had attracted sufficient attention to the calamity, it was hoped, to insure the building of the fence--the creation of school attendance officers who would enforce the compulsory attendance law. The county illiteracy agents had been given permissive power by the Legislature of 1918 to act as attendance officers and had pioneered such a measure and created sentiment for regular attendance officers with full power. This sentiment must be crystallized before the approaching Legislature convened. To this end two thousand speakers went into the field to urge the people to their utmost efforts in teaching all to read and write and also to advocate two kindred educational reforms--the attendance officer as a preventive of another crop of illiterates, and a living wage for those who had “borne the heat and burden” of the campaign--the public school teachers of the state. When the Legislature convened the following January the sentiment was overwhelmingly favorable and it was a mere matter of phrasing the laws, creating attendance officers and increasing teachers’ salaries, which were promptly passed.

Kentucky in a few years time taught 130,000 to read and write. This record of the number taught is based on letters of pupils, who stated that they had learned, together with the reports of teachers and county superintendents. The names of the illiterates had been obtained from the United States Census Bureau early in the campaign to be used in locating them and checking off their names as they were taught. Though assured by the United States Commissioner of Education that these were records that would not be divulged, we had invaded the Census Bureau and secured the names of Rowan County’s illiterates. It was only a step that led to the divulging of the names of all the illiterates in Kentucky, though some pressure had to be put on before the complete record was obtained. It was the first time in history that the Census Bureau had ever been approached with such a request. The names of illiterates formed a record hitherto unavailable to the states. This Bureau has since been flooded with demands and some states have paid thousands of dollars to have the names of their illiterates copied. Kentucky had secured this information, not easily, but free of cost to the state and in so doing was carrying out the mandate of the Legislature which had charged the Commission “to make research, collect data and statistics and procure surveys of any and all communities, districts or vicinities of the state, looking to the obtaining of a more detailed, definite and particular knowledge as to the true conditions of the state with regard to its adult illiteracy.”

Kentucky through an effective attendance officer law, one of the fruits of her illiteracy crusade, has secured herself against a recurrence of illiteracy in future. The thousands of illiterates she has redeemed have demonstrated both their ability and their desire to learn. There lies before her the task of redeeming the others and of providing opportunities for the newly-learned to advance through, at least, the elementary grades. This will be done in time by following her crusade with the establishment of an extensive system of evening schools, with teachers paid and a State school for adults where those younger men and women who can leave home may complete their education quickly and enter upon intelligent and useful careers.