Moonlight Schools for the Emancipation of Adult Illiterates

by Cora Wilson Stewart

The women of America must regard themselves as thoroughly militarized. They must consider themselves as real soldiers and take orders from their officers here and obey them without question. Any woman who has a husband, brother, sweetheart, or relative in foreign service should write, write, write long, cheerful letters telling everything that happens in the old home town. The men are hungry for news and the things which seem like trivial happenings at home will be of the greatest interest to the men.

The order which I would send to the women of America is to work and write.

All who returned from the War Zone, lecturers, propagandists and others, brought the same message—“The boys need letters, letters; write, write, write.” The sad news came of boys dying of homesickness in the army overseas. It was not indifference or negligence on the part of the soldiers’ families that caused them to withhold letters, but in many cases it was the inability to write.

Here was a work for the moonlight schools scarcely less urgent than that of teaching the boys themselves, so sessions were begun for the wives, mothers, sisters and sweethearts of soldiers, and for the men over thirty-one who were subject to the next draft. The main purpose of these sessions was to teach those who enrolled to write to the boys in France, so they came with that expectation and all the training was to that end. Not only were they taught as quickly as possible to write letters, but they were instructed as to the kind to write and the sort to withhold. Letters such as “Mrs. Wiggs” and “Pollyanna” would write—radiating enthusiasm and cheer, were placed, for comparison, on the blackboard beside one of exaggerated woes, which rendered the latter so absurd that none would care to even faintly imitate it.

Boys in France wrote joyfully on receipt of these letters. The fact that they were written by those who were illiterate when they left home gave them a happy surprise. One boy wrote, and his was a typical letter.

You couldn’t imagine how pleased I was to get a letter from my dear mother. Ma I wouldn’t take the world for that letter. You certainly did well. I could read your letter a whole lot better than I could Pa’s.

A war course of study was prepared and issued for use in these sessions. The drills of peace time gave way to the more pressing ones of food conservation, the Red Cross, Liberty Loans and lessons on the history of the War and the geography of the warring countries, all of which were designed to bring isolated people into co-operation with the agencies that were striving to win the War.

The Soldier’s First Book was revised and elaborated and contributed to the Y. M. C. A., the educational arm of the Government, for publication by their press and for use in the camps. It was turned over to them on the one condition that it be provided to every illiterate soldier free, as had been done in Kentucky, in the early days of the War.

By the fall of 1918 an elaborate educational program had been mapped out by the Government and was being applied in places, but the signing of the Armistice called for a complete reversal of these plans, and for a program that would quickly turn the minds of the men to the things of peace and reconstruction. The plans were immediately shifted, and the Government sent 50,000 Country Life Readers overseas for illiterate soldiers detained on foreign soil. The lessons on the clean ballot, just taxation, soil conservation and cultivation, good roads and the prevention of disease were all part of the reconstruction program, which would require no less courage, energy and patriotism than even the War itself.