◆ SpookStack

RT. CER Highlander Folk by JANE LAWSON Editors’ Note: —This year the Highlander Folk School was made a beneficiary of the Vassar Drive. The interest of Vassar in Highlander dates from 1893, when Dr. William Wyckof Johnson, Instructor of History at the college, encouraged the school’s founders and gave them the original building. Many Vassar graduates have been connected with Highlander, including among others Elizabeth Day Hawes. ‘29 (Mrs. F. Dantel), Mrs. Ruby T. Norris, ’29, and Rosanne G. Walker, “38. dane Lawson, ‘39, author of the article, is at present a secretary at the school. € epson, inspire, and demonstrate” . —here is a platform for an edu- cational institution, Highlander Folk School, situated in the Cumberland Mountains in a rural community that has the dubious distinction of being the poorest in the South, does all three in its complex, varied, and exciting work, During two resident sessions of six weeks each, workers and farmers from southern unions and codpera- tives gain new insight into the world m which they make their living. Through an extension program, thou- sands of rural and industrial workers within a radius of twa hundred miles Pe fae ee ee a erg cay Age ee Ee ee ae eee I nae receive the educational services of classes, meetings, and recreational ac- tivities. Highlander’s own homework is its service to the community, the circulation of its library, its nursery school and its friendship for the neigh- bor folk. Informing, inspiring, and demonstrating are continuous and ever-growing processes in one or an- other of these fields of usefulness. Highlander isn’t much to look at. We call ourselves a school, but there are no school buildings: only a simple frame farm building with a vine-cov- ered stone porch, a gate that closes with a rock weight looped on a chain, ‘@) £ ee ee we ee ge