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The Case For Appalachian Studies
page 10
The Breathitt
County school system -- as are most in Appalachia -- is the largest
single employer. With seventy-five per cent of the people on
welfare, the Turners usually have plenty of applications for the jobs of
teachers, janitors, school bus drivers, etc. Kinship is the main
criteria for employment, and lacking that, a person can usually get a
job if both he and his kin (and their ancestors) have had a loyal
voting record.
Ostensibly, in spite of this control, the school system continues to
improve. New buildings are obvious. Only one of them was built entirely
with ESEA Title I funds, something which the law says may be
illegal. The Turners got around that by naming the school "LBJ
Elementary" and getting "Lady Bird" down to dedicate
it. The Nunn administration tried to raise a stink about the
school's funding, but "Ma" got a blue-ribbon state elementary
school. That shut everybody up. The Turner family is well
connected with national Democratic politics, particularly with
Representative Carl Perkins, who represents the interests of Breathitt
County well as chairman of the House Education and Labor
Committee. "Well" is used here in the sense that he
keeps the patronage money coming and doesn't bother about strip mining,
something which the Turner family is also involved in.
Most of the teachers hired in Breathitt County are offspring of present
teachers or students chosen even in high school as the ones to return
and teach after graduation. Most of them also are trained at one
of two of the state's teacher institutions, just like their parents and
former teachers before them. The teaching faculty at these
institutions are products of the same kind of school system themselves
and are careful not to implant any "foreign" ideas in their
students' minds. It is these same institutions, too, which receive the
federal EPDA monies to improve the deficiencies found in their former
students' classroom performance. All in all, it is a vicious cycle
where what is important knowledge-wise is how to maintain the present
system.
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