[AAACE-NLA] A Thanksgiving Day Message

[Thomas Sticht]

A Message for Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 2003

"The Call of the Illiterates"

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

In 1911, Cora Wilson Stewart of Kentucky  started schools for adult
illiterates. Because the adults had to work during the day, she arranged
to have classes at night. But there were no electric lights in the hills
and hollows and so classes could only be held on nights when the moon was
out. For this reason, the schools were called Moonlight Schools.

In 1922, after the Moonlight Schools had operated for a decade, Stewart
wrote a book about them  She dedicated the book "To the volunteer teachers
in the Moonlight Schools, whose vision, courage and self-sacrifice made it
possible to blaze the trail for the emancipation of the Nation’s
illiterates, this volume is gratefully dedicated."

The last chapter in the Moonlight Schools book is entitled, "The Call of
the Illiterates" in which Stewart argues against those who claimed that
adults can’t learn to read and write, a situation familiar to adult
literacy educators and adult learners today. Here are Stewart’s
impassioned thoughts:

"Those who would keep the illiterate out of their chance or who claim that
they do not want to learn do them a great injustice. Undoubtedly there has
been a striving upward among the mass of illiterates which has needed but
a helping hand to turn into actual achievement. Since many have been
taught in the past decade it has given new hope and the urge to others,
and has started them out seeking their sight. Like blind Bartimeus who sat
by the roadside crying, "Thou son of David have mercy on me" the
illiterates cry from everywhere. "Give me sight – have mercy on me."  They
call from the deep forests where brawny woodsmen with stunted brain fell
the trees to build America’s homes, its ships and bridges, they call from
the pit of the mine where men, bent and blackened, dig the precious ore
which sends a gleam athwart a million hearth-stones, they call from the
noise and hum of the factory where men slave and women toil to conserve
the food and to produce the fabric which feeds and clothes their
fellow-men, they call from the mountain fastnesses where men, walled in,
have preserved the blood of a noble race to pour like the elixir of life
into the nation’s blood-stream, they call from the Southern cotton fields
where Lincoln’s black brother toils and knows no real emancipation – the
emancipation of the mind – but waits for us to come and set him free. 


Hasten the day when there shall be no men and women in this country of
ours who have eyes to see and yet see not the splendid truths which have
been written in books, and who have hands to write but write not the
thoughts which, if recorded, might stamp with genius someone whom in its
urgent need the world is seeking to-day
.

For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress.
And as the evening twilight fades away,
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day."

The Washington Post of July 17, 2001 reported that the manager of the
National Adult Literacy Survey of 1993 indicated that about 5 percent of
the adults surveyed could answer no questions and thus could be considered
totally illiterate. This means that at the outset of the 21st century some
10,000,000 illiterate adults in our nation still cry out in silent voices
for emancipation from ignorance of the written word. They cry out for
access to information, for the freedom of the written word and for
independence from dependence.

This Thanksgiving Day we give thanks to the hundreds of thousands of
teachers, volunteer tutors, advocates, and all the others who hear and
move to answer the desperate calls of these illiterates and tens of
millions of other adults who seek to strengthen their fragile language and
literacy abilities to meet their daily needs at home, in the community,
and their places of work.

Adult learners of today should give thanks to those men and women, young
and old, who struggled through the mountains, across valleys and streams,
on foot, by wagon, or on horseback , on moonlit nights to breath life into
the Moonlight Schools. These courageous pioneers are the ancestors of
today’s adult learners and they helped forge today’s Adult Education and
Literacy System of the United States serving some 3 million adult learners
each year.

And even though we have the electric lights and numerous other
technologies that make it possible to offer educational opportunities to
adults in need of literacy at any time, day or night, we should give
thanks that the spirit of the teachers and adult learners of almost a
century ago lives on in today’s adult literacy schools: the "Moonlight
Schools of the 21st century" are still answering "the call of the
illiterates".


Thomas G. Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education
2062 Valley View Blvd.
El Cajon, CA 92019-2059
Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133
Email: tsticht at aznet.net


Note: I understand that the use of the word "illiterate" is considered by
many to be insensitive and out of place today but I have retained its use
here to remain historically consistent with the words of Cora Wilson
Stewart writing in the early 1900s.