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You Can't Padlock an Idea

Name: You Can't Padlock an Idea
Author: Stephen A. Schneider, Thomas W. Benson

Rhetorical Education at the Highlander Folk School, 1932-1961

Stephen A. Schneider, Thomas W. Benson

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You Can't Padlock an Idea

Rhetorical Education at the Highlander Folk School, 1932-1961

Stephen A. Schneider, Thomas W. Benson

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You Can't Padlock an Idea examines the educational programs undertaken at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee and looks specifically at how these programs functioned rhetorically to promote democratic social change. Founded in 1932 by educator Myles Horton, the Highlander Folk School sought to address the economic and political problems facing communities in Appalachian Tennessee and other southern states. To this end Horton and the school's staff involved themselves in the labor and civil rights disputes that emerged across the south over the next three decades.

Drawing on the Highlander archives housed at the Wisconsin Historical Society, the Avery Research Center in South Carolina, and the Highlander Research and Education Center in Tennessee, Stephen A. Schneider reconstructs the pedagogical theories and rhetorical practices developed and employed at Highlander. He shows how the school focused on developing forms of collective rhetorical action, helped students frame social problems as spurs to direct action, and situated education as an agency for organizing and mobilizing communities.

Schneider studies how Highlander's educational programs contributed to this broader goal of encouraging social action. Specifically he focuses on four of the school's more established programs: labor drama, labor journalism, citizenship education, and music. These programs not only taught social movement participants how to create plays, newspapers, citizenship schools, and songs, they also helped the participants frame the problems they faced as having solutions based in collective democratic action. Highlander's programs thereby functioned rhetorically, insofar as they provided students with the means to define and transform oppressive social and economic conditions. By providing students with the means to comprehend social problems and with the cultural agencies (theater, journalism, literacy, and music) to address these problems directly, Highlander provided an important model for understanding the relationships connecting education, rhetoric, and social change.

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Publisher

University of South Carolina Press

Year

2014

ISBN

9781611173826

CHAPTER 1 The Kairos of Educational Opportunity

The Development of the Highlander Idea

Myles Horton’s first fundraising letter for the Highlander Folk School describes his initial project as “the organization of a Southern Mountain School for the training of labor leaders in the Southern industrial areas” (1990, 61). To that end, Horton proposed “to train radical labor leaders who will understand the need of both political and union strategy,” and without whom “a labor movement in the South is impossible.” While he focuses immediately on the concerns of labor and the working class, Horton further extends his educational mission beyond union organization to “the total problem of modern civilization” (61). This vision provided a foundation for the school’s pedagogy, which would focus on “individual integration, relation of the individual to a new situation, and education for a socialistic society.” Articulated to these political and economic concerns, education was “one of the instruments for bringing about a new social order” (62).

As we might expect, Horton’s fundraising letter reflects his intellectual commitments to progressive politics and demonstrates the impact on his thinking of the social gospel, pragmatism, and the adult education movement; it makes little mention, however, of the educational method that would become known as the Highlander Idea. This is most likely because the combined focus on social change, crisis education, and student experience developed out of the folk school’s early programs. Horton’s initial description of the school’s pedagogy was, for the most part, pragmatic. “Personal relations,” he declared, “will play an important part” (61). Group discussion would center on students’ experiences, which would then be leveraged as resources for addressing broader social problems. This would allow “those who otherwise have no educational advantages whatsoever to learn enough about themselves and society, to have something on which to base their decisions and actions whether in their own community or in an industrial situation into which they may be thrown” (62). Horton thus believed that education could serve as an agency for social and economic reconstruction along democratic lines, and that his “Southern Mountain School” must also be directly articulated to such a goal. But he also saw the need for individuals to play a political role in securing democratic reforms, and for educational institutions that would focus explicitly on developing this kind of citizenship.

Despite this initial, broad-strokes discussion of the role residential adult education might play in the achievement of democratic social change, and despite the common perception that Horton developed the Highlander Idea prior to founding the folk school, it seems fairer to suggest that the Highlander Idea emerged as Horton’s pedagogical commitments were leavened by the school’s early programs. Early residential classes failed to adequately respond to student needs, with staff relying on traditional educational methods at the expense of the school’s broader goals. In fact, it was the folk school’s work with striking miners in Wilder, Tennessee, and bugwood cutters in Summerfield, Tennessee, that seem to have provided Horton and Highlander staff with more successful programs upon which to build. Insofar as these extension programs allowed staff to work directly with the problems facing students, they also allowed staff to more fully develop the rhetorical dimensions of Highlander’s educational philosophy. These later albeit modest successes at Wilder and Summerfield, which proved crucial to the development of the Highlander Idea, would increasingly inform the manner in which staff enacted the school’s pedagogical principles.

It was through these programs that Highlander staff also recognized and developed the rhetorical dimensions of the Highlander Idea. While Highlander staff members understood themselves to be working in nonformal adult education, they also helped students in Highlander’s programs cultivate the rhetorical strategies needed to achieve social change. In this regard, they helped students develop citizenship practices in hopes of increasing their civic participation and fostering a democratic society. Within this model, social problems became what Shirley Wilson Logan has called “sites of rhetorical education,” places that provided the conditions and exigence for students to critically examine their experiences and further develop their own rhetorical capabilities (2008). This emphasis on crisis situations and students’ own experiences with those situations led staff member John Thompson to ground the Highlander Idea in the “kairos of educational opportunity” (1958, 1).

By emphasizing student experience as a resource for social change, Highlander staff further encouraged students to develop collective-action frames from their own understandings of the problems they faced. Students worked collectively to frame problems in terms of injustice and used this foundation as a means of developing rhetorical strategies aimed at challenging inequality and exploitation. Framing thus proved central to Highlander’s model of rhetorical education; the development of local frames proved foundational to further rhetorical action, and the alignment of local frames with Highlander’s pedagogical commitments allowed the school to direct its educational energies toward democratic social change.

The Highlander Idea as Kairic Pedagogy

In a prospectus for an ultimately unfinished study of Highlander’s programs, one-time Highlander staff member John B. Thompson sought to define the school’s theory of “education for democratic citizenship” (1958, 1). Describing Highlander as “a center to help southern people find the solutions to their most urgent problems,” Thompson notes that Highlander’s pedagogical principles “may be relevant to the task of education for citizenship in other parts of the country and of the world” (1, 3). Thompson’s study was aimed to provide not only a history of Highlander’s programs, but also those “general principles and conclusions” that guided the school over the course of its first twenty-five years.

In describing Highlander’s programs, Thompson provides the one instance where a rhetorical concept—kairos—has been used explicitly to help define Highlander’s pedagogical methods. After describing Highlander’s pedagogical theory as one that sought to move from “Education and Society” to “Education in Society,” Thompson notes “the importance of the place and the time” (1). Within the Highlander Idea, “the social crisis or frustration” serves as “the kairos of educational opportunity” (1). While Thompson most likely encountered kairos as a theological concept at Union Theological Seminary, his use of the term is consistent with contemporary discussions that emphasize kairos as a concept both of “opportunity” and the “critical time” (White 1987, 13).

Eric Charles White offers perhaps the most detailed definition of kairos, which he identifies as “a passing instant when an opening appears which must be driven through with force if success is to be achieved” (13). Carolyn Miller further suggests that this passing instant presents the rhetor with a challenge: namely, to “invent, within a set of unfolding and unprecedented circumstances, an action (rhetorical or otherwise) that will be understood as uniquely meaningful within those circumstances” (2002, xiii). For Thompson, this passing moment was to be found in social crises—those events that lay bare structures of inequality and exploitation. By asking students to reflect upon the impact of these crises on their own lives, Highlander staff hoped to promote “education to help citizens to exercise to the fullest the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy” (1958, 1).

For Thompson, Highlander’s programs were built around four discrete elements: “needs,” “crises in the social order,” the “growing edge of people and institutions,” and “pilot projects to explore methods and means” (1). These elements combined to form what Thompson calls purposive education—a method that sought to find the purpose for learning (and therefore the foundation for lifelong learning) within those social problems we face on an everyday basis. It is within this context that moments of social crisis provide the opportune place and time for the development of meaningful educational programs. We might therefore see Highlander’s pedagogical philosophy as an attempt to invent an educational program capable of responding to (and ultimately transforming) the exploitation and poverty that attended southern industrialization. We might also understand this program in terms of Highlander’s emphasis on student experience, collective action, and democratic deliberation. These foundations allowed Highlander to articulate its programs to progressive political groups across the South, and to thereby develop a kairic pedagogy capable of supporting efforts at democratic social change. But just as significantly, we see in this invocation of kairos the importance of framing practices within the Highlander Idea.

Even in its earliest articulations, the Highlander Idea represented an attempt to link nonformal adult education and democratic social change.* Horton’s conception of democracy entailed two basic premises: first, following Jane Addams, Horton understood democracy as a commitment to collective, deliberative decision-making; second, and more immediately, Horton understood democracy to be a principled opposition to economic exploitation and discriminatory social practices. Highlander’s programs were therefore “designed to help the disadvantaged of all races to help themselves to challenge the status quo in the name of democracy and brotherhood” (Horton 2003, 4). Nonetheless, Horton recognized that “change in the social structure to divert more social productivity to those who have the least can only come about as a result of changes in the political and economic institutions of this country” (8). Education, then, represented only a first step; the Highlander Idea “was oriented toward social education to be followed immediately by action.”

As Thompson notes, Horton’s approach to rhetorical education was primarily grounded in a theory of crisis education. Drawing on his experience with sociologist Robert Park, Horton came to understand moments of social crisis as educational opportunities. Describing the school’s early programs, Horton notes that “when people are highly motivated to learn because of problems confronting them everyday, a great deal of education can take place fast” (2003, 8). The amelioration of social problems provided Highlander’s students with both a reason to learn and a telos or purpose toward which to direct their educational experiences. Crisis education, then, allowed Highlander staff “to see people as they see themselves and to help generate within them the desires to and determination to improve their conditions” (10). Furthermore, this theory of crisis education identified social problems as “sites of rhetorical education” (Logan 2008, 3). Social problems provided Highlander’s students with both the motivation to learn and a purpose toward which to direct that learning; they also demanded that students develop and deploy a range of rhetorical strategies for achieving social change.

Just as important as Highlander’s commitment to crisis education—to the “kairos of educational opportunity”—was the school’s commitment to solving those problems immanently, primarily by drawing directly upon students’ experiences. Horton thus saw Highlander not as a traditional school, but rather as “educational in the traditional meaning of the word ‘educate,’ which is to draw out instead of pour in” (2003, 34). In a 1983 discussion of Highlander’s influences, Horton describes the school’s approach to experiential learning: “The Highlander process of learning from analyzing experience is in itself a form of self- and peer education. It affirms our faith in working people’s capacity to become their own experts and take control of their lives. We not only provide practice in analyzing experiences, but give students a glimpse of a more humane society and urge them to push back the boundaries that inhibit them” (2003, 27).

Highlander staff dedicated themselves to discovering within students’ experiences the available strategies for achieving meaningful social change. For Horton, this was at the heart of what he described as a “percolator” theory of education, one in which knowledge boils up from student experience rather than being provided in packaged form by educators (Eby 1953). In this way, Highlander staff encouraged people to recognize their own potential as agents of social change and pushed them to discover within their own experience the “available means” for addressing and alleviating exploitation and inequality: as students came to see themselves as political agents, they also learned to act as rhetorical agents. “In so far as Highlander has been able to listen to the people instead of imposing our preconceptions,” Horton concludes, “we have been able to stimulate democratic initiatives.” (2003, 10)

The rhetorical dimensions of the Highlander Idea might be best understood as framing processes, or as communicative processes devoted to turning student experience into rhetorical structures capable of provoking and supporting democratic social action. As described by Erving Goffman, frames represent “schemata of interpretation,” or ways of organizing and responding to experience (1986, 21). Frames thus allow individuals “to articulate and align a vast array of events and experiences so that they hang together in a relatively unified and meaningful fashion” (Snow and Benford 1992, 137–38). But just as significantly, frames enable or disable certain forms of rhetorical action, suggesting those paths that are more or less appropriate to a particular set of circumstances (Burke 1966). Understood as a set of framing processes, the Highlander Idea was not only a theory of identifying opportunities and resources for social change, but also an agency for recognizing and developing appropriate strategies for democratic social action.

In order to promote this kairic model of education, Myles Horton placed a heavy emphasis on collective learning. Students were thus encouraged to share their experiences with one another, and to analyze them collectively as a means of discovering possible avenues for political action. This approach helped students to recognize those problems they had in common, and to “sit down and learn from one another” (Horton 2003, 13). This not only fosters what Horton calls “a yeasty self-multiplying process”; it also allows students to engage directly in collective deliberative decision-making (27). Within this context, students “participate in an actual democratic experience—a ripe experience where people are free to talk and make decisions, where there is no discrimination, and where their experience is valued” (49). For Horton, this is not simply education, but rather direct practice in collective action: “If students have been convinced of the necessity of collective action, gained self respect and respect for their peers, they will have a message that they can use and will want to spread.”

Within this process, Highlander staff acted more as facilitators than as teachers. This does not, however, mean that they remained neutral in their opinions or actions. Rather, if the educator hopes to foster a democratic learning environment, she or he is faced with a host of pressing tasks and “must define from the multiplicity of problems those which have the greatest need for immediate action; he must evaluate many proposed solutions and decide whether this program or that project can be adapted to fit his needs and whether it can be transferred from one place to another or from one country to another” (Horton 2003, 219). The “educational assistance” provided by Highlander staff thus involved actively structuring the learning environment in such a way as to promote democratic deliberation and collective action (10). Where necessary, staff would also provide their opinions, but principally as fellow workshop participants rather than as experts.

This recourse to collective action proved to be the foundation of Highlander’s framing practices. By having students share both the social problems they faced and the resources they might use to address those problems, Highlander staff encouraged them to develop collective-action frames that could support further rhetorical action. Insofar as they emphasized the collective exploration of social problems and the development of rhetorical strategies for solving them, Highlander workshops became rich sites of rhetorical education. Workshops thus focused not on learning in a formal sense, but rather on inventing strategies for achieving democratic political goals. Students were encouraged to frame their own experiences kairically, as moments for the examination and development of rhetorical action. Social crises thus stopped being insurmountable structures of exploitation and poverty and were instead framed as rhetorical situations that demanded sustained collective rhetorical action. Within this theory, the “kairos of educational opportunity” indicates both the ways in which education was articulated to social change, and the ways in which student experience became the basis for that social change.

It is possible, then, to see the Highlander Idea as an antecedent for the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire, and more specifically his problem-solving model for education (Freire 1970). Much as the Highlander Idea placed student experience at the foundation for the school’s educational programs, Freire’s problem-solving model sought to make those problems students themselves faced the basis for a politically engaged, dialogic pedagogy. From the outset, Highlander staff also encouraged students to collectively examine and recast the problems they faced. But the school’s longstanding commitment to student experience notwithstanding, the Highlander Idea certainly did not develop overnight—or as smoothly as we might assume when reading Horton and Thompson. In fact, it might be more accurate to suggest that the Highlander Idea—and the kairic understanding of education that it championed—developed as much from limited successes of the school’s early programs as it did from the theoretical and philosophical commitments of its founders.

Winter 1932: Early Residential Education

Upon returning to the South, Horton had set about finding potential teachers and coworkers for the school. In the summer of 1932, Horton befriended Georgia poet and activist Don West, whose similar plans to open a school for the Appalachian poor made him an ideal co-founder for the Southern Mountains School. It was West (or possibly his wife) who also suggested changing the school’s name to the Highlander Folk School, in keeping with the then-popular term for the Appalachian people.* At the suggestion of Abram Nightingale, Horton also enlisted the help of community educator and former college president Lillian Johnson. After hearing West and Horton describe their plans for Highlander, Johnson agreed to give them a house in Monteagle, Tennessee, as a location for their school. Upon taking over the property later that year, Horton and West set about developing an educational program to serve the needs of the Appalachian poor.

The Highlander Folk School’s main building. WHi-52777, Wisconsin Historical Society.

Horton’s time in Denmark had convinced him of the value of residential education, and the need for adult students to live and learn together. The opportunities afforded by a controlled residential environment allowed Highlander staff to provide “not only a physical arrangement and setting, but a clear and simple purpose as well” (A. Horton 1966b, 245). Horton argued that “residential adult education appears to be especially appropriate for dealing with human relations problems” (244). Residential schools provide students not only with a relaxed setting “where learning takes place by means of a variety of educational experiences” but also a place where they can “be together outside discussion, lecture and study periods” (244). Highlander’s pedagogy would thus concern itself with the “cooperative rather than competitive use of learning, and with general above personal improvement and advancement” (Cobb 1961, 278). In this way, the school itself could function as the kind of community that staff members were trying to build elsewhere, with democratic living and decisio...