Cora Wilson Stewart and Kentucky's Moonlight Schools: Fighting for Literacy in America.Cora Wilson Stewart and Kentucky's Moonlight Schools: Fighting for Literacy in America. By Yvonne Honeycutt Baldwin. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky The University Press of Kentucky (UPK) is the scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and was organized in 1969 as successor to the University of Kentucky Press. The university had sponsored scholarly publication since 1943. , c. 2006. Pp. x, 248. $40.00, ISBN ISBN abbr. International Standard Book Number ISBN International Standard Book Number ISBN n abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m 0-8131-2378-X.) Literacy has been a civic concern since the founding of the republic. In this biography, Yvonne Honeycutt Baldwin introduces readers to Cora Wilson Stewart, an important yet largely forgotten figure who pioneered literacy education for adults in Kentucky and across the nation during the early twentieth century. Stewart was called the "Moonlight Lady Moonlight Lady (顔のない月 Kao no nai tsuki " for her Moonlight Schools for the Emancipation of Adult Illiterates (New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of , 1922) and Country Life Readers (2 vols., Richmond, 1915-1916), which were devised to make literacy instruction palatable to adults. In the 1920s Stewart launched the National Illiteracy Crusade, which ultimately led to a job in the New Deal. Born in 1875, Stewart began her career as a teacher. Later she became the first woman to head the Kentucky Education Association. Like many other female reformers of this era, she was both a suffragist and a clubwoman club·wom·an n. A woman who is a member of a club or clubs, especially one who is active in club life. . Her success in promoting literacy statewide led her in 1916 to request state financial support to augment funds of the Kentucky Illiteracy Commission, initially sponsored by the Kentucky Federation of Women's Clubs women's clubs, groups that offer social, recreational, and cultural activities for adult females. Particularly strong in the United States, they became an important part of American town and village life in the latter part of the 19th cent. , for her work. This request brought only partial success but led Stewart into electoral politics. Baldwin argues that her experiences there reflect larger truths about the fate of women reformers during this era, as highlighted in the work of Theda Skocpol Theda Skocpol (born May 4 1947) is an American sociologist and political scientist at Harvard University, presently serving as Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. . Baldwin places Stewart's literacy crusade squarely within the context of maternalism. Throughout her life, Stewart used the language of social worthiness and social uplift to support her crusade, which Baldwin sees as a distinctive form of southern progressivism through social evangelism. In the end, however, a new emphasis on professionalism within education sidelined Stewart and contributed to her departure from the national scene. This book rightfully places Stewart within the context of other notable women education reformers, a number of whom have recently been the subjects of biographical treatment such as Kate Rousmaniere's Citizen Teacher: The Life and Leadership of Margaret Haley Margaret Haley (1861–1939), the teacher and unionist dubbed the "lady labor slugger," was born in Joliet, Illinois on November 15 1861 to immigrant parents of Irish descent; her mother came from Ireland and her father from Canada. (Albany, 2005) and Louise Anderson Allen's A Bluestocking bluestocking, derisive term originally applied to certain 18th-century women with pronounced literary interests. During the 1750s, Elizabeth Vesey held evening parties, at which the entertainment consisted of conversation on literary subjects. in Charleston: The Life and Career of Laura Bragg (Columbia, S.C., 2001). The book is well written and engaging, and the author is clear about the limitations of the historical sources upon which it is based. Baldwin is somewhat more successful in placing Stewart into the context of maternalist reform than into the history of education literature. Overall, this book makes a useful contribution to reclaiming the story of an important champion of literacy, still a subject of great concern in education today. MARGARET SMITH CROCCO Columbia University |
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