ERIC Number: ED342974
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1990
Pages: 12
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
A Report on the Highlander Folk School.
Cassara, Beverly B.
The Highlander Folk School was founded as an alternative kind of education with no academic admission requirements, no examinations or grades, and no set curriculum. Hard times were caused by lack of funds and the radical nature of its purpose--to help poor people know their rights and stand up for them. As an undergraduate, Myles Horton, its founder, gained two insights that influenced his future--the negative effect of the isolation of knowledge from practice in the development of democratic principle and an interest in unions. After college, Horton went to Denmark to learn about the Folk High School movement. On November 1, 1932, he established his school in Monteagle, Tennessee. The curriculum grew from needs of the county residents. Four main projects were local community development, training union leadership, organizing farm/labor groups, and civil rights. The school's efforts in union leadership training ended when the unions grew powerful. Highlander's next effort in civil rights grew naturally out of union leadership training, for blacks needed help to organize. This phase of the school's work and consequent legal troubles brought the close of the original Highlander School. Highlander then moved to its present site in New Market, Tennessee. Today the Highlander Research and Education Center has the same educational policy to help people take the lead in solving their current problems: establishment of rural health clinics; stopping the dumping of toxic waste, strip mining and absentee landlords; tax reform; and land use reform. (YLB)
Descriptors: Access to Education, Adult Education, Civil Rights, Community Action, Community Education, Community Problems, Community Schools, Democratic Values, Educational Development, Educational History, Educational Innovation, Educational Methods, Folk Schools, Leadership Training, Needs Assessment, Nontraditional Education, Postsecondary Education, Unions
Publication Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A