[Reading-hall-of-fame] Making Connections: Moonlight Schools to LoC

[tsticht at znet.com]

5/2/2015


Making Connections: Sage Advice from the Moonlight Schools and the Library
of Congress

Tom Sticht, International Consultant in Adult Education


In 1977, Daniel Boorstin, the Librarian of Congress, was successful in
getting the U. S. Congress to establish the Center for the Book in the
Library of Congress. In early May of 1979, a conference entitled "The
Textbook in American Education" was held in the Jefferson Building of the
Library of Congress. The Conference was sponsored by the Center for the
Book and the National Institute of Education (NIE) (Cole & Sticht, 1981).


The Textbook conference highlighted the role of functional contexts in the
preparation of textbooks. In a paper entitled “Cultures and Textbooks,”
Sylvia Scribner, of the National Institute of Education, noted that “The
instructional system in which the textbook and reader function is embedded
in a larger social order which shapes the purposes and practice of
instruction. 
Until a comparative perspective forces us to look at
education in other times and places, we may overlook the pervasive
influence which social context exerts on uses of text.”


Functional Contexts in Textbooks for Rural Adult Illiterates


The importance of taking a comparative approach to understanding how social
contexts influence the design and uses of textbooks is clearly illustrated
in the early work of Cora Wilson Stewart, founder of the Moonlight Schools
for illiterate adults in Kentucky (Stewart, 1922).  Starting in 1915,
Stewart published the first of a series of three textbooks for illiterate
adults living in rural areas as compared to city dwellers.  Her textbook
series was entitled “Country Life Readers” and in the “First Book” she
explained her reasons for publishing books for country folks:


Quote: “There is an increasing demand for the education of adult illiterates
who have somehow missed their opportunity in early life, and also for the
better education of adults that have a very limited degree of learning. The
city has provided for this need to some extent with evening schools,
designed mainly for foreigners. All the textbooks for evening schools have,
therefore, been prepared strictly for immigrants and city dwellers. Rural
America is coming to realize that there exists a need for education among
adults in the rural sections as much as among those in the cities. For this
reason moonlight schools, rural evening schools, which begin their sessions
on moonlight evenings, have been established and have now been extended to
fifteen States. The people attending these schools demand textbooks which
deal with the problems of rural life and which reflect rural life, and to
meet this demand this book has been prepared” (Stewart, 1915). End quote

Clearly, Stewart understood the role of the functional contexts
–geographical, cultural, social–identified years later by those
participants in the Textbook conference as central influences on the design
and uses of textbooks.  In her approach to teaching adult literacy, Stewart
explicitly recognized the importance of using textbooks for adults with
content relevant to the adult students in their daily lives. So in her
Country Life Readers she integrated the teaching of literacy with the
teaching of content knowledge in farming, healthy living, civics, home
economics, financial management, parenting and other important knowledge
useful in the functional contexts of adults living on farms and in small,
rural towns" (Stewart, 1920, p. 71).

Today, following the recommendations of the Secretary of Labor’s Commission
on Necessary Skills (SCANS, 1991) both the U.S. Departments of Education
and Labor recommend instruction that is contextualized to cultural and
social contexts of adult literacy and language learners.


Sage advice from the Moonlight Schools and the Library of Congress.


The Social, Intergenerational Effects of Textbooks for Adult Literacy
Education


Three years following the publication of The Textbook in American Society,
Daniel Boorstin prepared a report about the future of the book, including
textbooks, for the U.S. Congress. He discussed the problems associated with
illiteracy among adults and included a section on the intergenerational
importance of books called READING BEGINS AT HOME in which he states:


Quote: “The best way to motivate people to read is to encourage reading at
home and early in life. 
book reading is greatest among children whose
parents or guardians value reading both for pleasure and as a key to
achievement. 
More children would be reading—and would themselves become
avid readers—if their parents were readers, talked about what they had
read, and encouraged the family to read at home.” (Boorstin, 1984, pp.
12-13). End quote


Some sixty years earlier, in her book about the Moonlight Schools, Stewart
anticipated Boorstin’s report to Congress about encouraging the family to
read at home:


Quote: “Illiteracy begets illiteracy. 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” (Stewart, 1922, p. 172). End quote


In her textbook, The Country Life Readers: First Book, Stewart instills the
importance of families reading together. On a page with a pen and ink
drawing of a father reading a book to his three children and his wife,
Stewart writes several lines for the adult literacy student to read:

Quote: “I can read.
I can read a book
.
I will read many good books.
We will read at home.”
End quote

Sage advice from the Moonlight Schools and the Library of Congress!


References (See addendum following the references)


Boorstin, D. (1984). Books in our future: A report from the Librarian of
Congress to the Congress. Washington, DC: Joint Committee on the Library,
Congress of the United States.


Cole, J. & Sticht, T. (Eds.). (1981). The textbook in American society.
Washington, DC: Center for the Book, Library of Congress. (Online LC
Catalog Number: 80027657)


SCANS. (1991, June). What work requires of schools. Washington, DC:  U. S.
Department of Labor.


Stewart, C. (1922). Moonlight schools: For the emancipation of adult
illiterates. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company.


Stewart, C. (1915). Country life readers: First book. New York: B. F.
Johnson Publishing Company.



Making Connections: Addendum

Making Connections are brief notes on relationships among work that I have
done and the work of other researchers, practitioners, or policymakers.
During 1972-73 I worked with adult educators at the Appalachian Adult
Education Center at Morehead State University in Kentucky and learned of
the recent acquisition of a one-room school building on the campus named in
honor of Cora Wilson Stewart, founder of the Moonlight Schools for adult
illiterates. That’s how I first became interested in the work of Cora
Wilson Stewart and began to collect her textbooks for my home library. In
1975, I edited a book entitled “Reading for Working: A Functional Literacy
Anthology” which included a chapter on how to design more usable textbooks
and technical materials for education and training. This interest in making
texts more readable and usable carried over into my work at the NIE where I
was able to fund a Document Design Project with the American Institutes for
Research. Then in 1978, while I was working at the NIE, I was invited by Dan
Boorstin, the Librarian of Congress, to serve as a member of the National
Advisory Board of the recently established Center for the Book in the
Library of Congress. In 1978-1979, I worked with John Cole, Director of the
Center for the Book, to bring about The Textbook in American Society
conference.