The Arthurdale Community School: Education and Reform in Depression Era Appalachia by Sam F. Stack Jr. (review)

This review must begin with a disclaimer: I introduced the author, Sam F. Stack, to Arthurdale. However, we did not collaborate on this book, which is part of Dwight B. Billings’s series entitled Place Matters: New Directions in Appalachian Studies. Place definitely matters, for Arthurdale, West Virginia, was the first federal New Deal subsistence homestead community.

Elsie Clapp is the focal person in this story in her roles as principal of the Arthurdale school and director of community affairs. To introduce us to the two years she worked in Arthurdale, Stack provides extensive background on the development of progressive education, her discipleship with John Dewey, and her career before 1934, especially her work at the Ballard School near Louisville, Kentucky. He also provides background both on the economic situation in the Scotts Run area outside Morgantown that drove the initiative to move displaced miners to Arthurdale and on the Country Life Movement already on President Franklin Roosevelt’s mind by 1933. West Virginia University’s Extension Service had led the Country Life Movement in the state and was active in Scotts Run and the creation of Arthurdale, but Stack’s narrative virtually ignores this partner.

Clapp moved to Arthurdale in the summer of 1934, just after the first residents arrived, to establish a school system embodying the best of current thought on progressive education. As director of community affairs, she was responsible for everything from recruiting factories to enforcing the ban on alcohol. It was a Herculean job, and she served only until the summer of 1936, although she maintained a strong interest in Arthurdale thereafter. The American Friends Service Committee, especially Clarence Pickett, receive appropriate credit for their roles in establishing and supporting Arthurdale. Pickett advised Eleanor Roosevelt to ask Clapp to work in Arthurdale. The first lady provided constant oversight and encouragement and, with Bernard Baruch, significant financial support. A National Advisory Committee, including Dewey, Pickett, and representatives of federal agencies, and a West Virginia Advisory School Committee comprised of West Virginia University and local and state school officials, among others, opined on the schools, while parents worried the school was not accredited.

Considering the many competing interests at work in Arthurdale, it would have been easy for someone less motivated than Clapp to simply copy the existing Preston County school system in Arthurdale. Instead, Clapp and her staff, some of whom joined her from the Ballard School, established a curriculum for children from nursery school through high school. Starting in the fall of 1934 with few supplies and classes in makeshift facilities, the school expanded to six buildings by 1936. The curriculum was never just about the “3Rs.” Stack is most effective in explaining how Clapp and her staff focused on the whole child and integrated the school into the curriculum. Nurses addressed health concerns. Children watched adults building their community from the ground up and built their own versions of the town. They learned about pioneer life in a historic log cabin. They made musical instruments and presented public concerts. With most of the emphasis on the nursery school and high school, however, the reader loses track of what happened to students in intervening grades.

Stack draws on an extensive bibliography, continuing his narrative after 1936 by focusing on Clapp and the national progressive education movement through the 1950s. There is also some discussion of remaining progressive elements at Arthurdale after the Preston County Board of Education assumed control of the schools. Unfortunately, though, other than a 1941 survey, there are no reflections of those who attended the schools, although there are at least thirty-five oral histories available with homesteaders and their children. It also would be interesting to know if educators in other subsistence homestead communities learned anything from Arthurdale’s experiences, but that is beyond Stack’s scope here.

Finally, references to photographs are confusing. The cover photo and the identical one following page...