A History of Education in Kentucky by William E. Ellis (review)

BOOK REVIEWS SPRING 2013 89 A History of Education in Kentucky William E. Ellis Over a century of scholarship confirms Kentucky’s tradition of educational neglect. Historians may shift emphasis or add nuance but the narrative remains the same. Kentuckians failed to recognize the benefits of formal instruction throughout the state’s early history; when large-scale educational reform appeared, progress remained limited and inconsistent . William Ellis’s ambitious one-volume History of Education in Kentucky updates the story by adding a twenty-first century perspective to Kentucky’s well-traversed educational past. Ellis, professor emeritus of history at Eastern Kentucky University, adopts a methodical approach; four, equally divided sections take us from the one-room schoolhouses of the frontier era, to the state’s most recent approaches, to formal instruction. Each section contains chapters on elementary, secondary, and post-secondary education, and Ellis employs public records, secondary accounts, anecdotes, and previously unpublished reflections to document the history of the state’s schools. The work follows a strict political chronology . The policies of Kentucky governors and state legislators provide the backdrop for hundreds of histories about schoolhouses and individual educators. The litany of programs, initiatives , and institutions often becomes ponderous but not pedantic. Ellis embeds within the detail many charming vignettes, long forgotten but useful stories featuring men and women from Kentucky history. Schoolmaster John McKinney’s showdown with a stubborn wildcat, the unconventional childhood education of Supreme Court Chief Justice Frederick Moore Vinson, the success of Katherine Pettit’s Appalachian “Settlement School,” the failure of Cora Wilson Stewart’s illiteracy campaign, and other colorful asides give testimony to the durable qualities and uncommon characteristics of a Kentucky education. Ellis’s thoughtfully prepared collegiate histories prove equally valuable. Sketches of successes , successors, and failures demonstrate the tenuous, unsettled nature of higher education in Kentucky. Ellis develops individual accounts in isolation but makes thematic connections . He notes, for example, the long-term consequences of denominational influence in higher learning, arguing that Transylvania, William E. Ellis. A History of Education in Kentucky. Lexington:The University Press of Kentucky, 2011. 546 pp. ISBN: 9780813129778 (cloth), $40.00. BOOK REVIEWS 90 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Centre, Campbellsville, Georgetown, and other denominationally controlled colleges struggled to find their place among publicly funded and progressively oriented state colleges . Readers will find some expected patterns —World War II proved a net positive for most Kentucky colleges, intercollegiate athletics developed in spite of administrative protests—as well as other almost inexplicable trends—military schools never found a solid footing while professional schools, especially programs in medicine and law, experienced early and permanent success. However, Ellis devotes the majority of his work to documenting the abysmal failures of Kentucky public elementary and secondary schools. A system of common, tuition-free schooling, he argues, languished for want of public support, legislative oversight, and a satisfactory approach to teacher education. For much of the state’s history, Kentuckians proved neither willing nor able to contribute to this end. A brief period of reform under state education superintendent Robert J. Breckenridge in the 1850s did not survive the Civil War. Not until the state’s fourth Constitution (1891) did the legislature formalize a regulated system of state financial assistance. The education of Kentucky teachers proved another matter entirely. Wandering pedagogues—the intemperate , ill-tempered, and poorly educated masters of one-room schoolhouses—contributed to the rustic quality of early Kentucky. Pleas for even basic evaluations of teacher competency went unfulfilled until the middle of the nineteenth century. Requirements increased slowly but with purpose; a one-day test of rudimentary subject knowledge in 1852 became a week-long “teachers institute” in 1870, and a more rigorous two-day state exam at the turn of the twentieth century. However, corruption and graft inhibited what was otherwise a step in the right direction. Nepotism, bribes, and kickbacks to county education trustees—men responsible for the hiring in and management of local schools—ensured that teaching remained of a low quality throughout the first half of the twentieth century. As a chronicle of institutional politics, A History of Education in Kentucky is an unqualified success. As a contribution to history of education, however, Ellis’s work remains...