Moonlight Schools for the Emancipation of Adult Illiterates

by Cora Wilson Stewart

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.