A History of Education in Kentucky

Chapter 6. Higher Education in the New Century

Chapter 6 Higher Education in the New Century At the turn of the twentieth century, Kentuckians were influenced, indeed had been impacted for much of their history, by educational experiences beyond the classroom. In the broadest sense, education is “intergenerational, with adults teaching children.” Acculturation is the process whereby a person is incorporated into the larger group, absorbing the culture of his or her surroundings from birth.1 Outside of the normal school setting, whether elementary, secondary, or college, there were opportunities to learn for the willing and able. After the Civil War print media became more available with the development of cheaper printing methods. While there had always been proper books, magazines, and newspapers, the “dime novel” became a democratizing influence in the late nineteenth century. The church remained the center of not only worship but also learning in the nineteenth century. Those who attended were exposed to learned clerics in the larger urban churches, where some ministers had attended some of the finest colleges and theological seminaries in the country. If their doctrine was strict, they lent an air of sophistication to their flocks. In the country churches, the preachers may not have been as learned but were even more expressive. The Bible was the center of these churches and was also found in nearly every home. Children grew up reading the Bible if nothing else.2 Organized Sunday schools became a source of learning, first in urban areas in the East, then spreading eventually to rural areas of the South after the Civil War. Children and adults learned Bible lessons as well as a degree of reading skills in an evangelical Protestant setting. Forbidden to preach in most Protestant denominations, women found Sunday school work an outlet for their talents and religious zeal. Sunday school conventions of the late nineteenth century demonstrated the growing role of women in Kentucky, 221 222 A History of Education in Kentucky particularly in affairs religious. Whereas “women made up 30 percent of the delegates to Kentucky’s 1875 convention,” three years later their numbers had increased to 45 percent.3 The imagination of Americans for nonformal public education abounded. Beginning at Lake Chautauqua in New York in the 1870s, a movement swept the country that brought “enlightenment, education, and entertainment to thousands of people over the summer months.” From June to September, Chautauqua circuits crisscrossed Kentucky by the late nineteenth century, and “lecturers brought ideas, world news, and culture to those who might not otherwise have been exposed to such informative refinement.” Their events lasting from a few days to two weeks, such circuits as “The Redpath Chautauqua ” came to perform and inform in special tents erected for the events. Those who attended could hear such political figures as William Jennings Bryan deliver speeches. Renowned composer and band leader John Philip Sousa even came to Elkton on one occasion. Educational leaders such as Henry Hardin Cherry often toured the western Kentucky region, helping develop “Rural Chautauquas.” On one such tour in 1913, he proposed reform . “The policy for the development of Kentucky has been too indefinite, negative and vague,” he said. “Our civic, social and industrial standards have been too frequently made by men who have appealed to the prejudice and ignorance of the people rather than by a consideration of the fundamentals of permanent and universal development.” To be more specific, he argued that Kentucky had “too many elections and suffered too much politicking.” Oratory of this type and intensity during the Progressive Era would have been the highlight of many a Chautauqua circuit.4 In some places Chautauqua exhibited a more religious emphasis. For example, an 1888 meeting at Woodland Park in Lexington highlighted workshops for Sunday school teachers. Other instruction included a lecture titled “In and about Shakespeare’s Home,” accompanied by “Stereopticon Illustrations.” Chautauqua could also have an agricultural emphasis, as at one held in London, Kentucky, in August 1919. Shakespearean plays and demonstrations such as the “Wonders of Modern Science” were performed before packed crowds of Madison countians in the early 1920s. Separate programs for African Americans followed the strict segregation of the time in the commonwealth. For as little as $2.50 for a week’s events, white patrons could take part in all the events of Chautauqua in Winchester and Ashland in the summer of 1915. However, a study of Chautauqua in Kentucky found that between 1920 and 1930, the variety of entertainment increased so rapidly , along with automobile transportation, as to render the...