CHAPTER IV PIONEER METHODS IN DEALING WITH ILLITERATES

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.

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.