Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 13: EDUCATION
Series    : ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
Introduction

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TAGS: education, educational programming, Pine Mountain Settlement School, Harlan County, Kentucky, Boarding schools, Early Childhood Education, industrial education, environmental education, in the classroom, instruction, Youth Guidance Institute,

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EDUCATION

Education is at the center of programming at Pine Mountain Settlement School. Whether it is a scheduled school group or an evening class for the local community, education is centered on programming that instructs. The fundamental educational ethos at the School however, goes much deeper than just programming, It is an education with its roots in a deep heritage.

The earliest educational programming just following the founding of the School in 1913 was established for the disadvantaged very young boarding student. These early children came from homes and families that were impacted severely by the conditions in the Southern Appalachians in the first decades of the twentieth century. The lack of schools, the distance that was needed to travel to a school, the loss of parents or a mother, the health condition of the children , and other factors determined the children’s admission to the School.

As the School grew the age of the children increased and by the early 1930’s the School was accepting adolescents into the School and had developed a unique curriculum that combined the need for industrial training with the traditional grades. The 1930s and 1940s under the direction of Glyn Morris saw the School nationally recognized for its innovation. The high school that caught the attention of national educators and led to work with leading educational scholars, was in the area of student guidance. The Guidance Institute that grew out of the Pine Mountain experiment continued into the late 1940’s and was incorporated into many schools county-wide and also country-wide.

Following WWII the School struggled to maintain its applicants and the staffing of the institution did not map well to the many changes in the rapid industrialization of the surrounding region. A Community School was proposed and existed on the Pine Mountain School campus managed by the Harlan County School System. This School arrangement persisted until the new school at Green Hill was completed and at that point all students were bused to the County School at Green Hill and the High School students were bused over the mountain to Harlan County Schools.

Various programming was tried to fill the gap left by the departure of a residential program, including a “Little School” that again found national attention as a precursor of the early childhood education program adopted by the US Government to meet the growing need for early intervention in education. Pine Mountain staff member, Milly Mahoney,  who created the program was an advisor for the National “Headstart” program.

By 1972 the staff at Pine Mountain was experimenting with Environmental Education and by 1978 the Board of Trustees at Pine Mountain unanimously approved the institution of an Environmental Education program stating

The Trustees of the Pine Mountain Settlement School, realizing the alienation that exists between many modern-day people and their natural environment, believe that the abundant natural resources of the Pine Mountain Settlement School should be put to use in a program of environmental education.

The Board and the Director then proceeded to set forth the goals and the philosophy of that new direction, [See ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION EE]