ARE YOU TOO OLD
 TO LEARN?
By Hortense Flexner

The Moonlight Schools of Kentucky furnish stories of achievement in learning which may give you new ideas of your own possibilities.

GLORY   to God, I don't never have to make my mark no more!" The moun­taineer who spoke, a gaunt, middle-aged man, was sit­ting at a child's desk in a roughly built schoolhouse in Rowan County, Kentucky, staring at the first copy of his name that he had ever written. He spoke to him­self in a tone of relief and pride. The teacher who was passing was too well acquainted with mountain character to act as if she had heard. After a moment the mountaineer bent to his copy again, and continued to write his name over and over.

The "making of the mark" has been a thorn in the flesh of the illiterate moun­tain people. These slow-moving, silent men, living "away in the hills" are a proud, lonely race, asking favors of no­body, relying on their own strength to live. To be helpless in any respect is more than bitter to them, but to seek help is out of their nature. Perhaps there is one reason why they are as they are. In any event, they have been hu­miliated too often by having to "make their mark" in public. At the polls, in a store where any business is transacted aman who cannot write has had to ask help, to make his cross with unaccustomed fingers, beneath the letters that he could not read. The sting of this has gone deep into his consciousness, and has made him hate his ignorance. The powerful mountaineer who bent over his desk, and thanked his God that he had at last written his name, was grateful for more than mere "larnnr." In the uneven let­ters that he had formed, he saw, as thousands of illiterate men and women have seen since then, the escape from an old stigma, a fuller measure of self-respect.

The moonlight schools have recognized for the first time the passion of the illiterate mountain people to learn. These schools, which are in fact night schools open to all persons above eighteen years of age, have in their brief existence upset a number of educational theories, but they have also taught one hundred thousand men and women, ranging in years from eighteen to eighty-seven, to read and write, as well as to do other important things to improve and give zest to their way of living.

The name "Moonlight Schools" has been a powerful factor in their develop­ment, for the combined words have made a picture, and thrown something of mystery and poetry about the one-story log building to which the elderly pupils come in order "to learn to read their Bible before they die." Yet the moon has been from the beginning a practical necessity to the success of the undertaking, because the moonlight has been the only means of making the mountain roads passable in the darkness. A mountain road is at best a road by courtesy. It is deep with ruts, narrow and rocky, it winds through woods and lets the "crick" run over it; it stops suddenly and begins on a different level and always it is either going sharply up or sharply down. But it is better than the "crick" beds, which in some places are the only roads that have cut their way back into the big hills, and so must be followed to the schoolhouse.

A night school approached by a dry creek bed or mountain road had to wait for the moon. It had to wait, further­more, for the midsummer moon when the air was warm, and when the busy mountain people could spare time, just be­fore harvest, to attend its sessions. The term lasts only twenty-four evenings, and it begins as a rule when the August moon is full. In parts of the State where the crops are harvested later, the classes begin later.

There was one more reason, during the first years, why the schools depended on the moon and did not open at all on rainy nights. This was because it was not the custom of the mountain folk to go out after sun-down. In a number of counties there have been feuds, not too long ago, and the stories of what hap­pened on those dark trails are still to be heard. The mountaineer preferred day­time for his venturing. Now, however, this prejudice has disappeared, and only the opening week is regulated by moon­light. The students come "feeling their way" over the hills on the dark as well as on the white nights, crowding every possible moment into the class-room.

The  moonlight  schools began, it is true, in Rowan County in 1911, but for a year before that they had been running regularly in  the quick and very constructive mind of a slight, black eyed, black-haired woman who happen to be, at the time superintendent of education in that county.   Mrs. Cora Wilson Stewart is the person who made the moonlight schools.    The need of some­thing interesting and new in the lives of these shut-in people was brought to her during the winter of 1910 by three distinct incidents.

"I used to write a number of letters for the people in the country and often they would bring their letters, with the seals unbroken, fcr toe to read. These were usually from absent children to their par­ents, containing simple messages of their life and work in the city. While I read, the man or woman would watch every movement of my lips, and when I had finished he or she would draw a long breath, take the letter, look at it almost hungrily, and go. Sometimes I would write a reply, every word carefully and slowly uttered, while the eyes were always on my mov-

ing pen,   There used to come to   my   office   an   old,   tired woman,       whose youngest daughter had gone to Chicago. I had often  read the letters from this  young  girl  to  her mother, who  thought nothing of walking seven miles over the hill to have a letter interpreted and answered.   Sometimes she would take it to a neighbor, but as a rule she came to me. Once, after she had been away for six weeks, longer by far than was usual with her, she came in fondling a letter and I noticed that the seal was broken. I anticipated her mission and said,    "A    letter    from    your daughter—shall I read and an­swer it for you?"   She straightened up with dignity, and replied, 'I kin read it fer myself. I've larned to read and write.' I questioned her and she said, "Sometimes I couldn t git here to see you, and the neighbors would be away from home, or the cricks would be up and I couldn't get a letter read and answered for three or four days; anyway it jest seemed like there was a wall 'twixt Jane and me all the time, and I wanted to read with my own eyes what she had writ with her own hand. So I went up to the store and bought a speller; and I sot up at night until midnight and sometimes till daylight—and I larned to read and write.'"

Mrs. Stewart verified the statement, and heard the letter haltingly but truly read. The second incident occurred shortly after.

"There came into my office one morning a middle-aged man, stalwart and intelligent in appearance, a man who might have been a doctor or a lawyer. While he was waiting for me, I gave him two books to glance through. He turned the leaves hurriedly, like a little child, turned the books over and over, looked at their backs, and laid them down with a sigh. Knowing the scarcity of interesting reading matter through the county, I offered to lend them to him. He shook his head in the slow, mountain way and said, 'No, I cannot read or write—I'd give twenty years of my life if I could.' "

Not long afterwards, Mrs. Stewart was attending an entertainment in a rural district school. One of the boys on the programme, a lad of about eighteen, sang a beautiful ballad, partly borrowed from his English ancestors but chiefly his own. Mrs. Stewart was charmed with it, and asked him to write it down for her. The boy's face clouded and he answered, "I would, if I could write, but I can't. Why, I've thought of a hundred better 'n that, but I fer git 'em 'fore any­body comes along to set 'em down.."

These three incidents, implying so much more than the need of three individuals, led to the establishment of the moonlight schools. Mrs. Stewart did not at the time see them as they are today, flourishing in New Mexico, California, North Carolina, Oklahoma, wherever in fact there is illiteracy, among her own race or among immigrant races.

"The work opened out before me step by step," she said. "If I had known or foreseen the road ahead, a typical moun­tain road, I doubt if I should have had the courage to try. As it was, with the

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A letter written "by  a man thirty two years old—after five nights work

Steady-eyed men and women came to school to make up a deficiency.

Rugged roads to travel, hills to climb, streams without bridges to cross, children to lead and smaller ones to carry, but they came—1,200 strong!

But the problem of the moonlight schools was a larger one than the teaching of reading and writing, although even for this there were no funds nor books. Mrs. Stewart solved the text­book difficulty by using the district newspaper, re-written in simple form, as a basis for reading, spelling, arithmetic and economic drills. This use of the local news was most welcome to the mountain students, who are always keenly interested in what is happening around them. In certain/ of the more isolated counties, the local news is the only news, and the world is hardly larger than the horizon. Teachers in these dis­tricts, asking their pupils to name the President of the United States have been given in reply the name of some prominent man in the community. Similarly these far away people have thought that the Governor of the State is some especially prosperous neighbor.

It was natural, therefore, that the newspaper should be interesting to all pupils, and they were never tired of work­ing problems based on local events. If John Hobbs had traded his red heifer for tobacco, if  Thomas York had sold part of his field to a newcomer, the entire class would work out the gain and loss of those concerned. Mrs. Stewart adds that occasionally men would make a trade in order to bring a new prob­lem to the school­room, and would even sell for the same reason an object it might have been better to keep.

But the news bulletin text-books were difficult for the teach­ers, and it was clear that a special series of books would have to be prepared. The earnest men and women who came to these schools would not be interested in the ordinary primer or reader, dealing with objects unfamiliar to them. They were ashamed, furthermore, to use the books that the tiny children used. So Mrs. Stewart began work on the first Country Life Reader. Later, when her students were ready for them, the second and third books of the series were completed.

These test-books contain more than reading r spellin lessons.

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 -write certain words, but he is learning why it is that his own wagon is in constant need of repair. Similarly, there are lessons on cattle-feeding, on bridges and roads, on the rotation of crops, on keeping one's money in bank, on ven-tilation,  sanitation,  on voting and  on cooking.     The  right  and  wrong  ways ,(and the mountain people have so often f lapsed into the wrong ways) of doing ' the things of every-day are pointed out, and  the  mountaineer  is  told  how  to help himself.

In the first book the lessons are very simple, but the treatment is  such as will  catch and hold  the  attention  of grown-up pupils.  There is, for instance, instead of the usual primer interroga­tion about the cat and the rat, a lesson | which  follows:    "I can read.    I can I read a book. I can read a Bible." That something to stir the elderly students looking for the first time at printed letters. The lessons on roads is also significant. "See this bad road. It will waste my time. It will hurt my team. It will hurt my wagon. The bad road is my foe. I will work for a good road.

The second book gives more detailed information on the subjects introduced in the first. The third volume of the series is a  collection of passages from great authors, describing the beauty of the country, so often unnoticed by those who have always known it. The illustrations are excellent, and and the effort is made to stimulate the student to continue his reading alone.

While the books were being prepared however, the moonlight schools were growing constantly. During the first term 300 pupils learned to read and write, and  many records of remarkable development were made. The schoolhouse became a social center. Friction and factional feeling melted away. In one or two class-rooms, where the descendants of "feud families" met, there was at first a certain restraint, which was gradually lost in the progress of common interestes.

The second year 1600 pupils were enrolled, and 350 more men and women were taught to read and (continued on page 62)