Moonlight Schools for the Emancipation of Adult IlliteratesStewart, Cora Wilson
History
Moonlight Schools for the Emancipation of Adult Illiterates
Stewart, Cora Wilson
Education -- Kentucky; Literacy -- Kentucky
There are 208,084 men and women in our State who cannot read and
write, and of whose intelligent efforts along the lines of education,
religion and general development and advancement the State is
deprived, and this constitutes a deplorable situation and presents a
great and urgent need which should be promptly met and relieved.
Instruction should be offered to the mothers for their own sake and
for the sake of the children and the benefit of the State; it should
be offered to the fathers for their own sake and for the sake of
increasing their earning capacity and of promoting home comforts, and
for the sake of a more intelligent exercise of the right of suffrage
so as to help maintain good government for the State. Instruction
should be offered to the young men and young women who have missed
opportunities earlier in life, but may yet take hold of instruction
and make achievements.
The instruction of all the illiterates in the State will not only
give to Kentucky a higher rank, educationally, among the states, but
will give her a new and distinct position as the first Commonwealth
which has ever attempted to accomplish such a great and important
work.
I call upon all to help in the cause of education of those under
twenty-one years of age and those upward of twenty-one years of
age, and I appeal to every public and private school teacher, every
professor in our high schools, colleges and universities, all public
officials, every representative of the press, every professional man,
every farmer, mechanic and business man and every woman who loves the
blessings of education, and to all who desire to promote religion,
science, literature or art, or to advance progress or improvement in
any line, all who desire to lessen crime, to help in the great work
of teaching adult illiterates, both male and female, to read and
write and spell and to encourage them to seek knowledge and to add to
their acquirements through moonlight schools in illuminated school
houses where education is as free as the air we breathe, and where
all may come to edify themselves and to drink of the water of life
freely.
In testimony whereof, I have caused these letters to be made patent
and the seal of the Commonwealth to be hereunto affixed. Done at
Frankfort the 21st day of September, in the year of our Lord one
thousand nine hundred and fourteen, and in the one hundred and
twenty-third year of the commonwealth.
JAMES B. MCCREARY,
Governor.
C. E. CRECELIUS,
Secretary of State.
(seal)
CECIL H. VANSANT,
Assistant Secretary of State.
The United States Bureau of Education, at this time, made Kentucky’s
campaign against illiteracy the occasion for a second notice to
the public. In this bulletin, which was headed “Kentucky Wars on
Illiteracy,” the Commissioner of Education said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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