Moonlight Schools for the Emancipation of Adult Illiterates

by Cora Wilson Stewart

Two men met on a mountain pathway, and began to talk about how soon their county would be “Cleared up.” They were not referring to weeds or underbrush or timber, to insects, reptiles or malarial fever. They were referring to the elimination of illiteracy. Nothing just like it has found expression in any educational system, in any age; the sureness of faith of those who teach, the simplicity of their efforts, the general response. I have seen three generations studying the same books in one moonlight school. “There are 2,442 illiterates in the county,” said a man to me in one of the counties in the Cumberland Mountains. “It will take two years to wipe out illiteracy.” Think of the calm faith of it! I believe that the story of the moonlight schools is the most exalted and sacrificial that has been told in the educational effort of America.

The newspapers now find a fertile field in illiteracy statistics and have come to devote space and headlines to them, giving them ranking interest with the most vital things of the day. The purpose of the moonlight school is so outstanding that it has captured the pens of cartoonists. These have vividly pictured illiteracy in all its evil, its weakness and its disgrace. It is only a matter of time until poets, sculptors and artists will here find a theme for their art.

The change of attitude toward adult illiteracy has not come about without some resistance, some opposition, of course. Where such indifference and such ignorance prevailed in regard to a subject it could hardly be expected that reform could move forward without some interference and obstacles. Some educated people had no more intelligent idea, at the outset, about removing illiteracy, than had a certain old colored professor in Mississippi when the crusade was started in that state. The teachers in their examinations were asked the question, “How rid the state of adult illiteracy?” and the professor wrote this answer: “The only way to rid the state of adult illiteracy is to get rid of the adults. You should not have adults around your place or anywhere. As long as you have adults around, you’ll always have illiteracy.”

The education of the educated to the problem of illiteracy has been no small part of the crusade. The pioneers had to educate themselves as to the nature and scope of the problem and the plan of attack, to educate the public to co-operate—some to contribute funds, a larger group to give service, and the whole public to give their moral support. The public had to be brought under indictment for the illiteracy statistics, which, viewed in bulk for state and Nation, had seemed too stupendous to arouse a feeling of responsibility in community or individual, but when analyzed and presented for counties and local communities produced an entirely different effect. The right of adult illiterates to learn had been challenged, their ability to do so had been questioned, the advisability of having teachers assume the extra duty of teaching them had been doubted, the statistics, when analyzed and brought close to home had been disputed and resented; demagogues had assumed that any reference to the illiteracy of the state or community meant to traduce it, professional politicians had gloried in holding the purse-strings of the public treasury as tight as possible against any invasion for such a cause, and a few educators so violently opposed illiterates being taught to read and write that it brought forth from a layman the caustic comment, “The greatest trouble with some educators is that they are so opposed to education.”

The illiterates themselves had to be educated to an understanding of their opportunity. Not everyone came rushing out to school in every district when the schools first opened. An institution so new as a school where illiterate adults could learn to read and write may easily be misunderstood, criticized and even resented by those who need it most. Considering the mistaken attitude of the educated for generations past on the question of teaching them, it is not at all strange that some of the illiterates, themselves, with minds so befogged and darkened, should have had doubts and misconceptions of the school and what it would do for them. My father, himself a former school teacher, but later a physician, greeted me once in the early days of the movement with the remark, “What fool thing is this you are doing? I hear that you have old Jimmie Thomas and old Dicie Carter going to school.”

His was the viewpoint, at the time, of the average educated man. That illiterates could overcome their fears and their pride with such sentiments being expressed around them is a credit both to them and to the teachers who persuaded them that it was within their power to learn to read and write.

The change in the public attitude toward illiteracy in the states that have had campaigns has been eminently worth while. Alabama realized this when her progressive program of school legislation passed so readily due to the awakened public sentiment brought about by her crusade; Kentucky was in no mood to provide special officers to enforce her lax and inadequate compulsory attendance laws until the illiteracy campaign had swept over the state and shown her how foul and frightful a thing was illiteracy in either child or adult. Arkansas and other states that wage war on illiteracy talk of it “awakening an educational conscience.” This is one of the purposes of the moonlight school—to awaken the educated to their responsibility, to create in them a desire to redeem the illiterates, as well as to arouse the illiterates to seek their freedom. All of this means more than freeing a state from illiteracy. It means a new appreciation of education, a devotion to it which will not cease with the illiteracy crusade, but will affect the public school system from the elementary school to the university. You cannot teach the illiterates of the district to read and write without increasing the educational spirit of the community and improving the school advantages of the children. You cannot start the educated out on a crusade to redeem their illiterate neighbors without arousing in them a sentiment for better education for their own and their neighbors’ children and for better educational conditions throughout the system for future generations.

The moonlight school movement does not assume to be an educational regeneration. It assumes but one duty and that is to redeem the illiterates. Its by-products, however, are increased attendance in the day schools, increased interest in school improvement, intelligent support of progressive legislation and other things that vitalize and help the schools. Some who have no vision of a community redeemed from illiteracy and no sympathy with the illiterates are often heard to remark, “The best result of the moonlight school is its effect on day-school attendance.” A thing must first have a good direct effect before it can produce a good indirect one. Teachers declare that the moonlight schools increase day-school attendance all the way from ten to thirty per cent, but the moonlight schools could not accomplish this did they not achieve their primary purpose, that of teaching the illiterates to read and write.

In 1910 there was not a law on the statute books of any of the states referring to adult illiteracy. In 1920 there were laws providing for the teaching of adult illiterates; laws providing salaries for teachers to teach them; laws providing for training of teachers of adult illiterates; laws compelling illiterates of certain ages to learn, and laws providing for their instruction at home or in factory, mill or mine.

The spirit behind these laws could not and never will be fully translated into legislative acts. The determination of the illiteracy crusaders in the different states is like that of the colonists in the American Revolution. When the English Secretary urged an increase of troops in Boston until their guns outnumbered the Americans, Pitt declared, “We must reckon not so much with their guns as with their sentiments of liberty.” The emancipation of all the illiterates in the United States is not a dream of the far future. The challenge to liberate them has been answered by leaders all over the nation with the slogan, “No illiteracy in the United States in 1930.”