Pine Mountain Settlement School
DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH
Notable Quotables
Series 27: Publications
NOTABLE QUOTABLES
TAGS: quotes, publications, snippits of history, intellectual and moral training,
ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION 1913
The purpose and objects of the corporation shall be to found a Mountain school or schools for industrial, intellectual and moral training and education in the mountainous district of eastern Kentucky. The organization, management, and activities of such school or schools shall be dominated by a Christian spirit and influences but entirely free from anything of a sectarian or denominational character. The school or schools … shall also serve as a social center for the people of the neighborhood and community in which the same may be established. The corporation shall also have power to engage in such other activities, either of an educational or business character, as may come within the scope of the main objects above declared …
Articles of Incorporation, 1913
PMSS PURPOSE 1914
To give industrial, moral, and intellectual education, Christian but non-sectarian; to serve as a social center in an isolated, intensely rural neighborhood; to further by teaching and by the wise use of its own 234 acres of land, the agricultural and economic development of the country.
Publicity folder, c. 1914
SETTLEMENT INSTITUTIONS
GRAHAM TAYLOR AND THE CHICAGO COMMONS 1911
Described as “General Propaganda” in the Handbook of Settlements, the idea of the Chicago Commons was to promote public education. This it did very well by encouraging public debate and free speech in the weekly “free floor” discussions and in the widely circulated monthly magazine, “The Commons.”
“The Commons”, founded by John Palmer Gavit, 1897-1899 was continued by Graham Taylor and found its way into the discourse of the growing city of Chicago. It is not surprising to find Jane Addams soon cooperating with Taylor to spread the work that she and others at Hull House were doing in education and “social betterment”. Over the course of years at Hull House the interests of the women who passed through the seminal institution, turned increasingly toward politics, social justice, and civic betterment in the inner-city neighborhoods.
See Woods, Robert A. and Albert J. Kennedy, editors. Handbook of Settlements, Russell Sage Foundation, 1911. E-Book Free 0.00 x 0.00 in. 351 pages January, 1970
KATHERINE PETTIT
NOT WHAT DO YOU KNOW? BUT WHAT CAN YOU DO?
The average school teaches the child to answer such questions as, “What do you know?” but we think the question that life itself puts to him, “What can you do?” is of equal importance. They should be taught to be industrially efficient and responsible. The mountain child does actually do those things which he is expected to perform in a larger way in adult life. He should be taught to do them in such a manner as to acquire those elements of character, which we look for in the honest, industrious, self-reliant man or woman. We want to have such an environment for our boys and girls that will furnish a whole group of ideals ad standards of living, which they will strive to realize later on in their own homes.
Katherine Pettit, 1912
KATHERINE PETTIT AND THE AGRARIAN MYTH
When William Creech surveyed the lands around his small farm on the headwaters of the Kentucky River in Harlan County, Kentucky, he noted the way his neighbors farmed, or more importantly, didn’t farm.
He believed that farming was “doing them no good … it was hardening them.”
The Creechs, one of the earliest pioneer families to cross the Allegheneys and move from Virginia into the high Cumberland Plateau in the Southern Appalachians, were fiercely patriotic. William Creech, one of the founders of Pine Mountain Settlement School was a veteran of the Civil War, and a literate and original thinker. Creech was a complex man. He was a dreamer, a pragmatist, and an environmentalist in the broadest sense of the word. His personal dialog with mountain farming was one grounded in religion, patriotism, economics and civic responsibility.
But even more importantly, his thought was deeply tied to a need to access an education. It was this mutual desire that brought Katherine Pettit into contact with William Creech and to the eventual founding of the educational institution, Pine Mountain Settlement School.
Katherine Pettit had been in and out of the southeastern corner of Kentucky for some years when the Pine Mountain valley came to her attention …
Helen Wykle, 2015 Katherine Pettit and the Agrarian Myth (unpublished)
ETHEL DE LONG ZANDE
KENTUCKY AND ILLITERACY
The illiteracy commission appointed by Governor McCreary under an act of the 1914 Legislature, to attempt to eradicate illiteracy in the state has held “Illiteracy Week” in various cities of the state. Louisville held the first campaign the week of November 15, 1914. Eleven other cities held similar campaigns the following week. Dr. P.P. Claxton, U.S. Commissioner of Education, announces that this commission marks the most important educational advance of recent years.
See Ethel de Long, School as Community Center – Talk
We do want Pine Mountain to give our children tools that will make them fit for the modern life that is coming in, but also we want it to be a place where hearts and souls are trained Spirit is the most important thing in the whole world.
Ethel de Long Zande, 1921 Letter
PMSS NOT AN INSTITUTION BUT A LIFE
Pine Mountain isn’t an institution, it is a life; people aren’t here just to earn their livings; they are living.
Ethel de Long, 1917
CONSTRUCTIVE WORK NOT IMMEDIATE
Our conviction steadily increases that we must do work in the neighborhood which is constructive in the long run, rather than immediately helpful.
Ethel de Long Zande, 1918
CHANGE 1921
I do not believe we can expect very great differences in conditions in the mountains inside of a generation; there have been so many generations of isolation and of individualism rather than of community living. The problem of getting people who work together seems to me to be exactly what one finds in many communities outside. A good leader must invariably work through other people, helping them to make their ideas go, and inspiring them without being too much in the foreground … It is my firm belief that the more we take the mountains as a place in which to live and practice our legitimate professionalism and work on the same large lines that people live and work on [the] outside, the better it is for the mountains.
Ethel de Long Zande, 1921
SPIRIT 1921
We do want Pine Mountain to give our children tools that will make them fit for the modern life that is coming in, but also we want it to be a place where hearts ad souls are trained. Spirit is the most important thing in the whole world.
Ethel de Long Zande, 1921
QUIET MODIFICATION BY EXAMPLE 1924
The greatest need of the mountains is for contact with the right people … Nothing can ever be so significant for the mountain people as constant, quiet contact with friends and teachers — living among them — who have wider experience, and who are modifying day after day, in unnoticed ways, the ideas and standards of the mountains.
Katherine Pettit, 1924
HERITAGE AND COMMUNITY 1926
[Pine Mountain] tries in every way to foster appreciation of the heritage of mountain children both in character and culture, to give them an independent viewpoint as they think of making their own livings and raising their families … Socially they must be trained to think of the group and the community rather than of themselves alone. They must be stimulated by wholesome recreation, spiritual guidance of the highest type, and by example from their own communities as much as possible.
Ethel de Long Zande 1926
VISITORS
PRAYERS
Observed in 1910 by artist and writer in his Appalachian travels.
A woman prayed in an agonized, hysterical voice for “a special blessing Lord, a very special blessing.” When her voice died away, an old man, with a long white beard knelt stiffly with rheumatic knees and prayed in these words: “Lord, we know mighty little. You know our need-cessities. Bless us to suit yourself. Amen
Henderson Daingerfield Norman, The English of the Mountaineer, 1910
IN PRAISE OF EDUCATION AT PMSS 1926
We reached home yesterday after a most delightful visit. Adjectives seem bromidic, inadequate to express the extent and quality of well-being that one feels after such an experience. It is more than enjoyment, more than satisfaction and pride in seeing a group of people throw themselves so completely into the breach between the lack of opportunity of yesterday, and a carefully adapted program for meeting the needs of today.
I love the spirit of youth, of joyousness with which both workers and children attack the business of the hour. This leaven of ginger or unadulterated play, and of beauty with which you surround them robs duty of its irksomeness, and daily routine of becoming deadly monotony. The picture you are crystallizing in their minds of life as it may be lived i the mountains will blend their pioneer heritage with modern achievement into invaluable citizenship. Uncle Sam owes you a debt of gratitude. Your children are to be congratulated, — and so are you.“
In Pine Mountain Notes, 1926
Dr. Frances Sage Bradley (1866-1949), of the Children’s Bureau
[Physician and public health official married to artist husband Horace James Bradley
GLYN MORRIS
PMSS PURPOSE 19 …
PMSS PURPOSE 1938
We are trying to help the youngsters to understand the problems of this particular area, indicate some solutions, and of course, above all to make them think for themselves.
Glyn Morris, 1938
PMSS NOTES QUOTES
CHANGE 1949
Although we are still far from the well-beaten paths of civilization, we are constantly reminded that things are not as they were when Pine Mountain was founded 36 years ago. Even in a few years we have seen changes in the economy of our local community. The construction of roads is linking what were once remote spots. Even the new telephone in the school office is a symbol of this change. No one who sees the situation can feel the need for the school has passed. We are still almost twenty miles from the nearest county high school and a large percentage of our boarding students cannot easily reach schools from their homes. We have always tried to plan the program to fit the situation and are at present particularly concerned that we may be ministering to the changing needs about us. To this end, we are thinking and discussing in the hope that we may develop more significant channels of service — especially in the life of the communities around us.
Pine Mountain Notes, Feb. 4, 1949
POST-WAR [WWII] CHANGE SEEN FROM THE OUTSIDE [MOUNTAIN LIFE & WORK]
The mountain areas have been seriously affected by the drainage of youth into the armed forces and many others into the war industries. What this is doing to the institutions that most of you Mountain Life and Work [MLW] represent is something about which you are better informed than myself …. Thousands who have gone out of the mountains during this war period will not come back anticipating to remain. As never before they are being trained in technical skills for which they will not be able to find a satisfying outlet in mountain life as it exists today; it is a real question as to whether much of mountain life can be so reorganized at to provide this outlet, This raises the question which if we are to be honest must be raised. It is this; Has not the time now arrived to reappraise the mountain situation, to be realistic in our thinking, and to recast our philosophy and program?
Are we justified in maintaining a program that encourages so many of these people to remain in a land area that cannot provide the economic resources necessary to maintain the standard of living and culture which we are accustomed to think of as American? ….
A survey made some ten years ago of the territory represented by this Conference (Conference of the Southern Mountain Workers) revealed that there are two-thirds more people in the area than can be supported by the land and resources than are available and that even when the changes had been made and a more suitable agriculture had been achieved, it would not support more than half the present population on a desirable minimum standard of living.] [See Amanda Stone Thorburn article in Louisville Courier Journal] ….
Mountain Life and Work, ? [post 1947] ?AUTHOR – Glyn Morris?
END OF AN ERA- BOARDING SCHOOL CLOSURE 1949
For the first time since its founding thirty-six years ago, Pine Mountain Settlement School is operating without boarding students. They are missed in many ways; the quiet of the campus after the last school bus leaves; absence of student chapel services on Sunday; the passing of a student labor program which did so much to make our community life run smoothly. But Pine Mountain has not lost its vitality. One has only to step into the Schoolhouse on any school day to realize that!
The considerations leading to the change from a boarding high school to a consolidated elementary school were various. Trustees have been alarmed at the necessity for using capital funds to maintain a boarding school at present-day high costs. They felt too, that Pine Mountain had a definite responsibility toward the younger children of the immediate community. Several one-room county schools had three or four emergency teachers a year with long breaks between. Such teaching failed to prepare pupils for high school at Pine Mountain and few of the children close to us had enough interest in more schooling to come.
The Board asked three well-qualified men to survey our situation and give their recommendations. This committee was composed of Dr. William Jesse Baird, president of of Morehead State College; Dr. L.E. Meece of the Department of Educatio of the University of Kentucky; and Dr. Howard Beers of the Department of Rural Sociology of the University of Kentucky. After studying their report the Board took action last April with the following results. Berea College was asked to sponsor our administration, leaving Pine Mountain to operate under its original articles of incorporation. Pine Mountain’s new Board of Trustees is composed of nine members of the Berea College Board. Berea does not assume any of the financial load. The budget must still be raised by Pine Mountain School. Five one-room county schools have been consolidated at Pine Mountain. The Harlan County Board of Education pays the five teachers and the bus drivers and furnishes buses to bring in the children. President Hutchins and members of the Berea staff have been of the greatest help during these days of reorganization not only with suggestions and advice in their specialized fields but in the locating of needed personnel. This is a year of pioneering but the zeal of the staff, the enthusiastic help of our Berea colleagues and the heartening cooperation of the County school board and our neighbors give us hope for the future of our work.
Rogers, Burton. Pine Mountain Notes November, 1949
