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The Case For Appalachian Studies
page 22
Home economics majors are taught to cook fine French dinners with the
correct wine and to prepare for receptions for New York society, but not
a word about the dishes of the mountains or nutrition training for poor
mothers.
Presently, most colleges and universities are not in the business of
granting academic credit to students working to solve immediate and
indigenous community problems. But the world of needs beyond the
classroom is a learning environment that is grossly underutilized.
The most sensible approach to education would be to help students
examine their own experiences as creatively and critically as
possible. Formal education too often provides little opportunity
to learn how to learn or how to solve problems that are not
hypothetical. Little attention is devoted to analyzing life
styles, to understanding processes, to examining how institutions
influence behavior. Most current emphasis is still on factual
information, content delivery and the preparation of specific
skills. But research now tells us that within five years that kind
of education is either forgotten or outdated. Appalachian schools
of high education spend little time b2thinking about the community
below their own mountainside.
Too often, the university-community dialogue never becomes dialogue,
since the university provides its services from its storehouses of
wisdom and rarely does the university recognize the educational uses of
the world beyond the classroom.
A college Appalachian studies program should utilize the community as a
learning laboratory, allowing the student to be autonomous, and identify
resources for learning about Appalachia.
Community awareness and involvement are not inborn -- people must
acquire them. Appalachian youth are no different in this
respect. Regional studies must provide a stimulus that will
promote learning -- a learning of oneself, of one's people, one's region
and one's life.
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