Unearthing Seeds of Fire: The Idea of Highlander

Great book. Good detail. Put together well.

Unearthing Seeds of Fire: The Idea of Highlander (Adams, 1975) is an engaging narrative describing the birth, struggles, and successes of the Highlander Folk School from its beginnings in the early 1930s through the retirement of its founder, Myles Horton, in the early 1970s. Set in the backcountry of Tennessee, the unconventional school is not about textbooks or teachers or personal enrichment, but rather the school promotes meaningful content created by participants, informal workshops, and community empowerment. Horton, having grown up in the impoverished Appalachian coal communities of eastern Tennessee, was moved to establish Highlander after becoming disillusioned with education which had little relevancy to the every day struggles of the poor. Recalling a summer administering a vacation Bible school program on the Cumberland Plateau, Horton said, "I couldn't put this in words...but such education failed to connect with their lives" (p.2). After college in both the South and the North and a trip to Denmark to visit the Danish Folk Schools, Horton learned not only to put his ideas into words, he put them into action. In the fall of 1932 Horton and a colleague opened the Highlander Folk School in Grundy County, Tennessee. The new school was dedicated to "social change and community action" (Merriam and Brockett, 1997, p. 57). Highlander would, "get behind the common judgments of the poor, help them learn to act and speak for themselves, [and] help them gain control over decisions affecting their daily lives" (Adams, 1975, p. 24). Highlander was run as a residential school where those suffering from social and economic injustices could come and voice their problems, work through solutions together, and create plans for community action upon returning home. As Adams details in his book, Highlander began its career empowering Southern workers to unionize for better pay and working conditions. Later Highlander proved instrumental in empowering Southern blacks to press for civil equality. The school's method of bringing people with like problems together and facilitating their efforts to understand and combat their problems proved to be highly successful; however, such methodology, as it resulted in structural change, proved to be controversial. Those advantaged by the status quo frequently threatened the school, its personnel, and its participants, and, moreover, denigrated its technique. Highlander was condemned as being communist, socialist, and anti-American. Historically adult education programs for the lower classes and minorities in America had been instruments of social control, whereby individuals such as Native Americans were taught to be 'civilized' farmers or African Americans were taught 'useful plantation skills' (Stubblefield and Keane, 1994). Too, the focus of adult education for all groups had generally been the improvement of the individual. As far back as the days of the early Republic, adult education was primarily viewed as a means to personal enrichment or personal advancement (Stubblefield and Keane, 1994). By the 1920s however, the idea of adult education as a path to social reform and social change--an idea championed by the likes of Edward Lindeman and Joseph Hart--had gained recognition and was an oft discussed topic during Horton's college years in the North (Adams, 1975); in the end, what Horton's professors preached, Horton, through Highlander, practiced. Unearthing Seeds of Fire is an unassuming book, written in both a matter-of-fact and intimate manner. Adams' style is straightforward and uncomplicated, seeming to evoke the very atmosphere of Highlander itself. Yet, the reader is also introduced to an endless stream of individuals and events, giving the reader a sense of the breadth and depth of the personal connections made at Highlander. Perhaps most remarkable to the uninitiated, is the history of the Southern labor movement and the fight for civil rights which the book provides. It is inspirational to learn that one man who put his vision into practice was able to establish an alternative institution which proved to have such a positive and profound effect on the lives of so many people and on the very conscience of a nation. The story of the Highlander Folk School should be known to all Americans, for it is a tale of the struggle for justice and equality by the most maligned in our society. It is a story of hope and empowerment. Educators, activists, social workers, community advocates, and those interested in marginalized groups or part of marginalized groups have much to learn from the educational methodology developed and followed at Highlander. Unearthing Seeds of Fire provides a solid introduction to the ways and means of Horton and Highlander.ReferencesAdams, F. (1975). Unearthing seeds of fire: The idea of Highlander. Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, Publisher.Merriam, S. B., and Brockett, R. G. (1997). The profession and practice of adult education: An introduction. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Stubblefield, H. W., and Keane, P. (1994). Adult education in the American experience: From the colonial period to the present. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Unearthing the Seeds of Fire: The Idea of Highlander by Frank Adams with Myles Horton is a book about social change through education via empowering the individual and a semi-biographical narrative about the folk school founder, Myles Horton. In a broader perspective, this book follows the political trends and intellectual movements of the United States from the early to mid-twentieth century. Specifically, Highlander illustrates how ideas that challenge the status quo can change the world, one mind at a time.Reading Highlander is like listening to a storyteller spin a yarn. Frank Adams' writing style draws the reader into Myles Horton's life and it is easy to imagine being there with him in Tennessee and North Carolina in the trenches of the labor movement in the South, motivating people and fighting for equal rights, be it for miners, loggers, or minorities.As the title suggests, the main thesis of the book is that the people will tell educators what they need to know in any context. In the case of Myles Horton, he listened while people told him they were fed up with being exploited as workers and disadvantaged as minorities. Horton's gift was teaching people how to learn, and through this, they became empowered learners with the strongest weapon of all in the war for equality: ideas. The "seeds" for change were in the communities that Horton came into contact with, what he did was teach folks how to help themselves. From Gatesville, North Carolina, Adams writes:..."I believe that education should foster individual growth and social change and nourish the fundamental value of complete personal liberty while encouraging thoughtful citizenship in community." (Adams, p. xv) Adams and Horton share this quantum idea of education. Chapter 3 entitled "...coming here, getting information, going back and teaching it..." tells how the Folk School's ideas that fostered independent and critical thinking and notions of equanimity among races, social classes, and between the sexes presented a direct challenge to the traditional Jim Crow South. A case in point is the coal miners from the town of Wilder in Grundy County, Tennessee. They were indebted to the coal mine due to exorbitant rents and overpriced goods and worked in extremely hazardous, life-threatening conditions for very low wages. These poor mining families lived a feudal existence that was more reminiscent of 17th century France than the new republic. The Fentress Coal and Coke Company (FCCC) was their landlord, employer, and the sole proprietor of the only store in town. The miners went on strike and the FCCC held nothing back in an attempt to force the miners by fear of starvation or freezing to death to go back to the mines. Horton came to Wilder from the newly established Highlander Folk School to support the townspeople, who were under the constant eye of the National Guard. A National Guard officer arrested Horton for "coming here and getting information and doing back and teaching it." (Adams, p. 33) This is but one of many instances throughout his life and the life of the Highlander Folk School where Horton's ideas cost him his freedom and almost his life. Put in the colloquial, Horton walked the walk, not just talked the talk, and ordinary folks new this. That was the secret to Horton's success as an educator and to the success of the Folk School. Horton was the real deal, not some highfalutin do-gooder. One hundred and fifty years before Horton's lifetime, another gentlemen, who himself was not a highfalutin do-gooder, Benjamin Franklin, supported the advancement of African Americans in society and "he became one of American's most active abolitionists, one who denounced slavery on moral grounds and helped advance the rights of blacks." (Isaacson, p.153) But in the Jim Crow South of the 20th century, things were slow to change and white Southerners were hell bent on maintaining their dominant position in society. This of course, required continued subjugation of minorities, the poor, and women. This is the world into which Highlander Folk School was born. The ideas shared by Horton and other social and political activists were part of a broader Occidental intellectual movement that was based on distrust of the status quo. Horton and the Folk School exemplify the ideals of tolerance, equality, and democracy. Like Franklin, Horton supported the advancement of African Americans and he saw all people as equals. At a time when it was against the law for whites and blacks to eat or go to school together, Highlander Folk School became the first school in Tennessee to have whites and blacks attend school together, eat in the dining room together, and "stay overnight under the same roof." (Adam, p. 981) I believe Franklin would like Highlander and Horton. Both men were unassuming and unquestionably a lot smarter than those who snubbed them. In comparison to the work of Jacob A. Riis in How the Other Half Lives, and intimate and shocking look at tenement life in New York City during the 1900's, Adams demonstrates the power of ideas in changing the lives of poverty stricken folks of Appalachia. The human condition inflicted by poverty is the same whether people are residents of urban or rural areas. These rural communities of miners, loggers, and urban African American shared living in a society that kept them subjugated in part by controlling access to education. Moreover, public education taught moral lessons and allegiance to the flag and did not promote questioning authority. Whatever threatened the status quo was red baited.Countless people, including Horton and other people associated with -Highlander Folk School, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and folk legend Pete Seeger, were called Communist. Red-baiting ran rampant during this time and even "the governor of the state of Georgia has fallen into a common error among Southerners. He believes that anyone who favors integration must be a Communist." (Adams, p. 127) This fear ultimately lead to the closure of the original Folk School, but Horton and his team moved to Knoxville and Horton and the school moved forward. In the end, Horton's legacy is that he taught folks how to help themselves and he knew when to back away and let things develop naturally. This book is more than the story of Highlander Folk School, albeit enough reason on it's own to read the book. If you are interested in seeing passive resistance and social change in action, you will certainly enjoy this unique book. Historians will find this book of interest as well as anyone interested in the labor movement, civil rights movement, legislative and legal history, and well as educators. As a native of the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina myself, I found this book especially of interest as a source of local history of my native land and will most certainly continue looking for gems of information about Highlander Folk School in the rich heritage of Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina.

Good book, easy reading.I bought this for a school paper in Adult Education and found it easy to read. While easy to read and informative, I did find it was somewhat like reading Horton's life at a glance or reading a chronology of the Highlander school. I guess I was expecting more discussion of the Highlander school rather than a list of events- but I enjoyed the book and appreciated the historical data that was included.