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The Case For
Appalachian Studies
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6
But
any discussion of local leadership must sooner or later deal with the
role the public school system has played in mountain life. The
development of the modern school has paralleled the rise of the modern
industrial state and schools tend to follow the same structures and
operate upon the same assumptions as the institutions they serve.
The same patterns of thought, i.e., authority and discipline needed in
business are also carried over into schools. It is not without
accident that the most conspicuous element of Appalachian schools is the
emphasis placed upon discipline and submission to authority. Along
with this "outside" emphasis has been added the natural
influence of a culture which, due to rigors of frontier life, was
oriented along authoritarian lines in family life -- although adult relationships were based on staunchly equalitarian ideas.
Education in America has always been an avenue of escape for ambitious
youth eager to leave home for the lure of big cities or adventure in a
new and unfamiliar world. Such is still the case in Appalachia
where thousands of young people have left the region to enter the
military services, the mills and factories in the North, or (more
rarely) to attend college. Large numbers of mountain born
Americans have gone on to distinguished careers in government and
industry, but the school system which sends them out of the region has
also contributed enormously to the lack of enlightened local leadership
which exists throughout the area.
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