New Ground
Next week I will be at the John. C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC. Brasstown gives the lie to those who think that North Carolina ends at Charlotte. Almost in Georgia, almost as close to Tennessee, that region is not totally unfamiliar to me. We lived in Sylva for two years, but even there an hour west of Asheville, we were almost two hours east of Brasstown. You can get there from here, but only if you take the byways not generally taken, and that's okay by me.
Campbell is one of the remaining Appalachian "Settlement Schools" that began forming in the late 1800s' at time when there was widespread poverty there. I've read that, had the Civil War not started when it did, Lincoln had already agreed to a mass relocation program to move 'backwards' folks out of the uncivilized hills and hollers.
The Appalachians had not assimilated America's culture. This was disturbing to the growing number of newly-college-educated ladies of the day. They saw the unmet needs of southern mountain communities and set out to elevate the "needy" by educating them in proper manners, dance and music and language, and by organizing groups to produce traditional products--- especially items useful in everyday self-sufficient daily life: quilts, jugs and crocks, household items carved from wood. The farflung loosely-organized communities needed churches, schools, and health care.
Not everyone took kindly to these "interveners" as they were called, and their wide ranging effect on local community and tradition was not entirely positive. Still, the impact of settlement schools on local economies and communities are still felt even today. Some -- like Hindman in Kentucky and Campbell-- continue as creative centers.
Here's a good overview of the Folk School. I've never been. I only know what I read. I will soon know much, much more. Stay tuned.
Comments
Oh Fred, how quickly you made a liar of me!
I just wrote Jessica an email, a little over an hour ago, saying that I needed to stop chasing rabbit trails in my mind and buckled down on my grad work. Well, instead I am dreaming of a week at the folk school. My resolve lasted all of an hour. So I read passages from my textbook inbetween the loading of web pages. I am particularly interested in the intergenerational weeks in NC. My Nana is part of the elder hostel group that travels around doing extrordinary things. I am jealous to be sure. I have an interest in what we call the "primitive arts". I have a friend at the bookstore who has been in this community for awhile and she has an outstanding promise to teach me all she knows.
We have such a rich wealth of people in this area who have so much to teach us. Jessica and I recently spent some time in Roanoke looking at their appalachian arts exhibit at center in the square. They have a lot of information about the folk school in NC as well as photographs by a member of that community. I would also like to point out that explorer park on the Blue Ridge offers similiar experiences.
My mind is spinning about all the things I am going to pursue after school. I think my true education has always been outside the classroom. Then again I may just be reading to much John Taylor Gatto. Just for fun I will leave you with a quote from A Different Kind of Teacher.
"Schools train individuals to respond as a mass. Boys and Girls are drilled in being bored, frightened, envious, emotionally needy, generally incomplete. A successful mass production economy requires such a clientele. Small business and small farm economies, like those of the Amish, require individual competence, thoughtfulness, compassion, and universal participation. Our own economy requires a managed mass of levelled, spiritless, anxious, family-less, friendless, godless, and obedient people who believe the difference between Coke and Pepsi is a subject worth arguing about."
**Sorry Fred another long post. All readers please forgive me.**
Posted by: Seth | October 29, 2003 8:47 AM
Sounds really interesting. I'll be dropping by for the reports!
Posted by: Coup de Vent | October 29, 2003 4:21 PM