Kentucky's Moonlight Schools: An Enduring Legacy of Adult Learning Principles and Practice

Abstract

Honoring the past through knowledge of a powerful movement from the beginning of the last century has been found to contain useful, relevant, meaningful information for present-day practitioners in adult education. compelling story of an adult education project, begun nearly 100 years ago by Cora Wilson Stewart and known as The Moonlight Schools, provides amazing links with modern-day adult learning principles. What does an adult learning initiative that began nearly 100 years ago have to do with 21st century practices in adult learning? Recently, the two of us traveled the mountain roads of eastern Kentucky once a week to an extended Morehead State University campus where we each taught a graduate class. During our travels, we discovered several interesting connections. One of us, Jim Canipe, teaches graduate courses in Adult Education and Research Methods, while the other, Mattie Decker, teaches Foundations of Reading and Reading in the Content Area. Each semester, Decker teaches her students about and takes them to visit Little Brushy, the Moonlight School near the Morehead State University campus where Cora Wilson Stewart began teaching adults to read and write in September 1911. Decker's students are always surprised to find that many of the innovative strategies they are learning were once taught in the one-room schoolhouse. In addition, we saw the links between Stewart's methodology and present-day adult learning theory. We realized how certain principles of adult learning were encapsulated within Stewart's practices--long before much formal adult learning theory existed. Similarly, students in our reading classes continued to discover direct application of best practice reading strategies that were actually relevant back in Stewart's days. Therefore, we became inspired to share this remarkable story of the Moonlight Schools and suggest that some principles of adult learning reveal how lessons learned from Cora Wilson Stewart's historical campaign against illiteracy coincide with modern-day adult education practices. story itself is compelling: Stewart was the first female superintendent of schools in a rural community that had few roads and plenty of feuds. setting is Rowan County, eastern Kentucky, after the turn of the century, where the one-room schools scattered throughout the county were the sites used for the new effort in adult learning. Over time, Stewart became aware of a need for educating adults in the community, since many often visited her office asking her to read a letter they received and to write a response for them. Classes were held on the nights of the full moon, so that the students could find their way through the dark, tree-shaded, treacherous, and circuitous mountain roads. teachers were all volunteers, and the students ranged in age from 18 to 86 years old. Many brought their babies with them (Nelms, 1997). There are amazing photographs documenting these adult learners. One of those photos shows adult students engaged at the blackboard inside the simple classroom environment. What began here spread to other states and eventually grew to include Moonlight Schools for African Americans and Native Americans. Stewart received national and international recognition because of her work with adult education (Baldwin, 2006). setting of the story is a simple one. People lived and traveled in mostly undeveloped forests and hillsides. Travel on the few roads was made difficult by the isolation of the communities, as well as the frequent floods, mudslides, snow, and ice. Fifty small one-room schoolhouses were scattered throughout Rowan County by 1911 and were filled with children during the day. Cora Wilson Stewart devised a system in which the teachers in the day schools were asked to volunteer to teach in the evening Moonlight Schools. They spread the news of the idea mostly by word of mouth and did not know if anyone would attend that first night. …