Full Moon Schools
January's full Wolf Moon reaches peak illumination on Thursday, January 25, 2024, at 12:54 P.M. EST/ 9:54pm PT
Kentucky’s moonlight schools - educational betterment, secondary employment, are all called "moonlighting"
Cora Wilson Stewart (1875-1958) was an elementary school teacher and county school superintendent in eastern
Kentucky’s Rowan County who, in the fall of 1911, decided to open the classrooms in her district to adult pupils.
Full Moon : ..With every full moon the school movement grew
‘Gladys Thompson’s Moonlight School'; adults and a few children sitting or standing in a room with a potbellied stove
More than 1,200 men and women from 18 to 86 years of age were enrolled the first evening,” said Stewart of the initial 50 schools in the program. “They came trooping over the hills and out of the hollows, some to add to the meager education received in the inadequate schools of their childhood, some to receive their first lessons in reading and writing.
Mercer County, Kentucky offered a Moonlight School in every school district that served Black students. In 1915 Stewart published the Country Life Reader: First Book and in 1916 she published the Country Life Reader: Second Book, both featured material of interest to adults, written for people with low literacy.
During World War I Cora was concerned with Selective Service findings that some 700,000 men were totally illiterate, so she developed The Soldier’s First Book to teach military recruits to read.
And with every full moon the school movement grew... Alabama and Mississippi began their own Moonlight School programs shortly after Kentucky did, and by 1916 eighteen states had their own Moonlight Schools.
In 1914-15, it was estimated that 40,000 Kentucky adults had learned to read and write in moonlight schools. via
Sources:
Lexington Herald-Leader, "Call For Volunteers to Enlist in Battle Against Illiteracy" (1914). Moonlight Schools Collection. 238.
https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/moonlight_schools_collection/238
Mount Sterling Advocate, "A Worthy Measure" (1920). Moonlight Schools Collection. 147.
https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/moonlight_schools_collection/147
Lexington Herald-Leader, "Mountaineers Learning Their Letters in "Moonlight Schools" of Kentucky" (1917). Moonlight Schools Collection. 284.
https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/moonlight_schools_collection/284
Lexington Herald-Leader, "What Moonlight Schools Have Done in Rowan County" (1912). Moonlight Schools Collection. 222.
https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/moonlight_schools_collection/222
.Blue Moon of Kentucky, Keep On Moonlighting
“This is dirty and ugly. The house needs paint. The porch is falling down. A lazy, shiftless family lives here.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know it from the house. Lazy, shiftless people live in dirty, ugly homes.”
- Country Life Readers, Cora Wilson Stewart (1915)
Ms. Cora Wilson Stewart
dr. π (pi)
.
Kentucky’s moonlight schools - educational betterment, secondary employment, are all called "moonlighting"
Cora Wilson Stewart (1875-1958) was an elementary school teacher and county school superintendent in eastern
Kentucky’s Rowan County who, in the fall of 1911, decided to open the classrooms in her district to adult pupils.
Full Moon : ..With every full moon the school movement grew
‘Gladys Thompson’s Moonlight School'; adults and a few children sitting or standing in a room with a potbellied stove
More than 1,200 men and women from 18 to 86 years of age were enrolled the first evening,” said Stewart of the initial 50 schools in the program. “They came trooping over the hills and out of the hollows, some to add to the meager education received in the inadequate schools of their childhood, some to receive their first lessons in reading and writing.
Mercer County, Kentucky offered a Moonlight School in every school district that served Black students. In 1915 Stewart published the Country Life Reader: First Book and in 1916 she published the Country Life Reader: Second Book, both featured material of interest to adults, written for people with low literacy.
During World War I Cora was concerned with Selective Service findings that some 700,000 men were totally illiterate, so she developed The Soldier’s First Book to teach military recruits to read.
And with every full moon the school movement grew... Alabama and Mississippi began their own Moonlight School programs shortly after Kentucky did, and by 1916 eighteen states had their own Moonlight Schools.
In 1914-15, it was estimated that 40,000 Kentucky adults had learned to read and write in moonlight schools. via
Sources:
Lexington Herald-Leader, "Call For Volunteers to Enlist in Battle Against Illiteracy" (1914). Moonlight Schools Collection. 238.
https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/moonlight_schools_collection/238
Mount Sterling Advocate, "A Worthy Measure" (1920). Moonlight Schools Collection. 147.
https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/moonlight_schools_collection/147
Lexington Herald-Leader, "Mountaineers Learning Their Letters in "Moonlight Schools" of Kentucky" (1917). Moonlight Schools Collection. 284.
https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/moonlight_schools_collection/284
Lexington Herald-Leader, "What Moonlight Schools Have Done in Rowan County" (1912). Moonlight Schools Collection. 222.
https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/moonlight_schools_collection/222
.Blue Moon of Kentucky, Keep On Moonlighting
“This is dirty and ugly. The house needs paint. The porch is falling down. A lazy, shiftless family lives here.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know it from the house. Lazy, shiftless people live in dirty, ugly homes.”
- Country Life Readers, Cora Wilson Stewart (1915)
Ms. Cora Wilson Stewart
dr. π (pi)
.