Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 13: Education
EDUCATION
Holdings – Library Filing Cabinet
EDUCATION AT PMSS:
Boarding School (1913-1949)
Co-operative School
Community School (Grades 1–3, 1949-1972)
Pre-School, “Little School”
In her thoughtful “A Record of Pine Mountain Settlement School,” Evelyn K. Wells wrote succinctly about Education at the School. She said
“We have always been primarily a school. It is book-learning our children have come for, and book-learning that has explained Pine Mountain to the countryside. The life of the school adjusted itself around lessons even in days when the most important thing in the world seemed to be to get the food cooked, the clothes washed, fires built, corn hoed, buildings built. We did not wait for a schoolhouse to begin teaching; the House in the Woods took care of the children till snowfall, until 1918, when they were distributed in the living rooms of various cottages; or, the first three years at the Masonic Lodge over Mr. Nolan’s store. The day after the new Mary Sinclair Burkham Schoolhouse burned to the ground, classes were resumed in any odd corner of the grounds that was available. Study hour, from the very beginning, was impressed upon us as a sacred thing…”
As the School evolved, the idea of what constituted a well-educated individual also evolved. The concept of a work-study program was in place from the very beginning of the School when Uncle Wiliam Creech saw an educational plan serving the entire surrounding community. Katherine Pettit, as Mary Rogers in her History of Pine Mountain Settlement School noted, was interested in traditional schooling but
“… she [Katherine Pettit] envisaged also a settlement serving a whole community in its economic, health and cultural development. A settlement would not attempt to substitute an outside culture for the indigenous. It would try to strengthen people’s faith in their own heritage, making use of both the mountain environment and their unique traditions as media for learning. It would help people to retain a secure sense of their own worth as human beings.”

Print Shop, c. 1942: Student at printing press (1). Harmon Fdn. movie still. [pm_harm_094.jpg]

Alvin Boggs in the classroom, 1965. [boggs_004.jpg]
Pine Mountain Settlement School PMSS SERIES IV – LIBRARY FILE, 1911-1983, 1983-present Series IV: LIBRARY FILE, 1911-1983
[Originally boxed 55 –]
EDUCATION: Holdings – Library Filing Cabinet
SERIES | ID# | ALT ID# | TITLE | SUBTITLE | DATE |
13 | 1 | Education: Memos, Writings, Plans, Philosophy | Boarding School, Co-op, Youth Guidance Institute | ||
13 | 2 | Education: Community-Based Education at Pine Mountain School | Oldendorf | ||
13 | 3 | General Admin.: Boarding School | Duplicates | ||
13 | 4 | Education: Educational Survey | Argetsinger’s Report | ||
13 | 5 | D1.19 | Education: PMFC Co-operatives | 1941 | |
13 | 6 | Life and Work, School | Playground and Pool | 1949-1972 | |
13 | 7 | D1.17 | Community Group | 1942 | |
13 | 8 | Co-op Groups of 1940-1941 Cooperative | 1940-1941 | ||
13 | 9 | Education: Curriculum | 1937-1938 | ||
13 | 10 | Education: Miscellaneous | Meals Due; Lists of Teachers & Students & Amounts Owed for Meals | 1959-1962 | |
13 | 11 | School Lunch Menus | 1957-1958, 1960-1961 | ||
13 | 12 | “Progressive Education in the Kentucky Mountains” | By Glyn A. Morris | 1937-1938 | |
13 | 13 | Education and Curriculum | 1939 Community Service in the Curriculum; Apr-May 1937 Evening Program; Sept 1938 Staff Institute Program; Assembly Programs, First Semester | ||
13 | 14 | Curriculum Schedule | 1938-1939 | ||
13 | 15 | Education: PMSS Future Educational Services | n.d. | ||
13 | 16 | Education: H.S. Curriculum | 1999 [?] | ||
13 | 17 | Picture Guides & Community School | Program Bibliography | ||
13 | 18 | D1.11 | Children’s Writing | 1969 | |
13 | 19 | D1.27 | Educational programming | 1936, 1941 | |
13 | 20 | D1.32 | Emotionally Disturbed Children Project | 1975 | |
13 | 21 | D2.38 | Pre-School | 1963-1966, 1971 | |
13 | 22 | “Little School” |
See Also:
[Anon.] “Education That Fits” This article, found in Berea Quarterly of 1908, covers education in the Southern Appalachian mountains and stresses that education must “fit actual conditions.” It contains examples of the extension work of the early college of Berea and of the developing settlement schools in southeastern Kentucky.
GUIDE TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS
GUIDE TO EDUCATION SOURCES
EDUCATION – COMMUNITY/COOPERATIVE SCHOOL
EDUCATION – LITTLE SCHOOL
EDUCATION Pine Mountain’s Industrial Courses, 1936