[NLA] "Each One Teach One"

[Thomas Sticht]

Research Note February 10, 2002
Tom Sticht

"Each One Teach One"
Born In the Kentucky Hills of America!

Writing in 1922, Cora Wilson Stewart chronicled the origins of the
Moonlight Schools of Kentucky in her book, Moonlight Schools for the
Emancipation of Adult Illiterates. She wrote, "On September 5, [1911]
the brightest moonlight night, it seemed to me, that the world had ever
known, the moonlight schools opened for their first session." Though the
teachers who had volunteered to teach adults to read and write had
expected only about 150 students in all of Rowan county, they were
overwhelmed when some 1200 students showed up! 

The success of the first session in 1911 lead to a second session in
1912 in which over 1600 adults walked or rode by horse back to get to
school on moonlit nights to learn to read and write their names and send
letters to loved ones. In this second session of the moonlight schools,
it was found that some illiterates were too ashamed to come to school.
So some teachers took to going to people’s homes to tutor them
one-on-one. 

The Origins of "Each One Teach One"

In 1913, building on the findings of the second session that one-on-one
tutoring in homes could be successful, Stewart wrote in 1922 that in the
third session of the moonlight schools, "The citizens of the county were
enlisted. The slogan "Each one teach one," was adopted and most of the
people were glad to obey. Doctors were soon teaching their convalescent
patients, ministers were teaching their members of their flocks,
children were teaching their parents, stenographers were teaching
waitresses in the small town hotels, and the person in the county
without a pupil was considered a very useless sort of individual."

Frank C. Laubach and "Each One Teach One"

According to the New York Times of June 12, 1970, in 1911, the year Cora
Wilson Stewart started the Moonlight Schools, Frank C. Laubach received
a master’s degree in sociology from Columbia. In 1913, the year that the
"each one teach one" slogan was invented for use in Kentucky, Laubach
received his doctorate in sociology. In 1914 he was ordained a
Congregationist minister and a year later, in 1915,  he and his wife
left for the Philippines to work as missionaries. 

A chronology from the Laubach Literacy library in Syracuse, New York
reports that in 1930, "While working as a missionary among the Maranao
people of the Philippines, Frank C. Laubach developed a simple method to
teach them to learn to read and write in their own language. He also
discovered the potential of volunteer tutors, as newly-literate Maranaos
offered to teach illiterate family and friends. This on-to-one
instructional approach became known as "Each One Teach One." 

Today, Laubach literacy organizations are known around the globe for the
slogan, "Each One Teach One." But the question arises, was Laubach
influenced by the earlier work and writings of Cora Wilson Stewart in
devising the slogan "each one teach one?"  A review of several books by
Laubach revealed no citation of the earlier work of the Kentucky
Illiteracy Crusade or the origins of the "each one teach one" slogan in
the work of Cora Wilson Stewart. 

For now, it appears that this slogan that has played a major role in
advancing the policy and practice of using volunteers in adult literacy
programs may have had two separate birthplaces, first in the hills and
hollows of Kentucky, and some fifteen years later in the dense jungles
of Mindanao Island in the Philippines.