Moonlight Schools for the Emancipation of Adult Illiterates

by Cora Wilson Stewart

Royal Governor Berkeley, writing home to England in the seventeenth century, “thanked God that no public schools nor printing presses existed in the colony,” and added his hope that none would be introduced for a hundred years “since learning brings irreligion and disobedience into the world and the printing press disseminates them and fights against the best intentions of the government.”

George Washington and the other founders of our Nation held views just the opposite of those expressed by Lord Berkeley and they, almost without exception, left their message urging that the people be enlightened. Washington made a provision in his will that his negro slaves under twenty-five years of age should be taught to read and write. This is significant. It shows that the Father of our Country believed that even those who were physically enslaved should be mentally free and, also, that he considered learning to read and write a process not necessarily confined to childhood.

The Chinese have a tradition that when the art of writing was born all nature was moved, Heaven rained millet, demons wailed in the night and dragons hid in the depths. One can well believe that its appearance on the earth created this commotion when it is realized that with writing came the mightiest power for combating error and removing all manner of evil. How strange it seems that men have not poured out this power more freely on their fellow men!

Life itself is more or less dependent upon the ability to read and write. In no place is disease so prevalent or life so menaced as in illiterate sections. During the influenza epidemic of 1918, doctors and nurses found themselves helpless in communities where illiteracy prevailed. The death-rate is high where illiteracy exists and infant mortality mounts to the topmost round. Here the precautions of sanitation are little known and practised, and innocent children pay the penalty with their lives. “You say you have six children,” said an illiterate mother to an educated one, “That’s nothing. I’ve buried twelve.”

After the most destructive war in all history the conservation of human life is naturally receiving much attention, but illiteracy offers a serious handicap to this noble enterprise. A health car was sent out in one of the states to demonstrate facts concerning preventable diseases, and in a few weeks the director of the car wrote in, “The car will have to be brought in and overhauled. So many people come on it who cannot read and write, the printed charts are not practical.” The car was brought back and glass jars, filled to certain depths with marbles of different sizes and colors to illustrate the mortality of various diseases, were substituted for the charts of letters and figures. This was in the United States—not in Russia, though it reminds one of the system in use in illiterate sections of that country—the placing of pictures over the shops instead of lettered signs, the ringing of bells to indicate the time of trains, and other devices used in a land where illiteracy has long reigned supreme.

Law is less respected and law violations are more common where illiteracy flourishes, and the court costs are heavy in such communities as compared with those of education and culture. An investigation made in seventeen typical states in one year showed that the number of convicted criminals from the illiterate portions of those states was seven times as large as from the educated portions.

In the most lawless district in Rowan County, I approached the school-house one evening during the third term of the moonlight schools and stopped at the threshold overawed by the unusual scene. The house was filled with men and women and every head was bent over the Bible intently studying. It was indicative of the change which had come over the district with the education of the adults. In the years that followed, the court records, once filled with the misdeeds committed in that district, were left blank.

Illiteracy of parents is depriving more children of school advantages than any other one thing. The most illiterate counties in the United States, according to the census of 1910 had an illiteracy of 60.5 percent and 63.1 percent respectively. The former had an average school attendance of 21.2 percent, the latter 24.7 percent—an average in these two counties of less than three out of every ten children in school. Compared with other counties in the same states one with 11.5 percent illiteracy and 63.2 percent school attendance and another with 10.7 percent illiteracy and 67.8 percent school attendance—nearly seven out of every ten children in school—the result of illiteracy on school attendance is striking.

Illiteracy begets illiteracy. An examination of the census reveals this clearly. The names of parents and grandparents on the illiteracy list are usually followed by the names of most of their progeny. A family name is duplicated many times on the list. As a measure for insuring the education of the coming generation, the illiterate adults should be taught, for even where compulsory attendance laws are well enforced, public sentiment back of them is the only thing that can make them completely effective.