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The HIGH SCHOOL JOURNAL

Vol. 29. MAY, 1946 No. 3

This number of THe High ScHoot JourRNAL is is-
sued in cooperation with the Committee on Southern
Regional Studies and Education of the American Coun-
cil on Education and the Division of Research Inter-
pretation of the University of North Carolina’s Insti-
tute for Research in Social Science. Guest editors are
John E. Ivey, Jr. and Harry B. Williams.

“Us ton
u
Schoo] of +0781 ty

ue
~ Library —*40n

Committee on Southern Regional Studies and Education
American Council on Education

The Committee on Southern Regional Studies and Education of the
American Council on Education has been assisting existing agencies in
the South to develop methods and materials to close the tragic gap
between research and education. For the past four years it has worked
on this problem with 38 regional organizations and with more than 650
state institutions and organizations. In this process it has sponsored
Gatlinburg Conferences I and II and published two books, Channeling
Research Into Education and Education For Use of Regional Resources.
It issues a newsletter, Resource-Use Education, and provides, through
its central office located at the University of North Carolina, a regional
consultation and clearinghouse service in resource-use education.

‘

MEMBERSHIP
Maurice F. Seay, Chairman
Gordon W. Blackwell
John E. Brewton
George F. Gant
Edgar L. Morphet
Roy W. Roberts
George F. Zook, ex officio
@

John E. Ivey, Jr.,
Executive Secretary

[ 102 ]

on

Table of Contents

ee Te Pe Cid save nedndcdin ones chucnesuetdnsecoeerees Editor
Framework for Resource Use

Steps Toward Regional Resource Development......... Gordon R. Clapp and

William J. McGlothlin

Emerging Patterns of State Action...........cscceceesseed John E. Ivey, Jr.

Resources and Community Organization............... Gordon W. Blackwell

Resources and the Community School.....................-Maurice F. Seay
Taking Facts to the People

Regional Libraries Widen Community Horizons.............../ Marjorie Beal

kk fF CTT eT eT re eT eee William J. McGlothlin

Educational Materials for Regional Growth................4 John E. Brewton

\ Book for Study of Regional Resources................4. John E. Ivey, Jr.

Studying Resources in the Arkansas River Valley............ Roy W. Roberts

Teachers in Action

Classroom Teachers Make Resource Use Vivid...........1 Mary Sue Fonville

Preparing Teachers Through Community Experience. .... Hermese J. Roberts

New Perspectives for the Teacher in Service.......... William S. Taylor and

Kenneth R. Williams

Citizens Consider Their Community..............+2+00 0 Jean and Jess Ogden
The Minister and the Land. ...........ceceeeeeceeees Vladimir E. Hartman
The Librarian Looks at Resource Development.........../ Mary U. Rothrock
The County Agent Teaches Resource Use............... Harry B. Williams

Cover by John E, Sink, University of North Carolina Art Department

[ 103 }

PAGE

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162

167

Bridging the Tragic Gap

Photo by Tennessee Valley Authority

The tragic gap! A modern school: symbol of science and technology, of learn-
ng for citizenship and wise resource use—a biological desert: symbol of exploita-
tion and misuse of resources. This picture presents a challenge far more dramatic
than words. It symbolizes the opportunity of education to help close the gap be-
tween what is known and what is practiced. And particularly to southern educa-
ion, it seems, is the challenge presented to help build a region.

Frequently it has been said that the South is “the best documented region in
\merica.” To put it another way, more research has been completed on the re-
sources and opportunities of the South than on any other of America’s regions.
Now we face the issue: because the scientific facts are available, there is an un-
paralleled opportunity for leadership to translate science into public action. The

stakes are high: a new way of life for 28,000,000 people!

This opportunity exists because a host of agencies and great minds have fol-
lowed a growing curiosity to discover why a potentially powerful region has lost
substance and spirit in the lethargy of self-complacency. An endless tide of pam-
phlets, reports, and books have resulted from the probing of a region’s life and re-
sources. But three volumes have symbolized the spirit and fruits of the search.

Howard W. Odum’s Southern Regions of the United States and Rupert B.
\ance’s Human Geography of the South represent a pioneer level of synthesis and
interpretation of what the South is, and what should be done to correct social and
economic deficiencies of the area. The work of Odum, Vance, and their associates
throughout the region, creates the rock base for intelligent social action to build a bet-
ter life in the South.

Within the same decade, when many Americans were still pondering the South’s
late, another volume brought another type of thinking. David E. Lilienthal’s TVA
Democracy on the March capped a fast-growing interest in “how do we work to-

[ 105 ]

bridging the tragic gap

gether to improve living in the South.” This poses a different type of intellectual
problem. The research specialist concerns himself primarily with “what is; what
could be.” The administrator, taking up where most research stops, says, “How,
through what practical methods, in what place, at what time, can we get the job

done ?

It is in answer to this point that Mr. Lilienthal verbally parades flesh and blood
examples of how men and science in the Tennessee Valley are slowly weaving the
new fabric of a richer life. One is struck, and in a democracy perhaps should stay
struck, with how the expert must find rapport with people he serves; how labora-
tory and classroom specialization, exposed to the test of solving everyday problems
of living, must grow into a new unity of purpose and synthesis of judgment.

The individual who works within the influences of research and action cannot
escape a growing humility born of respect for what each has to contribute to the
other. He knows that, separated, research and administration each will tend to be-
come sterile: research, because it may lose contact with people and the needs of ac
tion programs; administration, because it may lose the stimulation and discipline
of science.

Today the South is becoming increasingly concerned with how communities and
states can act to improve agriculture, industry, business, and public services. Ex-
periments in method are growing out of the contributions of the scientist. Research
and administrative interests are being joined, not separated. The task is becoming
one of arranging systematic and practical methods for a three-way flow of influence
among research, administration, and the people.

This flow of influence is basically an educational process. Building channels of
communication among the people, research specialists, and administrators is essen-
tially a job of devising new and more effective working contacts. The object is mo-
bility of ideas, synthesis of judgments, and consequent action on specific jobs.

Resource-use education has been furnishing a focal point of interest and work in
the South. The development of resources is basic to improved living. Scientists,
educators, and administrators are joining efforts in forwarding this educational orien-
tation on all levels of action: public school, college and university, and adult. The
objective is not just learning more about the South’s resources; it is also the dissem-
ination of information in such a way that it results in action.

These channels between research and action, in final analysis, exist in the minds
of people. For the task, we do not necessarily need new schools, new colleges and
universities, new libraries, and new public agencies. Rather, we need a new con-
viction in the hearts and minds of the leaders who influence the destinies of people
through these institutions; we need a conviction that public service can be effective
only if it is informed, based on a union of science and spirit so as to release the
maximum of human creative energy.

This issue of Tue Hicu Scuoor JourNAL records points of view and ways that
groups and individuals, through specific and seemingly unspectacular jobs, are work-
ing to devise practical channels between research and action. Each author has put
emphasis on the what and how. In so doing, they have reflected examples of meth-
ods for arranging working relationships to provide a flow of research into action.

\ new frontier for pioneering democracy is the field of systematic research and
action in how educational processes, through organization and administration, can
channel research into social action. As you will see, the South may furnish some
valuable experience, as education helps build a region.

—J. E. I. Jr.

[ 106 ]

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Steps Toward Regional
Resource Development

by GORDON R. CLAPP and WILLIAM J. McGLOTHLIN

The ancient writer who said “All flesh
s grass” gave poetic expression to an in-
‘uition born of reverence for creation. If
e had lived at a later time, he might have
said “All flesh is sunlight, water, air, and
minerals,” for science has revealed to us
a part of the mystery of nature’s powers
of growth. Now as in ancient time man
cannot escape dependence upon the never-
changing basic resources of his environ-
ment. We can discover and develop new
sources of minerals, we can invent the
wheel, the plow, the dynamo, we can even
unlock the stupendous store of energy
in the atom, but we are always brought
hack to a source, to what we have come
to call physical resources.

Our Fundamental Resources

The term will be used here to mean
those natural parts of our environment
on which we depend. Resources, in this
sense, are the physical elements on which
iorms of life and civilization feed and
build. In their simplest, indivisible form,
they are, of course, the 92 chemical ele-
ments, to which man himself, through
nuclear research, is adding more. Of
these, we can identify a relatively small
number—some twenty odd—as the ones
essential to human life. They are the ones
which perform miracles of creation in the
capture of energy for man’s use and in
the formation of structural materials to
satisfy man’s need to build. The major

a

elements for man’s use include nitrogen,
oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, phosphorus,
potassium, calcium, sulfur, magnesium,
iron, aluminum. To these we may soon
need to add uranium, as the industrial
and medical uses of this element are de-
veloped. We need also to add the ap-
parently limitless supply of energy in the
form of light and heat which the sun
daily pours upon the earth.

When we take a close look at these
elements, these fundamental resources, we
find that there are some we apparently
cannot do anything about, and others
about which we need not do anything. No
matter what we do we cannot increase or
decrease the sunlight as such. We have
limitless stores of nitrogen, oxygen, and
hydrogen in air and water. Carbon is
present in every living thing. Calcium is
widely available through limestone. Mag-
nesium is diffused through all the seas,
and aluminum is in every clay. But phos-
phorus, potassium, iron, and sulfur are
relatively limited in quantity.

Why is it important to know this? Be-
cause these elements of limited quantity,
especially phosphorus and potassium, are
the very ones we must always have to
convert the inexhaustible supplies of
other elements into forms useful to man.
We know that man’s life is dependent
on his ability to capture the sun’s energy
for his use in the things he eats and the
things he uses for shelter and clothing.

Gordon R. Clapp is general manager of the Tennessee Valley Author-
ity. Mr. Clapp has been with TVA since 1933 as assistant director
of personnel, director of personnel, and general manager since 1939.
He served as member of the President’s Advisory Committee on Edu-
cation, 1936-39; chairman of the Committee on Employee Relations in
Public Service of the Civil Service Assembly, 1942; editor-in-chief
of the Public Administration Review,

1943-44.

| 107 ]

framework for resource use

Wood and wool, grain and meat, oil and
coal—all are the product of the sun’s
energy. Without them man_ withers
away. These elements of phosphorus and
potassium are vital to this process of link-
ing the energy of the sun to the life of
people.

The fact is simple, the process is not.
Science has not yet penetrated the cre-
ative mystery of the green leaf. We do
not yet know how the magic of chloro-
phyll transmutes sunlight, water, air, and
a few minerals into food and fiber. But
we are beginning to know the conditions
under which that process will effectively
take place. We know that without water
and sunlight there is no growth. We
know, also, that the plant, given sun-
light, moisture, and air, must draw from
the earth certain mineral elements if it
is to grow and bear fruit. About five
percent of the plant’s weight will be com-
posed of these minerals, but without that
small amount the plant will not grow.
These minerals unlock the vast, limitless
stores of sunlight and the elements in air,
water, and the land. They are the cap
that fires the shot. They form a vital list
—phosphorus, potassium, calcium, nitro-
gen, and traces of others such as sulfur,
iron, boron, and manganese.

Once we recognize this fact, there is
no need to labor the point. Without these
elements, no plant. Without plants, no
food or fiber. Without food or fiber, peo-
ple cannot live. Our course seems clear
—it is to so organize our use of resources
that these crucial elements are placed or
retained where they are needed and used
as cleverly as possible to obtain the major
result of capturing energy for man’s use.

This is more than abstract knowledge.
[t lies at the heart of man’s economic
and social well-being. For the saving
feature of our resources is that they can
be made constantly fruitful for man’s
use. The cycle of sunlight, air, water,
plant, animal, and return to soil to com-
mence the cycle again, can be steadily put
to use, if man does not disrupt it vio-
lently.

Preservation of this cycle determines
our survival. It is significant as well for
our time. All over the South, for ex-
ample, one can see evidences of where the
cycle has been broken. The sagging
shacks, the barren fields, the undernour-

[ 108 ]

ished bodies tell the story of those who
did not know and could not observe na-
ture’s primary law. Economic security
depends upon adequate resources. But
possession or availability is not enough.
Economic security and strength require
adequate and intelligent use of resources
Wealth is created through man’s labor
by the fabrication of resources, by com-
bination and recombination of the twenty
odd elements.

What Must We Know

This simplified account of man and
his environment can only suggest what
we must do to capitalize on our oppor-
tunities and overcome our former errors.
But if we are to come to terms with our
erivironment, we must consciously and
intelligently take the necessary steps to
do it. Wishing will not make it so.
There are things we must know. There
are things we must do.

We must first of all know what our
resources are, both in the supplies of
elements available to us, and in the useful
combinations of those elements which
occur in natural state or can be developed
by our efforts. We need to know as fully
as possible what coal we have and where
and of what quality, what ores, what po-
tential water power, what rainfall, what
climate, what soil—all the complex of
facts about the blocks from which we
build a world. Many inventories of this
sort have been and are being made by
county, by state, and by region, but we
need to make it a continuous process, so
that at any point in time we can know
surely what we have.

We need to know trends also. It is
not enough, for example, to know that
phosphorus ore is present in Tennessee,
Florida, and the Far West. It is not
enough, even, to know that there are so
many tons in Tennessee, so many more
in Florida, and many times more in the
Far West, important as that information
is. We need to know what is happening
to these beds—that Tennessee is with-
drawing its limited amount rapidly, a
trend which requires the conclusion that
the beds in Florida and the Far West
should be used to supply more of our
increasing needs in the phosphate-defi-
cient soils of the nation.

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means constant research in our universi-

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framework for resource use

ties, governmental agencies, and else-
where. It must be kept up to date and
vital, a strategic body of information to
euide our thought and action. It must
constantly keep before us which of our
resources are replaceable, by natural proc-
ess or importation, and which, when used,
are gone forever. Without such infor-
mation, planning becomes theory and il-
lusory dogma. We must know and un-
derstand what we have, in order to know
what we can do.

We need to expand rapidly research
on the uses of our raw materials. The
fast-growing scrub pine of the southeast
hecame an entirely different asset at the
moment Dr. Herty perfected his process
for making newsprint. What had been
firewood now became the sister of spruce
aid a new industry was born to the
South.

We need to tabulate what we have,
and we need to find new and better uses
for what we have. Resources, however,
are never isolated from each other. Each
leans on and is supported by others, and
you cannot touch one without affecting
many. The plant is a product of sun,
air, water, soil, minerals. Change any
one of these factors, and you affect the
ability of the plant to use them all. If
the plant is so grown that soil is robbed
of its minerals, the plant next year will
be less able to capture the sun’s energy
for growth. If ores are so mined that
the tailings seep into streams, the life of
that stream is destroyed, and the ore is
bought at the price of another resource
useful to man. At Ducktown, Tennessee,
you can find dramatic expression of this
interrelationship: there, years ago, copper
ores were roasted by wood slashed from
the surrounding hills; the sulfuric acid
fumes from the smelter blighted the scant
vegetation left; for years the hills have
been bare to sun and rain and the scars
oi erosion are deep and ugly. The Cop-

per Basin is now a biologic wasteland.
It will take a mighty effort to restore it
to the cycle of growth.

These ideas suggest that we need to
know more than merely the quantity,
quality, and location of our resources,
more than new uses for them. We need
to apply to them the kind of creative
thought that makes patterns out of facts,
drawing them into effective and fruitful
relationship to each other. In the South,
the pattern will recognize the favorable
prevalence of sunlight and water, the
variety of trees and ores, the composition
of the soil, and the products and influ-
ences of the sea. Our plans will draw
these together into a productive organi-
zation which recognizes the peculiar re-
quirements and opportunities of each, but
also the effects of one upon the other.

Dairying in the South is an example.
Our sunlight and heavy rainfall make
year-round grazing possible; pasture
cover preserves soil, captures sun and
water, and relates land, animals, and man
in a system that is essential to overcome
the dietary deficiencies in the South and
to add to the region’s wealth. The farm-
ers of Tennessee have moved in this
direction to the point where the value of
dairy and beef products now exceeds that
of crops. They have built a pattern.

Our resources have a site. The area
where we work with the resources we
have must be defined to the scale of our
comprehension. Otherwise our under-
standing becomes too abstract to produce
action. It is here that the concept of a
region has significance. Regions can, of
course, be variously defined—by a water-
shed, a tier of states, or the application
of a score of indices. The significance of
the idea of region, however, lies not in
the definition, for no definition can be
wholly satisfactory, but in the search for
unity—unity in a common cause for work
and action. What makes a region is that

William J. McGlothlin is chief of the Training and Educational Re-
lations Staff of the Tennessee Valley Authority and chairman of the
Board of Directors, Southern Educational Film Production Service.
Mr. McGlothlin has been with TVA since 1935 as training officer,
assistant chief of the Training Division, and in his present position.
He is a member of the Committee on the Southern Regional Training
Program in Public Administration.
was instructor in English at the University of Tennessee.

Before joining TVA’s staff he

| 109 |

framework for resource use

its components are more closely related
to each other than they are to the com-
ponents of other geographic areas. There
is similarity, therefore, in the problems
and the factors which create them. There
is similarity in the needs and opportuni-
ties present throughout the region.

From these fundamental similarities a
sense of a cultural neighborhood emerges.
And in the context of cultural affinities
people find it easier to reach general
agreement on what courses they must
follow to improve their lot. They cast
their governments in forms that are in-
tended to meet their needs; they develop
customary ways of thought and expres-
sion reflecting and rooted in their envi-
ronment; and they may undertake joint
action to reach their common ends. The
pattern of action can be valid and im-
pelling, in the large, throughout a region,
since it is woven out of common re-
sources, common problems, and common
aims. What one part of a region learns
will have meaning for other parts of the
same region. The lessons of success and
failure here and there within the area
begin to impart momentum and direction
to the region as a whole.

Our search then is for regional pat-
terns, patterns in which man achieves a
productive partnership with the factors of
his environment, so that his use of re-
sources is creative and redounds to the
benefit of all men. Such patterns emerge
from a knowledge of what resources are
and what the laws of their use demand.
Man ignores at his peril the simple princi-
ple that running water can carry particles
heavier than itself, as our gullied fields
attest. Out of this knowledge, we must
build a working scheme, a multiplicity of
plans of how to get from here to there,
a guide to action that will move toward
the ends on which regional understanding
and agreement have been set.

But we must know something more.
We need to temper impatience with full
and faithful understanding that resource
development is not a job for a self-ap-
pointed elite of experts, scientists, and
administrators, no matter how competent
they are or how beneficent their intent.
The life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness
of the people depends on their resources
and how they use them; the people, in
accord with the most elementary prin-

[110]

ciple of freedom, are the ones to deter-
mine what they will do and how they will
do it. The regional program, however
sanctified by the judgments of experts,
will have meaning only if the farmer, the
banker, the workman, the manager, the
editor, the teacher share in the analyses
of problems and opportunities which sug-
gest the region’s purpose. They are the
ones whose daily action, delay, or apathy,
whose knowledge or ignorance, whose
vision or selfishness will decide what hap-
pens to our resources and how we shail
use or destroy them.

There is no end, furthermore, to the
process of public definition of how the
job is to be done. Agreement on general
direction in a region can and must be
reached. We should agree, for example,
whether more industry should be fostered
as a substitute for agriculture or whether
a stronger agriculture is a necessary base
for the kind of industrial development we
want and can sustain. But within the
understanding about man’s relationships
with nature and with agreement on direc-
tion, we shall constantly be defining and
redefining how and with what devices
we are going to propel ourselves to-
ward the foreseeable goals we have se-
lected. This is as it should be. Our
ultimate end is never fixed if we rec-
ognize the latent and unlimited inge-
nuity of man’s mind now and in pos-
terity. Our responsibility in our time is
to establish and strengthen the processes
by which we and our children can keep
open a wider choice of development.

What Can We Do—An Illustration

It is fairly easy to point to what we
must know to define the regional resource
development job. What we must do
poses a different sort of question. From
knowledge to action is a crucial step
which must be taken if resources are to
be used for human benefit. A_ brilliant
book, a penetrating report, is that and
nothing more unless it finds its way into
action.

When we begin to move from know!l-
edge to action, we move from research
and education, sometimes by the route of
legislation, to administration, to the way
things are done. Since that decision is
one for people themselves, general state-
ments lose their meaning. An example
is necessary. The Tennessee Valley

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framework for resource use

\uthority is such an example—an illus-

tration of knowledge being translated into
ction through administration. Because
ie illustration grows out of the kind of
nalysis we have been discussing, it has
place here.

The TVA is many things to many
eople—power maker, dam builder, soil
estorer, recreation developer—many
thers. Its chief significance is revealed
n the context of this discussion: it rep-
esents a new kind of administrative ar-
rangement, through which agencies of
states, communities, and the federal gov-
rnment, together with thousands of in-
lividual citizens have joined in a federa-
ion of effort to put the resources of the
'ennessee Valley to work to produce

ore income for more people. These
lany agencies and _ individuals have

greed generally that their task is to dis-
over and translate the knowledge of re-
sources so that it can become part of the
mpelling forces within men and women

citizens whose daily decisions deter-
line the future of the people.

This community of effort is not the
product of a day or a year. Slowly the
Valley and its agencies and people have
grown toward agreement on ends and on
the means of reaching them. Almost
numberless public, semipublic, and pri-
vate agencies, institutions, and groups
have planned or carried out or modified
or extended parts of the effort. A list
of them sounds almost like a catalog of
American institutional life—universities,
colleges, experiment stations, extension
services, libraries, school boards, health
departments, conservation commissions,
planning boards and power boards, labor
unions, farm organizations, business, in-
dustry, and federal bureaus and depart-
ments. New regional organizations have
come into being in agriculture, resource
education, library service, labor unions,
power distribution, and public administra-
tion. No better evidence could be cited
to demonstrate the growing consciousness
of regional unity in the Tennessee Valley.

How did it come about that in the
Tennessee Valley the administrative

Photo by Tennessee Valley Authority

Regional development and richer living require us “to know ourselves in our environment and

to act according to what we know.”

Tennesse? farmers examine a field of oats that is part

f a land-use plan that conserves moisture, protects grain from winter freezing, prevents loss

of soil minerals, and increases fertility and crop yield.

knowledge of nature.

This is a plan based on scientific

[111]

framework for resource use

forces have joined together to do a re-
gional job? The answer lies in the fact
that the TVA was created to achieve pre-
cisely that result. In President Roose-
velt’s words, “It should be charged with
the broadest duty of planning for the
proper use, conservation, and develop-
ment of the natural resources of the Ten-
nessee River drainage basin and its ad-
joining territory for the general social
and economic welfare of the Nation.”
Such a broad duty required a host of al-
lies. Success in the Valley, as success in
the South or any other region, depended
on getting as many people as possible to
make the task of regional development
their own job. “The planning of the Val-
ley’s future,” TVA said in its 1936 re-
port, “must be the democratic labor of
many agencies and individuals, and final
success is as much a matter of general
initiative as of general consent.” If hu-
man freedom is one of our objectives,
there is no other way.

This is not the place to recount the
multitude of efforts in which thousands
of citizens and scores of administratively
separate agencies and institutions have
come together to work toward common
ends in the Tennessee Valley. There are
stories worth telling of farmer, business-
man, and banker joining as a board to
guide the distribution of electricity to
houses no longer dark at set of sun; of
all farmers in a small watershed within
the Valley joining each other and their
counterparts in 29 states to experiment
with and test new forms of fertilizer, and
report their results to the nation; of
county library boards joining neighbor-
ing boards to administer service in sev-
eral counties as a single unit, and pre-
vailing on state legislatures to extend the
service to other areas of the state; of six
state universities joining in a study of the
administration of resources in each of the
states, as background for recommenda-
tions to their governors on organization
of state functions in that field. All these
stories, and there are many, have a single
point: the administrative agencies of a
region are joining hands to expand pub-
lic knowledge of resources and to act
upon what is known.

It is this surge of joint effort which
causes us in TVA to talk about a Ten-
nessee Valley program, not a TVA pro-

[112]

gram. For TVA alone—and this is the
administrative lesson—could never have
achieved the progress which the Tennes-
see Valley is winning for itself out of the
resources at hand. That takes the uni-
fied effort of many. In administrative
language it requires “integration.” No
other word has more significance in the
vocabulary of regional administration.
For without integration and all the merg-
ing of effort it implies, programs of re-
source development would proceed helter-
skelter, futile in their separateness. Ef-
forts of unrelated agencies and groups
would fail to capture the momentum, the
propulsion, the extra energy and social
force which the unity of many minds and
many hands can bring forth. In this case,
two and two become more than four.
What two people or two agencies can do
together is more, much more, than the
sum of what each can do alone. With-
out integration, regional development just
does not happen.

Integrated Regional Development

There is another administrative lesson
which the illustration of TVA may teach.
TVA not only acknowledges but assidu-
ously acclaims the contribution which
agencies, institutions, and individuals
throughout the Valley have made to
progress in the Valley. But it should be
clear that integration does not occur
automatically. An agency, public or pri-
vate, almost always tends to build a pro-
gram which reflects what the people of
its particular politically or economically
determined domain demand of it. In
fact, it must do so if it serves its pur-
pose. It can, however, do more. If its
purpose is sound, it can act not only with
direct benefit to its state or local con-
stituency but also as part of a larger pat-
tern of regional development. An agency
of a state or community can rise up into
larger vision and wider usefulness, with
its activity basically unchanged except
for the acknowledged fact that it is part
and parcel of a larger regional effort.
What is needed is an administrative in-
fluence, regional in orientation, to draw
the various agencies’ efforts into a vital
entity.

In the Tennessee Valley, the regional,
federal corporation, the TVA, by an act
of Congress, is the “integrator’’ in the
program of resource development. _ Its

this is the
never have
he Tennes-
f out of the
es the uni-
ministrative
tion.” No
ance in the
ninistration,
ll the merg-
rams of re-
ceed helter-
eness. Ef-
and groups
nentum, the
and _ social
> minds and
In this case,
than four.
cies can do
e, than the
me. With-
opment just

ment

ative lesson
. may teach.
but assidu-
ition which
individuals
e made to
it should be
not occur
iblic or pri-
build a pro-
e people of
-conomically
of it. In
ves its pur-
10re. If its
ot only with
- local con-
1 larger pat-
An agency
rise up into
ulness, with
iged except
at it is part
ional effort.
istrative in-
on, to draw
into a vital

he regional,
\, by an act
itor’ in the
pment. Its

tramework for resource use

success is measured by judging how the

cooperating
rengthened and the smallest units of

tate and local agencies.
greater than the sum of the parts, but

parts of the whole are
ministration take on new life. Strong
sional unity and a method of deliberate
centralization of work and decision
Ister and add to the functions of the

The whole is

e parts are greater by virtue of the

ranscending objectives toward which
hey lead.
If the TVA demonstrates any one

ing it is this: any proposal for resource
velopment programs which overlooks

he need for an agency of regional inte-

ation is basically deficient. The spe-

‘ifie facilities, the special skills, the indi-

lual competence required for the many
parate activities of a regional program
iy be easily available in federal, state,
local agencies. But unless there is a
hicle for administrative influence and

leadership, seeing the region as a whole,
charged with responsibility for creating
unity from a fortunate diversity, a re-
gional program will not emerge. There
must be a conscious, deliberate effort to
“integrate.” Integration is not achieved
by accident.

The regional development of resources
in the South requires the best we have in
us. It requires the best of research, the
best of education, the best of administra-
tion. It requires knowledge, and even
more knowledge, put to work through
education and administration. It is a
task for everyone. Truly democratic
methods can make of every group a
strategic social force in the quest for
man’s fulfillment. We have a chance,
if there is still time, to move a little closer
to the answer we forever seek: to know
ourselves in our environment and to act
according to what we know.

| 113 |

framework for resource use

Emerging Patterns of

State Action

by JOHN E. IVEY, JR.

The social and economic development
of any region, or group of regions, takes
place within some organized framework
of social action. In the United States
social action takes place within different
levels of social organization: the commu-
nity, county, state, regional, and national.
Within these levels, and across them, the
forces of social action generally are
shaped and driven through institutional
systems: government, business, religion,
education, the family, and others.

For people to improve health, housing,
agriculture, industry, and other such
areas of welfare, methods must be found
to release more productive energies in the
natural and human environment through
these institutional systems. This task is
being vigorously undertaken in the south-
ern United States. Attempts are being
made, through education and research, to
find a new union between men and their
natural resources, between men and sci-
ence, and a new spirit of cooperation
among different social and economic
groups.

Here major concern is with resource-
use education as it is being expressed on
that level of social organization known as
the state. Before reviewing some of the
specific state activities, it might be fruit-
ful to explore major considerations which
are influencing wy and how the activities
have been developed in their present pat-
tern.

The Role of the State

The people, according to the American

concept of government, hold the reins of

Resource-U'se

ern Regional Studies and Education.
specialist in educational evaluation and was on the staff of the soci-
ology department at the University of North Carolina.

social power. Theoretically, they guice
social and economic affairs by pulling the
reins according to expressed concensus On
public needs and on public policy for
meeting needs. It follows, then, that so-
cial action, whether on the national, state,
or local level, can be no better than the
expressed judgments of the American
people. And these judgments can be no
better than the information and objectives
of the people.

We must conclude that democratic so-
ciety thrives or disintegrates according to
the quality of and means for getting need-
ed information to citizens. The more
complex our society, the more urgent and
serious are the issues with which the pub-
lic must deal. For democracy to survive
in modern technological society, it is im-
perative that we maintain scientific means
for sustaining a well-informed and strong-
ly expressed public will. Have the peo-
ple centered on any agency or group of
agencies responsibility for keeping them
well-informed and up to date on latest,
scientific information ?

Traditionally, the states have been the
“people’s government.” In the Consti-
tution, federal powers were specifically
“delegated” ; the powers of the state were
considered “residual.”” The people have
hugged these residual powers still closer
to themselves through carefully phrased
limitations or protections in state consti-
tutions. And one of the jealously guarded
“states rights” has been that of responsi-
bility for public education.

The states have generally executed this

John E. Ivey, Jr., is executive secretary of the Committee on Southern
Regional Studies and Education of the American Council on Educa-
tion. Mr. Ivey is author of Channeling Research into Education, and
editor of Education for Use of Regional Resources.
Education, the Newsletter of the Committee on Sout!

He is editor of

He was formerly with TVA as

[ 114 }

they guicle
pulling the
oncensus On
policy for
en, that so-
tional, state,
er than the
- American
; can be no
d objectives

nocratic so-
ccording to
etting need-

The more
‘urgent and
ich the pub-
y to survive
ty, it is im-
ntific means
and strong-
ive the peo-
or group of
-eping them
te on latest

ve been the
the Consti-
specifically
ie state were
people have
s still closer
ally phrased
state consti-
isly guarded
of responsi-

xecuted this

on Southern
il on Educa-
jucation, and
is editor of
ee on Soutli-
vith TVA as
of the soci-

framework for resource use

responsibility for public education by op-
‘rating a system of secondary and ele-
mentary schools, and a system of higher
‘ducation through colleges and state uni-
ersities. Not generally considered in-
side the scope of “public education,” but
ievertheless part and parcel of the effort,
is another group of state agencies having

regulatory or action programs. These
include: agricultural extension service,

health department, state welfare depart-
ment, state library commission, labor de-
partment, agricultural department, plan-
ning board, and conservation and develop-
ment board.

The names of these agencies indicate
the fields in which state government pays
special attention to social and economic
problems. Either directly or indirectly,
such agencies use educational methods
ind materials to achieve the specialized
objectives for which they were created.
In this sense the agencies mentioned
ibove, plus state supported public schools
ind institutions of higher learning. meas-
ure the actual range of responsibility for
public education specifically defined for
state government.

Besides those agencies charged with
‘learly marked jobs in public education,
there are other powerful channels carry-
ing information and opinion to the peo-
ple. Newspapers, motion pictures,
churches, civic clubs, organizations like
the Parent-Teacher Association and the
\merican Red Cross, media like business
advertising—all these, to mention only a
few, are educational channels.

All wield powerful educational forces.
They influence our votes, change our
diets, help decide the clothes we wear,
mobilize our efforts in welfare programs,
euide our spiritual life, influence our in-
vestments; they can help put us in jail,
or make heroes out of us. To accomplish
feats of directing social action, these
wencies use radio, motion pictures, com-
ics, print, road signs, group meetings, and
ther such tools of communication and
persuasion.

It is clear, then, that we can speak of
‘wo general areas of responsibility for
public education within a state: public
ind private. Each has its role of public
service. And in a democracy each is
vital.

In the South many states have begun
o concern themselves with directing pub-

lic education to assist in improving the
effectiveness of resource use. State pro-
grams have been concerned with two
major interests (1) resource-use educa-
tion and (2) research translation.

Resource-use education, as a point of
view for all levels of educational activity,
has been concerned with human use of
all resources available for improving
living. The people increasingly realize
that natural resources exist in a pattern
of related forces and objects. Plant life,
water, land, minerals, air, sunlight, and
animals exist and are created in a “web
of life.” Some are.renewable, some are
exhaustible. Basic scientific principles
govern their natural productivity and
availability to man.

Social resources also exist in a pattern
of related forces. The church, school,
health and welfare agencies, business,
government, and other institutional sys-
tems, are created to fill needs of group
existence. Through law, morals, and
social attitudes, these institutions shape
forces of social control and drive or re-
tard processes of social change. Basic
scientific principles govern their operation
and adaptation to meeting human needs
in the natural and social environments.

Research translation, as an activity, has
been directed toward developing scien-
tific means for public education and ac-
tion in better use of natural and social
resources. It has been assumed that the
preparation and dissemination of infor-
mation is a subject for scientific inquiry
and administration. Organization, educa-
tion, and administration are three inter-
related processes which lead, in a demo-
cratic society, from research to action on
resource use.

Programs in Southern States

To create these processes for research
translation, southern states are using com-
mittee and commission forms of organi-
zation. Some of these groups have ex-
ecutive power, some are merely advisory.
Alabama and Virginia have advisory
groups. The Alabama Advisory Com-
mittee on Resource-Use Education in-
cludes twenty-six research, planning, and
educational agencies. The Committee has
two focal points of action: (1) the super-
visor of resource-use education in the
State Department of Education; and (2)
the Research Interpretation Council at

[115 ]

framework for resource use

Alabama Polytechnic Institute. Major
interest is in personnel training and pro-
duction of more useful educational ma-
terials. The concept of resource study
is broad, including natural, human, and
social aspects.

Virginia has begun work in this field
with an advisory committee to the super-
visor of conservation studies in the State
Department of Public Instruction. Here
the major focus of work is on natural re-
sources. The supervisor is writing edu-
cational source units and working with
public school teachers in adapting these
materials for classroom use.

Both Alabama and Virginia reflect or-
ganizational change in the state depart-
ments of education. Mississippi should
also be included in this group, for recent-
ly a similar position has been created in
the Department of Education. Different
from Virginia, and to some extent like
Alabama, service units for materials pro-
duction and teacher training have been
set up at Mississippi State College and
Delta State Teachers College. In creat-
ing these units, the resource concept has
been broad, including natural, human, and
social aspects.

In Kentucky no new committee or com-
mission has been set up on state level.
Rather the State Advisory Committee on
Teacher Education has taken major lead-
ership in this field. An ad hoc committee
of research specialists and educators has
just completed a volume on Kentucky’s
resources. Leadership was furnished by
the University of Kentucky’s College of
Education, the State Department of Con-
servation, and the State Department of
Public Instruction. The resource con-
cept has been three-fold: natural, human,
and social.

Florida and Texas have resource-use
education committees which possess exec-
utive functions and guide programs based
on the cooperation of a large variety of
agencies. Arkansas and Oklahoma also
have state committees. State programs
in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and
Texas are integrated through the Re-
source-Use Education Committee, South
Central Region. A significant feature in
this four-state area is the pattern of inter-
state cooperation on regional resource-use
education problems.

Space prohibits description of how each
of these state groups work. But North

[ 116 ]

Carolina’s work in this field reflects a
broad pattern of organization and method
of action which combines many elements
found in the other states. Forty-six re-
search, education, and planning agencies
have, at the Governor’s invitation, joined
themselves into a Resource-Use Educa-
tion Commission. An executive commit-
tee of eight has the function of guiding
the full-time central staff which will
utilize $55,000 in annual service commit
ments from member organizations.

The orientation of the Commission’s
program is to help member agencies, and
other groups, become more efficient in
their own resource-use education activi-
ties. A careful study of the Commission's
functions outlined on page 117 reveals
this basic policy point. These functions
also reveal points of action which the
Commission considers vital if membe1
agencies are to employ scientific means of
public education as a tool in democratic
social action. The improvement of edu-
cational media and methods for dissem-
inating information, the training of per-
sonnel, and program re-alignment—are
all strategic areas in research translation
for resource development.

These briefly described programs re-
flect a tendency toward an evolving co-
hesion of interest and action in public
education for the improvement of living.
Within each state, responsibility is being
jointly assumed by many agencies, but the
public agencies are assuming major lead-
ership. Discernible patterns of joint re-
sponsibility include the following char-
acteristics:

1. Closer cooperation between research spe-
cialists and educators

2. A tendency to encourage specialists in dif-
ferent fields of research to synthesize judgments
on scientific resource use

3. Closer working arrangements among the
public schools, colleges, and adult education
agencies

4. Wider recognition of the necessity for
adapting techniques for (a) controlling reading
level in materials, (b) use of audio-visual aids,
(c) use of radio, (d) systematic organization
of relationships between research agencies and
educational agencies

5. A strong inclination to think and act in
terms of regional problems and needs

6. A more general acceptance of the position
that instructional programs of the public schools
and colleges should contribute to the improve-
ment of living in the area served by them

7. A general broadening of the resource con-

cept to include natural, human, and social as-
pects.

eflects a
1 method
elements
y-six re-
agencies
n, joined
> Educa-
commit-
guiding
lich = will
commit-
ns.

mMission’s
cies, and
cient in
m activi-
mission’s
7 reveals
functions
hich the
member
means of
*mocratic
t of edu-
- dissem-
r of per-
1ent—are
‘anslation

rams re-
ving co-
in public
of living.
is being
s, but the
yor lead-
joint re-
ng char-

earch spe-

ists in dif-
judgments

mong the
education

essity for
1g reading
isual aids,
‘ganization
encies and

ind act in
;

1€ position
lic schools
. improve-
them
ource con-
social as-

framework for resource use

Functions of the North Carolina Resource-Use Education Commission

1. Maintain a Materials Improvement Service
a.On request, the staff will secure for school and non-school agencies an analysis of the
adequacy of educational media and will suggest procedures for their improvement.
b. Secure technical staff assistance for agencies and institutions in the production of edu-
cational materials.
c. When there is a need for special materials not obtainable from existing agencies, materials
production will be undertaken.

2. Arrange for Maintenance of a Materials Distribution Service

a. Assist proper existing agencies, e.g., State Library Commission, in the collection and more
effective state-wide distribution to schools, colleges, and adults, of needed and available
educational materials.

b. Assist proper existing agencies, e.g., colleges, schools, and libraries, in establishment and
maintenance of county and community materials centers and in the improvement of ex-
isting facilities. 4 i o oR ’ {3

c. Develop and distribute select annotated bibliographies on available materials relating to
State and regional resources and problems.

3. Maintain a Leadership Training Service in Research Translation and Resource-Use Education

a. Assist and encourage teacher-training institutions holding workshop and study conferences
for in-service teachers and administrators to adapt curriculum, methods, and materials for
the provision of effective study of State an1 regional resources and problems.

b. In collaboration with teacher-training institutions and the State Department of Public In-
struction, identify (1) basic training needed by teachers in the State if they are to use
materials and methods to effectively provide resource-use understandings and skills; (2)
procedures to insure that teachers get basic training as an integral part of pre-service
and in-service teacher education programs.

c.On request, secure technical assistance for non-school agencies in devising more effective
methods for personnel training in resource-use education.

d. Stimulate and assist in holding special study programs on North Carolina and southern
regional resources and problems for newspaper editors, ministers, business men, and other
lay readers.

4. Program Development Service

a. In collaboration with the public schools and institutions of higher learning, identify (1)
emphasis and courses needed to provide effective understandings and skills in resource use;
(2) changes that need to be made in existing educational orientation and curriculum or-
ganization in resource use; (3) procedures for effectively making needed changes; and
(4) assist in the process of achieving needed emphasis in curriculum organization in re-
source use.

b. On request, assist non-school agencies in devising more effective educational methods to
accomplish their program objectives as they may relate to development of the resources of
the State and region.

c. Assist school and non-school agencies to develop programs which will insure (1) effective
collaboration among research and education personnel in the production, distribution, and
use of educational media based on curren: research; and (2) identification of needed re-
search,

The Role of the Specialist selves. When helping others help them-
selves, specialists in public and private
agencies do not have the job of telling
people what they should do, or of neces-
sarily doing the job for them. But rather,
the specialist has a task of assisting peo-
ple arrive at answers consistent with sci-
entific information. This makes the spe-
cialist’s role a more difficult job, one
which perhaps initially results in slower
progress. He becomes involved in a two-
way process of give and take; education
becomes a process of reaching concensus.

Part and parcel of these characteristics
are two emerging points of view which,
as they become generally accepted, will
wield powerful influence on contempo-
rary education. First, there is utmost im-
portance in considering the process, or
how the specialist works with the people
on the local level.

If, as already stated, the perpetuation
of democracy is dependent on a well-in-
formed and vigorously expressed public
will, an education program for resource

development must seek to release each A second point of view stems from the
individual’s maximum creative energy. concept of unity among the elements of

To do this, public education must be athe natural and social environment. For
process designed to help others help them- a specialist to operate effectively, he must

[117]

framework for resource use

know the general pattern of relationships
among life activities of the people he
In a sense, then, he must be a
“generalist.”

He must be a generalist so that in a
farm community, for example, the prob-
lems of health, housing, diet practices,
and farm management are seen in a pat-
tern of relationships. If the specialist is
a public health nurse, she would see mal-
nutrition in farm communities as partly a
farm management problem. The total
pattern of living would thus be seen in
proper perspective and could be more ef-
fectively developed.

The specialist must also be a generalist
in the sense that he knows when to call
upon, and how to work with, experts in
other fields. Again, for example, take the
problem of malnutrition mentioned above.
By calling in the county agent and the
home demonstration agent, the public
health nurse could make a many-sided at-
tack on the problem. Home canning and

serves.

better ways of cooking foods could be
devised by the home demonstration agent.
Gardening, raising of chickens, and other
farm management arrangements could be
worked out by the county agent so as to
help furnish needed food elements for a
better diet.

Needs for the Future

While one can identify emerging pat-
terns of state action in resource-use edu-
cation, it is also possible to note unmet
needs. And a serious need is for profes-

sional personnel possessing the view-
points mentioned above and skills and
motivation to act accordingly. The col-

leges and public schools have an unparal-
leled opportunity and responsibility to
meet this urgent need. If they do not act,
the emerging patterns will be but fads, or
flash-in-the-pan innovations ; they will be-
come superficial and rightly lose the con-
fidence of educators, research specialists,
and laymen alike.

At this stage public agencies have as-
sumed primary responsibility for resource-
use education. A needed next step is to
involve more vigorously the informal
educational forces: newspapers, radios,
churches, civic groups, and others. They
have much to contribute and even more
to gain.

States in the South have taken very
important first steps in resource-use edu-
cation. But the vision reflected in their
next moves may determine whether they
accelerate or retard the processes of re-
gional development.

zing pat-
‘use edu-
te unmet
r profes-
le view-
kills and
The col-
unparal-
bility to
9 not act,
- fads, or
, will be-
the con-
ecialists,

have as-
resource-
tep is to
informal
. radios,
s. They
en more

cen very
use edu-
in their
her they
*s of re-

framework for resource use

Resources and Community

Organization

by GORDON W. BLACKWELL

A well-known anthropologist, recently
commenting informally on the American
scene, had this to say: “To most people
community organization is merely lining
up a bunch of bums to put some agency’s
program across.” All too often this has
been true. A health agency, a welfare
agency, an agricultural agency, or any
agency seeking financial support explores
ways of effectively using the community.
The agency’s own narrow objectives are
paramount in the scheming.

Usually such agencies have state and
national headquarters and are attempting
to carry out programs designed at the
top. The philosophy of using the com-
munity tends to become more prevalent
the higher up one goes in the hierarchy
of national agencies, both public and pri-
vate. To such groups community organi-
zation becomes a catch-all for the various
ways of mobilizing community resources
“for our program,” rather than for the
best interests of the entire community.
This we may call the vertical approach to
the development of community resources.
It has appeared in totalitarian countries
in an extreme form, in this country in
some of the straight-line agencies, private
and public, operating from national head-
quarters. Its antithesis, horizontal com-
munity organization, is exemplified in the
town meeting of New [England and in the
current community council movement.

What Is Community Organization?

In horizontal community organization
or local planning,' a cross section of resi-

Homes for Old.

dents, both lay and professional, with the
help of additional experts when needed,
decides upon a priority listing of the
needs for that particular community. The
needs may include such things as road
improvement, additional parking space,
slum clearance, draining a marshy place,
development of a town forest, an addi-
tional nurse for the health department,
a receiving home for juvenile delinquents,
a cooperative, and so on. The develop-
ment of natural, human, and social? re-
sources is obviously indicated by these
community needs.

In considering needs, the planning
group necessarily moves into a second
step in community organization—the re-
viewing of resources available to meet the
needs. Many of these resources are in
the community; some may be secured
from state and national agencies and or-
ganizations. The resources will some-
times be natural, such as a tract of land
suitable for a particular use; sometimes
institutional, such as the school system,
the churches, a welfare agency, the agri-
cultural extension service, or a woman’s
club; sometimes financial, such as the
taxing authority of local government or
the wealth of a few of the residents ; and
sometimes in the form of skilled person-

*The term “community organization” is here
used synonymously with “local planning,” the
geographical area being sometimes a community
and sometimes a local governmental unit such
as the county.

* Included in “social resources” are social in-
stitutions and cultural characteristics, capital
wealth, and technological skills.

Gordon W. Blackwell is director of the Institute for Research in So-
cial Science at the University of North Carolina. Mr. Blackwell is
a member of the Committee on Southern Regional Studies and Edu-
cation. He was formerly on the staff of the Greenville (South Caro-
lina) County Council for Community Development and is author of
Toward Commmunity Understanding. He is co-author, with Rupert
B. Vance, of a forthcoming volume on rural housing New Farm

[ 119 ]

framework for resource use

nel, such as the county engineer, persons
skilled in the methods of adult education,
publicity experts, or a specialist in com-
munity organization.

The importance of this broad concept
of resources cannot be stressed too much.
Although often difficult for the engineer
and physical planner to grasp, it is basic
in any sound development of regional
and community resources. The organic
nature of the region and the community,
in which all factors are closely interre-
lated be they natural, human, or social,
makes it mandatory that regional plan-
ning and community organization be
founded on this meaningful concept of
resources. Otherwise the cultural lag
and human deprivations already resulting
so apparently from advances of science,
technology, and engineering will con-
tinue increasingly to weaken our regions
and communities. One may well ask
whether a limited concept of resources,
considering only the physical and_bio-
logical, can suffice for the development of
the regions and communities of China.
Surely population facts and the peculiar
cultural patterns of this great country are
fully as important as the immense natural
wealth which has remained untouched
through centuries of human need.

To maintain that the concept of re-
sources should be limited to the physical
and biological, while at the same time
admitting that the people and their insti-
tutions, value systems, and customs must
be given consideration in resource devel-
opment, is only to beg the question. To
maintain that an understanding of basic
laws of natural science and principles of
physical resource development is primary,
and that demographic and cultural under-
standing is only of secondary importance,
is disturbing to say the least. Such an
orientation for regional and community
development can perhaps be explained
by the wording of the legislative man-
date under which an agency operates, but
this should not be blindly accepted as the
soundest concept of unified resource de-
velopment. It would seem to negate the
very concept of region and community as
organic entities comprised of dynamic,
interrelated factors including the natural,
human, and social.

But back to the analysis of community
organization. By the time these first two
steps have been taken—listing needs on

[ 120 ]

a priority scale and determining resources
for meeting the needs—the group preb-
ably has developed a pretty good picture
of the community. Usually considerable
fact finding, sometimes in the nature of
a survey, is needed to reach this stage.

Planning and Decision Making

Then comes the heart of the commu-
nity organization process—planning and
decision making. Next steps in commu-
nity action are determined. Responsi-
bilities are allocated to existing agencies.
A new agency is decided upon when nec-
essary. Plans are made for securing ad-
ditional legislation or funds. Here it
should be emphasized that the planning
group does not usurp agency responsibili-
ties in program operation. The failure
to distinguish between planning and co-
ordination on the one hand and program
operation on the other has doomed many
a highly motivated community organiza-
tion effort.

Finally, the planning group must work
to get its recommendations understood,
accepted, and carried out since usually
it has no legal authority.

If key citizens and key agencies are
represented in the planning group, the
very nature of the planning process has
been an educational experience. Accept-
ance of the group decisions is greatly fa-
cilitated when community leaders have
been studying problems such as those of
agriculture, forest conservation, health,
and housing with experts such as the
county agricultural agent, the forestry
expert from the United States Forest
Service, the director of the local health
department, and the head of the welfare
department. The personal and frequent
contact between laymen and technicians
focusing on significant community needs
does something to both groups. Cus-
tomary patterns of thinking are changed,
and attitudes and prejudices are modified.

In addition, public opinion must be
mobilized, and here is a real challenge to
adult education. All types of educational
media and personnel must be used in this
task—carefully planned use of the press
and radio, appropriately timed with the
steps in the community organization
process; films; attractive pamphlets;
speakers at all sorts of club meetings;
the local library, which can prepare spe-
cial book lists, exhibits, and programs;

sources

prob-
picture
lerable
ure of

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ommu-
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framework for resource tse

Photo by Farm Security Administration

“ . . folk wisdom guided by the expert.” Here a group of farmers work with their county
agricultural agent and the district agent. Printed materials and maps help in the process of
planning land use on the basis of sound information.

the schools, which can enrich their cur-
ricula and teaching methods through con-
cern with fact finding for the community
planning group; the county agricultural
and home demonstration agents, who con-
tinually engage in educational work with
hundreds of rural adults; ministers, who
more and more are relating their preach-
ing and the work of their churches to
community needs.

Community organization of this hori-
zontal type is, of course, never completed
but must be of a continuing nature. New
needs appear as old ones are met. New
resources are made available to meet
needs ; old resources may be exhausted.

Community Organization as a
Philosophy of Resource Development

From what has already been said, it
must be evident that horizontal commu-
nity organization has grown out of a
series of philosophical assumptions which

are inherent in the dynamic development
of our free society. These would include :

(1) A belief in the values of local
autonomy within limits consistent with
the optimum development of the larger
society—a sort of antidote for extreme
centralization

(2) A belief in the folk—in folk wis-
dom guided by the expert, in contrast to
belief in the infallibility of the expert

(3) A recognition of the important
role of the specialist or expert

(4) A belief in the value of group
processes—group decisions rather than
one-man, dictatorial action

(5) A concern for the entire commu-
nity—the development of natural, human,
and social resources to meet all the needs
of all the people, rather than the vested
interest approach of one segment of the
population, of a particular agency, or a
particular organized group

(6) An emphasis upon the long view

[ 121 ]

framework for resource use

of resource development as contrasted
with short-run objectives for the commu-
nity

(7) A willingness to make progress
slowly on a firm basis as opposed to flash
achievement which is not lasting

(8) A concern for means as well as
ends—the opposite of the totalitarian
philosophy.

Limitations in the Community Approach
to Resource Development

At this point in our discussion it must
be apparent that action by the community
alone is not sufficient to assure wise de-
velopment of resources. Planning and
action are necessary at the international,
national, regional, and state levels as well.
There are many reasons why this is true.

The occurrence of natural resources is,
of course, no respecter of community
boundaries. In fact, it is probably safe
to say that most problems of physical de-
velopment of resources cannot be handled
within a single community. Similarly,
population characteristics and cultural
factors reveal patterns extending over
areas much larger than the community.
The complex resource structure of the
American economy may seem to render
the community impotent as far as plan-
ning is concerned.

The dynamic patterns of population mi-
gration offer still another reason why the
community approach is often not suffi-
cient. Estimates are now being made
which predict that within the next ten
years upwards to four million persons
will be displaced from southern agricul-
ture, largely through the development of
technology. Few rural communities in
the region will be able to meet this crisis
on their own.

Perhaps these few examples, among the
many which might be cited, are sufficient
to indicate the limitations in the commu-
nity approach to resource development.
Such efforts as the National Resources
Planning Board and the :c.ent full em-
ployment legislation are hopeful indica-
tions of how the federal government can
participate in the planning of resource
development within the framework of a

federation of state governments and a
capitalistic economy. Other techniques
applicable at the national level will un-
doubtedly be evolved. :

Since most federal agencies operate
through or in coordination with the var-
ious arms of state government and in
view of the important historical traditions
and loyalties associated with the indi-
vidual states, effective resource develop-
ment must rely in part upon planning and
action at the state level. The vigorous
and sometimes startlingly original tech-
niques being developed by some of the
state planning commissions demonstrate
the possibilities.

3ut again the occurrence of natural re-
sources, as well as demographic and cul-
tural patterns, is no respecter of state
boundaries. Here become apparent the
significant advantages of the region as
an optimum area for resource develop-
ment. On the one hand, regional plan-
ning serves as a buffer against extreme
centralization of authority. Again, the
region affords the area within which the
occurrence and interrelatedness of the
several categories of resources indicate
the greatest possibilities for unified re-
source development. A nation with the
make-up of the United States can hardly
afford to neglect the regional approach to
resource development.

Our perspective, then, on the role of
community organization and local plan-
ning in resource development is that alone
it cannot be sufficient. It is not viewed
as a panacea. We do maintain, however,
that in a free society the opportunity to
make choices between alternative uses of
resources should be pushed downward as
far as possible so as to involve the maxi-
mum number of people, both lay and pro-
fessional. A primary challenge to Ameri-
can democracy is how to assure the wisest
possible development of resources in a
society so complex in its organization.
Certain functions in thi$ respect can be
handled through local planning as indi-
cated in the earlier sections of this article.
The part which education must play is
indeed great.

and a
niques
ll un-

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framework for resource use

Resources and

The Community School

by MAURICE F. SEAY

The community school is the logical
agency to bring facts about resource use
to all the people of a community, and,
more important, to provide experiences
in applying these facts. Because of its
interrelationship with its environment,
the community school uses and develops
community resources in working toward
its educational objectives. Improvement
in the environment thus automatically
means improvement in the school, and the
school’s success in turn is measurable by
the extent to which the community uses
its resources to meet its needs.

In bringing facts about resources to
the people, the community school does
not forget that the people themselves—
their work, their attitudes, their abilities
are the most important resource of all.
Discovering and developing this resource
is the school’s greatest objective. The
wise use of natural resources, though es-
sential and though closely related to the
main objective, is only a means to an end.

The community school is not merely a
building to house a certain proportion of
the population for a predetermined num-
ber of hours a day and days a year. It
is a center, in the best that the words
“community center” have come to mean
in America, for all the people and at any
time. It represents typically the larger
and more intricate whole of the com-
munity at work and at play—the organi-
zations and agencies, the more informal
groups held together by common inter-

ests, the families, and the individuals.
No other institution can present as true
a picture of community needs and re-
sources as the school which bases its
philosophy upon community service. And
no other institution in a community has
as great an opportunity, through leader-
ship, personnel, and physical facilities, to
teach and demonstrate the use of re-
sources in meeting needs.

Interrelations in Education

The high school which is part of a
community school system recognizes the
interrelation of educational factors. Peo-
ple learn from one another, from doing,
from seeing, from hearing, from reading,
in every situation and at every age. Thus
the school seeks and stimulates coopera-
tion with every group or individual ca-
pable of contributing to the school’s objec-
tives. It initiates working relationships
with any agency interested in the educa-
tional approach to community improve-
ment. Health departments, scouts, pub-
lic libraries, ministerial associations, agri-
culture extension departments, and many
other organizations make a vital contri-
bution to the school program.

Contributors to the program also are
the farmer who is successfully controlling
gully erosion, the editor of the newspaper
in whose office the high school paper is
printed, the mother who helps can vege-
tables for school lunches, the grocer who
employs high school boys on Saturday,

Maurice F. Seay is director of the Bureau of School Service and head
of the Department of Educational Administration at the University of
Kentucky. Since 1943 he has been chairman of the Committee on
Southern Regional Studies and Education. Mr. Seay is director of
the Kentucky Sloan Experiment in Applied Economics and has super-
vised many educational studies, including directorship of the Alabama
Educational Survey, 1944-45. He has been dean of the College and
head of the Department of Education, Union College, Barbourville,
Kentucky, and chief of the Training Division in TVA.

[ 123 ]

framework for resource use

Courtesy of Bureau of Schoo! Service, University of Kentucky

“The school environment serves as a laboratory

the natural laboratory around their school.
resources are used in their future communities.

the elderly widow who gives private piano
lessons, the father who is remodeling his
house, the gardener who has tried out new
varieties of plants, the lawyer who has a
plan for curbing juvenile delinquency,
and the oldest inhabitant, who reminisces
about the founding of the community.
The community school discovers the abili-
ties of these people, and finds ways to
make use of them in the educational pro-
gram.

Learning Is a Continuous Process

The community high school also recog-
nizes the continuity of the learning proc-
The education of an individual is
not interrupted between school days or
school years, and does not cease when the
last examination is over and the last B+
recorded. He may drop out of school
and put away his textbooks forever, but
he goes on learning. As long as he re-

ess.

mains in the community, the community
school accepts responsibility for guiding
as he learns.

him The high school in

| 124 |

.” The children in this picture learn in

The things they learn here should affect the way

particular has a responsibility to the
adult population.

The high school recognizes itself as a
link. Betore high school comes elemen-
tary education, and after, college or some
other kind of education. The community
high school does not see itself as a sepa-
rate entity, existing to pass or fail an ac-
ceptable group of “properly qualified”
boys and girls in a prescribed number of
required and elective subjects, to grade
and classify them as to oral and written
ability in stating facts, and to give di-
plomas to whatever proportion it deems
worthy of college entrance. Instead, the
school offers each individual an oppor-
tunity to learn how to live in a world
which needs his best possible service. If
that service lies in one of the professions,
for example, the individual should have
preparation for college; but society needs
the service of workmen, laborers, farm
managers, homemakers, and many others
who may not require college education.
The community school recognizes its re-

Kentucky

earn in
the way

to the

lf asa
*lemen-
1r some
munity
a sepa-
an ac-
alified”’
nber of
) grade
written
‘ive di-
deems
ad, the
oppor-
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ice. If
essions,
ld have
y needs
s, farm
, others
cation.
; its re-

tramework for resource use

sponsibility in preparing young people
for many types of service to society, and
at the same time giving them the con-
cepts that will make them most useful as
citizens.

Practicing Democracy

It follows that the organization, the
administration, and the relationships of
the community high school are demo-
cratic. Every individual is valuable.
School-board members, superintendent,
principal, and other suprevisors, teachers,
janitors, students, all understand the pur-
pose of the program and help in planning
and carrying it out. The school is demo-
cratic in its dealings with other local
agencies and with individuals outside the
school, with other school systems and
with other schools within its system, with
institutions of higher education, with
state, regional, and national agencies for
social, economic, and educational im-
provement. Democratic relationships im-
ply understanding of common problems.
The community school uses a local situa-
tion to exemplify the common problems
of any group of people, small or large.
The small community group is part of a
larger state group, of still larger regional
and national groups, and, inevitably, of
the world group. The school demon-
strates the interdependence of all within
a group, and the value of each part to
the whole.

When a program of regional action is
undertaken, the community school is vi-
tally concerned. Gatlinburg Conference
II, held in 1944 at Gatlinburg, Tennessee,
is a case in point. Out of this regional
conference came the stimulation for a
state-wide program in resource-use edu-
cation for Kentucky. A large committee
of interested Kentuckians worked coop-
eratively with state departments and the
University of Kentucky to prepare a
source book on the State’s resources.
This book is to be made available to every
high school in Kentucky. Regional ac-
tion in regard to the development and use
of resources led to state action, which in
turn is leading to local action. The com-
munity school, through its democratic
relationship with the state and regional
agencies, receives valuable services in any
program of improvement.

The Committee on Southern Regional
Studies and Education, which sponsored
the Gatlinburg Conferences, is one serv-
ice agency giving help at state and local
levels. It gives suggestions for action
programs, spreads information about
work in progress, and holds conferences
for state and local representatives. The
school, through participation in regional
activities, brings the whole community
into democratic relationships with the
larger communities of which it is a part.

Flexible School Programs

The philosophy which underlies the
program of a community school requires
extreme flexibility in administrative pro-
cedures. Arbitrary academic requirements
yield to the needs and resources of the
community and its individuals. Rigid
daily schedules have no place in a school
which takes advantage of learning situa-
tions as they arise. The school facilities
and equipment are available at all times—
at night, on weekends, through the sum-
mer. Space is used to fullest advantage.
The school personnel accepts wide re-
sponsibilities in the community as well as
in the school. Not only is the schedule
flexible—the curriculum is subject to
constant change, as the needs and re-
sources of the community change. Sub-
ject-matter compartments are broken
down. Instructional materials are suited
to the problem at hand and to the com-
munity in which the problem exists.

The school environment serves as a
laboratory; a town’s business district, a
farm, a forest, an eroded hillside, a flood,
can supply material for any high school
class or for all classes. The school
grounds can be a demonstration of good
soil management and suitable landscap-
ing. Such projects as vegetable gardens,
fish ponds, plantations of fruit and nut
trees, and gully control, carried out by
high school students, can serve as an ex-
ample and as an incentive to the whole
community. The school may even start
a new enterprise—a business or a coop-
erative, for example—when the need is
indicated. A cannery, a frozen food
locker, a machine repair shop, a sawmill,
may be initiated by the school and man-
aged as a part of the school program
until community interest has developed
to the point that the enterprise can be
turned over to a group or an individual.

[ 125 ]

framework for resource use

The flexibility that is characteristic of
a community school is an outgrowth of
the school’s recognition of three principles
illustrated above :

(1) All educational factors are inter-
related.

(2) The learning process is continu-
ous.

(3) The practice of democracy teaches
the meaning of democracy.

Implications for the Community School

Administrators and teachers who wish
to make their school truly a community
school will find a number of implications
in these principles :

(1) The school must have a workable,
understandable philosophy of education,
based upon accurate knowledge of the
needs and resources of the community
and upon appreciation of the community’s
place in a democracy. A statement of
the philosophy should include what the
school thinks it should do, and also what
it is doing and what it plans to do.

(2) The school must modify its sched-
ule as the need arises, to take advantage
of valuable learning situations and prac-
tical experience. It must provide a con-

tinuous program, in recognition of the
principle that education is a continuous
process.

(3) The school must seek and main-
tain cooperative relationships with indi-
viduals and with local, state, regional, and
national agencies which can contribute to
the educational program.

(4) The school must adjust its curricu-
lum to meet changing needs in the com-
munity and in the larger communities of
which it is an essential part. Strict
boundary lines between subject-matter
areas must be broken down, as well as
those between grade levels.

(5) Secondary education must assume
its place as a link between elementary
education and college or education out-
side the school.

(6) Some of the materials of instruc-
tion must be specifically and directly re-
lated to the situations in which they are
used and to the people who use them.

(7) Teachers must have broad prepa-
ration, in both pre-service and in-service
education, to fit them for working in the
community with the individuals who are
its greatest resource.

of the
itinuous

1 main-
th indi-
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ibute to

curricu-
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Photo by Tennessee Valley Authority

Regional Libraries Widen

Community Horizons

by MARJORIE BEAL

The pattern of library service has
changed with the years. The _ typical
small village library of the past was open
a few hours a week, providing books
only for those people who could come
to it. In recent years it has expanded
its service to include first the people in
its entire county and then the people of
adjacent counties. Some results of this
new library pattern have been more books
for everyone, with an exchange of books
between units, bookmobiles to take books
into the remote corners, and qualified
librarians to select the books carefully
and to stimulate the readers.

Regional Libraries Reach More People

Two or more counties may combine or
cooperate in public library service to form

a regional library. The headquarters li-
brary, usually located in the trading cen-
ter, is open free for people to borrow
books, pamphlets, and other materials
and to use the library for reference and
research. The local libraries in the re-
gion continue their services to their com-
munities, sometimes as branches of the
system and sometimes as independent
libraries. Books from the county library
and the advice of the county librarian are
always available to them.

A library board of trustees, composed
of men and women who serve without
pay, is appointed by the appropriating
bodies in the region. The board of trus-
tees is the group responsible to the people
and the commissioners for the service

[ 127]

taking facts to the people

rendered. The library, board elects the
librarian and the library staff. It en-
courages gifts of money and buildings
and works actively to secure adequate
appropriations.

The state and the state library agencies,
in their responsibility for the extension
of library services to every man, woman,
and child, cooperate with regional library
boards and librarians in developing and
improving service within their areas.

Regional libraries have developed dur-
ing the past few years, especially in the
South, as a more economical and more
efficient unit of service. By making books
easily accessible, they provide the people
with both the opportunity and the incen-
tive to educate themselves, to keep abreast
of current thought, and to learn useful
knowledge. Regional libraries provide
the best means of getting resource-use
materials into the hands of rural and
small community people. The develop-
ment of one such regional library in a
southern state is given to show that vision
and persistence, books and materials, can
mean enlarged horizons and a wider view
of life for its citizens.

State Aid to Regional Libraries

North Carolina was fortunate to have
state aid for public libraries voted by the
General Assembly in 1941. The first ap-
propriation for rural library service
proved to be a stimulating fund to help
counties help themselves. Previously only
twenty-three counties had county library
service and 1,700,000 people were with-
out any public library service, but state
aid changed the library picture. The ap-
preciation of the people for books and
for making books available by means of
bookmobiles and book stations has helped
to secure increased funds at succeeding
sessions of the legislature. The 1945
General Assembly voted an appropriation

Extension Division.

of $175,000 for each year of the bien-
nium. Eighty-four counties are sharing
in the fund during 1945-46 and less than
half a million people are without library
service in North Carolina.

To share in state aid, county funds
must be appropriated or voted and an ac-
ceptable plan of library service presented
to the North Carolina Library Commis-
sion Board, which is authorized and em-
powered to allocate the money. The
smaller, poorer counties have been en-
couraged to work out plans with adjacent
counties whereby supervision by a quali-
fied librarian, a bookmobile, and more
books can be obtained. The North Caro-
lina Library Law provides that two or
more counties may join for the purpose
of establishing and maintaining a free
public library. It also states that the
governing board shall be composed of
three persons from each appropriating
unit.

The first regional library in North
Carolina was in the eastern section where
the counties of Beaufort, Hyde, and Mar-
tin combined and started service in the
summer of 1941. Since that time four
other regional libraries have been estab-
lished in North Carolina.

Cherokee, Clay, and Graham Counties
in western North Carolina formed the
second group to take advantage of state
aid for public libraries and formed the
Nantahala Regional Library. The three
counties are situated in a rural section
about equidistant. 125 miles, from Ashe-
ville, Knoxville, Atlanta, and Chatta-
nooga. No city of medium size is nearer.
Soon after July 1, 1941, when state aid
became available, the county commission-
ers of each county appointed three board
members who were to be responsible for
setting up the service, employing a quali-
fied librarian and assistants, and setting
up a program for the extension of library

After serving as children’s, public school, and college librarian, Mar-
jorie Beal has been secretary and director of the North Carolina Li-
brary Commission since 1930. Miss Beal is a past president of the
Southeastern Library Association, a Council member of the American
Library Association, and chairman of the Library Extension Board.
She is a member of the North Carolina Resource-Use Education Com-
mission and has served as a member of the New York State Library

[| 128 |

ie bien-
sharing
ess than
- library

y funds
d an ac-
resented
Sommis-
and em-
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adjacent
a quali-
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th Caro-
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purpose
a free
that the
osed of
ypriating

1 North
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nd Mar-
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me four
n estab-

Counties
med the
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med the
he three
| section
m Ashe-
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state aid
mission-
ee board
sible for
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an, Mar-
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American
m Board.
ion Com-
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taking facts to the people

service into every corner of the three
counties.

However, public library service did not
have its beginnings in that section in
1941. It was in the early years of the
century that Cherokee County fortu-
nately shared in the gift of Andrew Car-
negie for funds to erect library buildings.
The condition of these gifts was that the
locality must appropriate at least five
percent of the building cost for mainte-
nance and support. The two towns of
Andrews and Murphy in Cherokee Coun-
ty met the requirements and secured Car-
negie library buildings. At first there was
great enthusiasm and signs of real library
development ; but with an annual appro-
priation of less than $400 by each town,
there was little left, after the librarian
was paid, to purchase books or to expand
the service.

Government Cooperation

Both libraries seemed to have reached
a dead end, when two things happened.
The Works Progress Administration li-
brary program offered workers and the
Tennessee Valley Authority began the
construction of dams in North Carolina.
It was exciting news when the town of
Murphy heard that a dam would be built
on the Hiwassee River. It would mean
improved economic, agricultural, indus-
trial, and cultural conditions.

At a meeting of the Murphy Library
Board the news seemed too good to be
true that TVA wanted reading material
for their employees and believed library
service was an important part of the de-
velopment of that region. TVA asked
the Murphy Library Board and the North
Carolina Library Commission to make a
contract for library service which would
include funds for books, for a trained
librarian, and for means of getting these
books into use. The contract was signed
by all three agencies. Then with new
books, with a trained librarian to carry
on a program of public relations, with
removal from the shelves of the out-of-
date books, and a rearrangement of the
library room, the Murphy Public Library
took on new life as headquarters library.
The Andrews Library shared in the en-
larged book collection. A library in
charge of a trained librarian was also set
up twenty-two miles from Murphy at

Hiwassee Dam to serve the workers and
their families. Soon everyone in the
county was aware of improved library
service.

The Cherokee County Commissioners
saw the importance of county-wide li-
brary service and made an appropriation
from county funds. The North Carolina
library law permits support of a public
library either by city or county appropria-
tions or by a library tax vote. The
county library needed better library sup-
port than was possible by county appro-
priations, so in the fall of 1940 Cherokee
County citizens voted a library tax of
three cents on $100 of assessed valuation.
This produced $1500 annually.

A bookmobile, books, and _ library
workers had been supplied by the WPA
library project. Since the TVA area was
considered a defense area, the WPA
bookmobile and books remained in the
region at the close of the WPA library
project. Eventually the county purchased
the bookmobile from the federal govern-
ment.

People were using the public library ;
new up-to-date books supplied answers
to their questions ; forums for the discus-
sion of timely topics were started; ex-
hibits, publicity, and films called attention
to special materials. More TVA dams
were to be constructed in that section,
which brought in new people and new
demands for information. Libraries, in
charge of trained librarians, to provide
books, magazines, and reading materials
near at hand, were established as new
dams were constructed at Apalachia,
Ocoee, Chatuge, and Fontana.

The Nantahala Regional Library ex-
panded its services to new territories.
The Murphy Public Library continued
as the headquarters library and through
that library books were exchanged be-
tween libraries and book stations.

In the midst of this development of
library service, the North Carolina Gen-
eral Assembly of 1941 voted state aid
for public libraries and state funds were
offered each county. This meant more
than dollars and cents for it gave security
and permanency to the library program
and assured library boards of the interest
of the state in cultural and informational
services.

[ 129 |

taking facts to the people

Bookmobiles on Mountain Roads

Clay and Graham Counties, which bor-
der on Cherokee County, had experienced
some library service under the WPA li-
brary program and realized the impor-
tance of having books to read. The
county commissioners made appropria-
tions, shared in state aid, and formed
with Cherokee County the Nantahala
Regional Library. A _ regional librarian
was secured. The Cherokee County
bookmobile revised its schedule to include
regular trips each month into Clay and
Graham Counties. In the county seats
at Hayesville and Robbinsville, the libra-
ries which had been part of the WPA
program were strengthened by more
books, longer hours of service, and super-
vision by the regional librarian. The
total population in the three counties,
according to the 1940 census, is 41,636,
and the book stock numbers 24,280 vol-
umes; the library income from cities,
counties, state, and TVA for 1944-45 was
sixty cents per capita.

City and county funds were used to
pay the workers in the various libraries ;
state aid and TVA _ funds _ purchased
hooks, paid the trained librarian, and
maintained bookmobile service.

The bookmobile became a_ familiar
sight on those mountain roads; books
were available to all the people. The
reading interests changed as people gained
facility in reading and discovered the

variety of books to be enjoyed. One
family, living two miles up a mountain,
met the bookmobile at the end of the
road and each member of that family had
good books to. read. Stops were made
on regular schedules—at the cross roads,
in the communities, at the schools, es-
pecially at the smallest schools. Books
were loaned for a month and could be
renewed for longer periods. People were
encouraged to request special titles or
books on special subjects. Every effort
was made to fill these requests through
inter-library loans. People had books to
read !

As people began to use an up-to-date
library and to realize its advantages,
it was important to have cooperation
with the health and farm groups. A
county council of leaders in various fields,
including the regional library, provided
an exchange of plans and of problems.
Carefully selected educational films were
shown on a regular schedule at the vari-
ous libraries. A monthly book review
group sponsored the reviewing of out-
standing and timely books; this was fre-
quently followed by a heated discussion
entered into by everyone present. Each
activity united the library with the com-
munity and proved that a public library
has a vital responsibility as an educa-
tional agency, and that cooperation be-
tween leaders in a region promotes better
thinking and better living.

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taking facts to the people

by WILLIAM J.

Film News for January, 1946, carries
an article, “Films in the Post-War
South,” in which this statement appears:
“Observers of the information film fields
would do well to look South. In that
part of the country, particularly in the
southeastern states, where the citizens for
so long have had to apologize for their
educational efforts, things are beginning
to happen which will bring about a re-
evaluation of film programs in the ‘pro-
gressive’ states.” In the lead article of
the same issue, Sidney Kaufman adds,
“We have arrived at a period in the de-
velopment of the information film in
which close contact with universities 1s
essential.”

The Southern Educational Film Pro-
duction Service reflects both these ideas.
It represents a rapidly advancing interest
in improved film programs. Its head-
quarters will be established at the Uni-
versity of Georgia so that it will be closely
related to the subject matter and fields of
competence represented in a university.
To these ideas, however, the Southern
Educational Film Production Service
adds a significant third—it is based on a
region, and will therefore work toward
welding efforts of state agencies into an
effective regional whole. The fifty or
sixty public agencies and _ institutions
which have worked together to develop
the Service are convinced that it will be
highly significant in serving educational
programs in the South. This may be
particularly true in the field of resource
education, since much of the subject mat-
ter of that field is effectively presented
through films.

How States Work Together

The SEFPS is composed of two parts:
(1) a non-profit corporation composed of
public tax-supported agencies and insti-
tutions in the southern states interested
in film production, and (2) a production
unit at present being established at the
University of Georgia. The University
of Georgia will administer and operate
the production unit under the general di-

Films for the South

MeGLOTHLIN

rection of policies and work plans estab-
lished by the Service itself through its
Board of Directors.

Any tax-supported public agency or
institution in the states of Virginia, Ken-
tucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, South
Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and
Mississippi may become a member of the
SEFPS simply by indicating its desire to
do so. There are no fees or dues attached
to membership. In each state the agen-
cies and institutions which have become
members of the Service elect from their
membership one person to represent that
state on the Board of Directors of the
Service. The Board of Directors is com-
posed of one representative from each of
the nine states, one representative from
the Tennessee Valley Authority, and one
representative from the University of
Georgia as the sponsoring institution of
the Service. This eleven-man board will
bring to the production unit administered
by the University of Georgia a regional
consciousness to guide film production
plans. In this way the Service will con-
tinue to be regional in its concern and
intent.

The production unit of the Service will
provide or obtain all services necessary
for the production of educational films.
The permanent staff of the unit will prob-
ably include a director, a cameraman, a
film writer, and a film editor. The pro-
duction unit can produce entire educa-
tional films or it can provide special serv-
ices, such as those of a script-writer who
may be needed by some agency which is
producing its own films. Charges to the
agencies for services will cover costs but
will not include profits. Agencies in the
South, by using the Service, will be able
to produce films for their own educational
programs at reasonable cost.

Any agency in the states covered by
the Service can request that the Service
produce a film for its use. A contract
will be drawn between the agency and the
University of Georgia providing for the
production of the film and the cost in-
volved. The production unit then will

[ 131]

taking facts to the people

work closely with the agency itself in pro-
ducing the kind of film desired. Ob-
viously, the unit will call on the agency
to guide its work so that the film will be
not only pictorially effective but factually
sound, telling the story the agency wants
told. Agencies themselves will retain full
control of the type or subject matter of
films produced.

Many State Agencies Help

Up to the present, the state agencies
which have taken the most active part in
the development of the Service are the
state departments of education, of conser-
vation, and of health, fish and wildlife
commissions, the state agricultural exten-
sion services, and the state planning com-
missions. Interest in film production is
not limited to this group of agencies, but
their interest was the clearest from the
beginning. The agricultural extension
services, for example, have been produc-
ing educational films in many states, most
notably in Georgia, where for the past
four years or more the Agricultural Ex-
tension Service at Athens has been pro-
ducing its own excellent educational films
for use in the State. The State Depart-
ment of Conservation of Tennessee has
its own film production unit. The State
Board of Education in Virginia is estab-
lishing a film production unit. The re-
gional unit established at the University
of Georgia under the Southern Educa-
tional Film Production Service’s spon-
sorship will supplement rather than sup-
plant these other well-established efforts.

Although educational film production is
the central function of the Service and
its production unit, it has other purposes
also which may be of equal significance.
It proposes, for example, to encourage
region-wide production of educational
films and film strips by public agencies.
The hope is that out of such an effort will
come a film production program in which
production in one state dovetails with
production in others so that the limited
funds of southern public agencies can be
most effectively spent. To aid this pur-

pose, the Service will provide a clearing-
house of information on educational films

planned or in production in the southern
states.

Film Needs in Southern States

There is no longer need to persuade
educators that educational films are useful
media. That usefulness has been proved
time and again, most spectacularly by the
armed services in training for war. In
the South, however, educational programs
have suffered for lack of locally produced
material. A film loses some of its impact
when it is used to illustrate problems and
their solution in an area different from
that in which it was made. It is this
immediate impact which production of
films in the South, by agencies of the
South, will achieve.

Success of the Service is dependent
entirely upon its ability to satisfy needs
of tax-supported public agencies for film
production. If there is no need, or if
the need is not great enough to support
a regional production unit, the Service
will disappear. Before reaching the pres-
ent point in the development of the Serv-
ice, the amount of interest in the public
agencies of the South was carefully as-
sessed. We found that many already had
definite programs of educational film pro-
duction, and even more important, had
the money to support those programs.
The agricultural extension services are
probably farther along in their thinking
on the production of films for their own
use than other agencies, but conservation
departments, planning commissions, state
departments of education, and state de-
partments of health in various states,
all have definite plans for film production.

The SEFPS is unique in the United
States. There is no other regionally-
based film production service designed
for the use of public agencies and insti-
tutions and directed by them. Success
here will be closely watched elsewhere
and will have influence much broader
than in the region alone. The major
focus, however, is on the problems of the
southern states and the purpose of the
Service is to provide a means whereby
southern agencies can use a new tool of
learning more effectively.

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taking facts to the people

Educational Materials
For Regional Growth

by JOHN E. BREWTON

To improve the relationships between
ur people and our resources we must
initiate and maintain an extensive pro-
vram of resource-use education. Re-
source-use education differs from the
more familiar conservation and nature
study courses in that it is “based on a
recognition of the unity of natural, hu-
man, and social resources, and demands
that this unity be recognized and ob-
served in our resource-use policies. In
this light, resource-use education is pri-
marily an emphasis or orientation for all
phases of education, not a special course
to compete with health education, con-
sumer education, and others.”!

If we are to improve the quality of
living in southern communities, schools
must become agencies of social action in-
terested in economic and social improve-
ment. Schools have ignored life within
the immediate environment of the learner
too long. They must become concerned
about all the people in the community
their health, nutrition, clothing, housing,
and their use of resources—natural, hu-
man, and social.

The Need for Research Translation

Research has far outstripped our dis-
semination of useful knowledge revealed
by research. We have not succeeded too
well in our attempts to channel research
through education. Two factors have

* John E. Ivey, Jr., “Resource-Use Education:
A Challenge to Social Studies,” The Bulletin,
Vorth Carolina Council for the Social Studies,
Vol. Il (December, 1945), 4.

Louisville city schools.

contributed to our failure to get the re-
sults of research to the people who might
use them to benefit themselves and so-
ciety. The conservative nature of the
school curriculum and the consequent re-
sistance to change have made the school
program one which has been slow to teach
the new discoveries of research. A _ sec-
ond and perhaps more important factor
has been the unavailability of educational
materials. Research, the work of spe-
cialists, couched in technical language,
has been of little value to the ordinary
citizen because it has not been generally
understandable to him. There is a defi-
nite need for research to be translated
into everyday language for popular con-
sumption if the findings of research are
to become useful and helpful in develop-
ing higher standards of living for our
people.

The more effective educational use of
research on southern resources and prob-
lems is dependent in large degree upon
the assembly of regional materials—origi-
nal research and available research trans-
lations—and the distribution of informa-
tion about these materials among teachers,
school supervisors and administrators,
and other community leaders. Unfor-
tunately, there has been no public agency
charged with the responsibility of pre-
paring and distributing materials of re-
gion-wide applicability ; nor any organized
plan worked out for the distribution of
information about such materials to the
school systems of the region.

John E. Brewton is director of the Division of Surveys and Field
Studies and professor of education at George Peabody College for
Teachers, and director of the Southern Rural Life Council. He is a
member of the Committee on Southern Regional Studies and Educa-
tion. Mr. Brewton formerly was high school principal, teacher, and
superintendent of schools in Florida, and director of research for the
He is author of numerous research studies and
books in the fields of rural education and children’s literature.

[ 133 ]

taking facts to the people

The 1943 Gatlinburg Conference iden-
tified a major need in the field of re-
source-use education—the provision to
teachers of better selections of educa-
tional materials on state and regional re-
sources and problems. The report of the
Committee on Southern Regional Studies
and Education revealed that this need was
not being met. It was pointed out in the
1944 Catlinburg Conference that one way
of meeting this need would be to provide
a regional materials service which would
facilitate the establishment of state ma-
terials services and the distribution and
use of educational materials on regional,
state, and local levels.

The Regional Materials Service

In response to these needs and as a
special project of the Committee on
Southern Regional Studies and FEduca-
tion, George Peabody College for Teach-
ers, Nashville, Tennessee, established a
Regional Materials Service in September,
1945. The service has initiated a broad
program to assemble regional materials
and distribute information about them.
The Service will also be a center for
training in resource-use education. It is
an activity of Peabody’s Division of Sur-
veys and Field Studies. A regional com-
mittee, composed of more than forty
members representing research and edu-
cational agencies in thirteen southern
states, is advising in the development of
the service.

The activities of the Service include
the assembly and distribution of mate-
rials and information, and cooperation
with interested agencies in the promo-
tion of resource-use education in the re-
gion. The Regional Materials Service
proposes to collect and catalog informa-
tion on the natural, social, and human
resources of the southern region. When
compiled, this information will become
a central reference to problems in re-
source-use education for each southern
state and the region. Such a central
source will be useful in regional research
and its translation, in curriculum de-
velopment on the state and local levels,
in the training of educational leadership
to promote better use of resources, and in
affording a wider selection of materials
for instruction. Along with the collection

{ 134]

of information and materials, the Service
will maintain a file and periodically issue
bibliographies on resource-use educational
materials.

In the program of cooperation with
other educational agencies, the Peabody
program will offer technical assistance to
state and institutional groups interested
in their own materials collections and in
the more effective use of the materials.
It will offer assistance in establishing
state centers of information. It will col-
laborate in state and institutional work
conferences conducted to train leader-
ship in the production and utilization of
resource-use materials. It will afford a
channel for the continuous interchange of
ideas among the directors of materials
collections. The Regional Materials Serv-
ice will actively participate in the pre-
service and in-service education of teach-
ers in resource-use education.

Regional Services to States

The Regional Materials Service will
assist the various states in the region in
the establishment and operation of their
own materials services. State materials
bureaus will be developed in such man-
ner as to encourage the permanent main-
tenance and utilization of materials col-
lections on the state and local levels.

Those states which do not set up ma-
terials services may still have agencies or
institutions which are interested in in-
creasing the effectiveness of their collec-
tion and use of materials bearing on state
and regional resources and problems. The
Regional Materials Service will attempt
to furnish these agencies and institutions
with consultant service and information
according to their particular needs.

The collection will be limited to mate-
rials in print and available to interested
educational agencies. A special attempt
will be made to include materials readily
adaptable to use by individual teachers.

The successful development of the
Service requires the cooperation and aid
of those engaged in resource-use educa-
tion. The Service is interested in the

activities of these groups and individuals,
in the programs they have planned, in
the translations they have made, and in
the materials collections they have as-
sembled.

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taking facts to the people

A Book for Study of

Regional Resources

by JOHN E. IVEY, JR.

By snow melting time in 1948, a new
book should be ready for public school
students who want to know more about
the southern United States. To package
and hand these facts to teachers and pu-
pils, several thousand southern educators
and research specialists will have spent
nearly four years of cooperative effort.

In 1944, after more than a year of
study, a little volume pointed out that one
glaring deficiency in educational materials
about the South was the absence of
any regional volume for public school
use.!. A special committee at Gatlinburg
Conference Il devoted time to recom-
mending how this need could be met.
Their proposal was considered by the
Committee on Southern Regional Studies
and Education. The Committee arranged
with the University of North Carolina’s
Institute for Research in Social Science
to produce the volume.

The major principle behind the method
for producing the book is that its useful-
ness will increase in proportion to the
number of educators and research spe-
cialists participating in the process. Ac-
cordingly, four means are being used to
increase the variety of judgments guiding
production of the book: (1) thirty-five
educators from thirteen states constitute
an advisory committee; (2) drafts of the
manuscript are reviewed by research spe-
cialists for scientific adequacy; (3) a
special conference for directors of teacher
education workshops devoted part-time to
a review of sections of the manuscript ;
and (4) teachers from all over the South
will use the complete manuscript experi-
mentally in classroom teaching as a basis
for final revision before publication.

A team of authors is preparing the
volume: Rupert B. Vance, Marjorie N.

* John E. Ivey, Jr., Channeling Research Into
Education, A Report of the Committee on
Southern Regional Studies and Education
(Washington, D. C.: American Council of
Education, 1944), Chapter 5.

Bond, and John E. Ivey, Jr. The theme
of the book shows how living conditions
in the southern region reflect a partner-
ship of men and resources.

This partnership, according to the vol-
ume, has been getting on badly. Soils,
forests, minerals, water, and wildlife give
evidence that the average southerner has
too often used them _ irresponsibly.
Health, housing, economic development,
government, religion, education, and other
social problems increasingly weigh heavily
on southerners because of the unscientific
way they have conducted their partner-
ship with resources.

The regional volume will examine the
causes contributing to the ailing man-re-
source partnership. And it will illustrate
principles for sound development of the
region’s natural, human, and social re-
sources which, if followed, will contribute
to improved living in the communities of
the region.

In an Atlanta, Georgia, meeting during
July, 1945, the regional advisory commit-
tee reworked the regional volume’s out-
line, previously prepared by the project
staff. Suggestions were also given on
reading level, format, major emphasis,
and many other points. Acting upon ad-
vice from the advisory committee, the
authors are now preparing a first draft of
the volume. As the chapters are com-
pleted, section by section, they are being
reviewed by research experts in the sub-
ject matter concerned. A second draft of
the volume’s first two sections, incor-
porating changes suggested by research
specialists, will be made available for
evaluation in the teacher education work-
shops held throughout the South during
the summer of 1946.

Through the state workshops, a large
number of teachers will become acquaint-
ed with information on regional resources
and problems. The teachers will be in-
vited to give suggestions for improving
the volume for student and teacher use.

[ 135 ]

taking facts to the people

The south central states—Arkansas,
Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas—are
seeking through cooperative effort to find
a solution to resource-use education prob-
lems having regional implications. The
efforts of the four states are co-ordinated
by the Resource-Use Education Commit-
tee, South Central Region. This commit-
tee has utilized state and regional con-
ferences, publications, special meetings,
and other devices for accomplishing its
objectives of stimulating state coopera-
tion in these regional problems.

Four States Join in
Research Translation

The committee came into existence as
a result of the recent accelerated interest
in resource-use education programs in the
four-states area. Representatives of the
states in the south central region held an
informal discussion on the need for re-
gional cooperation at the 1943 Gatlinburg
Conference sponsored by the Committee
on Southern Regional Studies and Edu-
cation. It was agreed in this discussion
to conduct a regional conference for the
four states—Arkansas, Louisiana, Okla-
homa, and Texas—for the purpose of
exploring the possibilities of translating
resource materials relating to the region
into teaching materials for use in the
public schools. A planning committee
composed of representatives from each of
the four states had responsibility for con-
ducting the conference.

The first Regional Resources Transla-

has served as

Conference.

the Rural Department, National Education Association.
state coordinator of

[ 136 ]

Studying Resources in the
Arkansas River Valley

by ROY W. ROBERTS

tion Conference, as it was called, was
held at the University of Arkansas in the
summer of 1944. Sixty-six selected con-
ferees and consultants from the four
states attended the conference. The con-
ferees were educators representing pub-
lic elementary, secondary, and _ higher
education ; and the consultants were spe-
cialists in the resource fields of soils,
water, power, minerals, industry, trans-
portation, and population. The principal
source of technical data for translation
was the report Regional Planning, Part
XII, Arkansas Valley, published by the
National Resources Planning Board.
The conferees and consultants trans-
lated the data of the report into teaching
materials for use on the various grade
levels, and in adult education programs.
Specific outcomes included units of work,
lesson plans, reference readers, and sup-
plementary reading materials for use in
school programs. Materials such as news-
paper articles, forum discussion topics,
radio scripts, and addresses were prepared
for use in adult programs. These teach-
ing materials were designed to stimulate
persons on various educational levels to
better appreciate the need for a wise use
of resources.
A Committee for Regional Coordination

One of the recommendations of the
conference was concerned with a perma-
nent organization for promoting resource-
use education within the region—and the
Resource-Use Education Committee,

Roy W. Roberts is head of the Department of Vocational Teacher
Education at the University of Arkansas, chairman of the Resource-
Use Education Committee, South Central Region, and a member of
the Committee on Southern Regional Studies and Education.

He is

a member of the Committee on Publications and Constructive Studies
and the Mid-South Rural Education Conference Committee, both of

Mr. Roberts
in-service teacher education in

Arkansas and director of the Arkansas Valley Resources Translation

was

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taking facts to the people

South Central Region, came into exist-
ence. This committee is composed of
three persons from each of the four
states, appointed by the chief state school
officer of the respective state. An attempt
was made in the selection of members to
secure a balance between representatives
of educational agencies and technical re-
source agencies, in order that the many
technical and professional problems in a
program of resource-use education might
be properly evaluated.

The committee has taken cognizance
of the fact that many conservation prob-
lems such as flood control, freight rates,
industrial development, and others, do
not confine themselves to state lines, and
that a degree of cooperation between
states is required if levels of living within
a region are to be raised. The efforts of
the committee have been directed towards
stimulating the states to give considera-
tion to these problems in state resource-
use education programs. The committee
activities have included regional work-
shops, special publications, conferences,

exchange of personnel, and committee
study. These activities have been im-
plemented by grants-in-aid from the Gen-
eral Education Board.

One of the first committee activities
was the sponsoring of a second regional
resources translation conference at the
University of Arkansas. This confer-
ence, held in the summer of 1945, was
patterned after the 1944 conference. The
principal difference was in the source of
technical data used in the translation
process. The technical consultants in the
1945 conference assembled, prior to the
conference, the important technical data
having regional implications in their re-
spective resource fields. This informa-
tion was used by the conferees as hases
for translating the teaching materials.

The committee will cooperate in two
regional translation conferences in the
summer of 1946. One of these will be
held at North Texas State Teachers Col-
lege, Denton. This conference will fur-
ther explore the possibilities of regional
cooperation in translating resource ma-

Courtesy of University of Arkansas College of Education

Good farm land lies useless as silt in the river bottom. Worse than useless, for it affects the
value of the water for other purposes and aggravates floods. From how many states upstream
did the soil come? Resources respect no political boundaries.

[ 137]

taking facts to the people

terials into teaching materials and will
attempt to determine the position educa-
tion should take in the post-war develop-
ment of regional resources to improve
levels of living.

A second regional conference will be
held in 1946 at Arkansas A. M. & N.
College, Pine Bluff, for the purpose of
initiating resource-use education pro-
grams in the Negro schools of the four-
state area. It is expected that this con-
ference will utilize some of the technical
data assembled in the previous confer-
ences as bases for preparing teaching ma-
terials for school use. The committee is
assisting in planning, selecting partici-
pants, and financing these two confer-
ences.

A report of the 1945 conference and a
reference reader for use in the primary
grades have been published by the com-
mittee. This reference booklet Surprises
in the Arkansas Valley was written by
Miss Catharine Garvin of Lawton, Okla-
homa, one of the conferees at the 1944
conference. It is designed to stimulate
younger children to interest themselves in
some conservation problems that have
regional significance.

The resources data assembled by the
consultants for the 1945 regional confer-
ence were considered of sufficient value
to warrant publication for use in the
public schools. The committee has de-
cided to publish these data in the form
of a source book. This volume will con-
tain some of the more important tech-
nical data about soils, forests, wild plant
and animal life, minerals, power, water
resources, industry, health, recreation
facilities, and human resources. The
publication will be written at the junior
high school level, first in tentative form
for trial in some of the schools; and later,
if its usefulness seems to justify, it will
be published for general distribution.
Members of the committee are assuming
responsibility for adapting the data for
publication.

The committee has also in process of
publication a second volume describing
the organization and procedures of the
1945 conference. Regular meetings are

held quarterly by the committee. These
meetings are given over to planning com-
mittee work, projecting plans previously
made, and reviewing state resource-use
education programs and activities.

State Programs

Each of the four states has developed
resource-use programs within the state.
Some of this development has come about
as a result of the stimulation afforded by
the Resource-Use Education Committee.
The Texas Resource-Use Education
Council was recently organized to pro-
mote resource-use education programs
among school pupils and adults. This
council is composed of educators and
specialists in conservation and use of re-
sources. It is contemplated that the coun-
cil will provide funds for the employment
of personnel to carry on its activities.

A workshop for selected conferees
from the state of Oklahoma was held at
Oklahoma A. & M. College, Stillwater,
in the summer of 1945. This was fol-
lowed by a special planning workshop
for Oklahoma teachers at George Pea-
body College, Nashville, Tennessee, in
which specific plans for an experimental
county-wide resource-use education pro-
gram were made.

Special parish-wide workshops for in-
service teachers were held in Ascension,
East Baton Rouge, and other parishes in
Louisiana in the summer of 1945. Plans
for improving levels of living through
the wise use of resources were made at
these workshops. Some of the Negro
schools in Arkansas have recently de-
veloped commendable programs in re-
source-use education and as a result some
nuticeable improvements have been made
in the levels of living of these commu-
nities.

The activities of the regional commit-
tee and of the state agencies in the South
Central Region have provided some stim-
ulation for developing state and regional
programs in resource-use education. The
further development of these programs is
needed if the region is to make wise use
of its resources.

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Classroom Teachers Make

Resource Use Vivid

by MARY SUE FONVILLE

Among the agencies in the South which
must educate people for full and wise use
of all resources is the public school. More
than nine million students and probably
eighteen million adults are affected di-
rectly or indirectly by its program each
year. If teachers and administrators in
the public school are to capitalize upon
their tremendously challenging oppor-
tunities, they will need to understand
clearly what is meant by education in re-
source use and how it may be made an
integral part of an on-going, functional
program designed to improve the quality
of living in the “here and now,” as well
as in the future. In short, they will need
to know the “what” and the “how” of
resource-use education.

The ‘*What’’ of Resource-use Education

Resource-use education does not pur-
port to be new or revolutionary. It is
rather an attempt to expand, unify, em-
phasize, and vitalize what has long been
recognized as an essential part of an ade-
quate and effective educational program
for the public schools in America—con-
servation education. In other words, re-
source-use education is all that conserva-
tion aims to be, and more too.

Resource-use education goes beyond
the usual concept of conservation educa-
tion in several ways. First, it interprets
resources as including not only natural
resources but also human resources—the
quality and quantity of the population—
and social resources—customs, institu-

tions, capital, and skills. Second, re-
source-use education recognizes as funda-
mental certain principles or concepts not
included, or not sufficiently emphasized,
in the usual conservation texts, and teach-
ing procedures :

(1) There is an uncompromising unity
and balance among all the elements of the
natural environment.

(2) The natural and the social envi-
ronments are inter-dependent. There is
an inescapable companionship between
nature and culture.

(3) The attitudes and customs of
groups, as well as their skills and insti-
tutional arrangements, condition the use
that they make of their resources.

Third, resource-use education differs
from the usual conservation instruction
in that it seems to offer a more positive,
creative approach to the problem of using
all resources. It is careful to emphasize
that wise resource use does not mean the
locking up and hoarding of resources.
It means that resources must be used in
such a way as to maintain the natural
process of replenishment. Only the use
of resources will result in higher levels
of living. Their scientific use will also
insure their availability for future genera-
tions.

The ‘‘How’’ of Resource-use Education

Both the starting point and the methods
employed in resource-use education de-
pend upon the same variable factors
which condition any other part of a sound

Mary Sue Fonville has been a teacher of social studies and of the
eighth grade in the Raleigh public schools since 1923. She is teaching
now at Broughton High School in Raleigh. Mrs. Fonville is vice-
president of the North Carolina Council for Social Studies and a
member of the Advisory Committee on International Relations of the
National Education Association. She has assisted with summer work
conferences in social studies and resource-use education at the Uni-
versity of North Carolina.

[ 139 ]

teachers in action

educational program: (1) the general na-
ture and needs of the local commumity;
(2) the needs and achievements of the
pupils; (3) the philosophy, the curricu-
lar content and organization, and their re-
lationships in the school; (4) the knowl-
edge, interests, ingenuity, and coopera-
tiveness of the teachers and administra-
tion; (5) the available materials, facih-
ties, and services.

Since this is true, there is no “one right
way” to begin or to proceed in developing
an effective program of resource use edu-
cation. There are, however, certain 1m-
portant considerations which should have
the continuing attention of both teachers
and administrators concerned with such
a program.

In the first place, resource-use educa-
tion should be considered an evolving
aspect of the total educational program.
The knowledges, understandings, atti-
tudes, skills, and habits which are its
objectives cannot be developed in one unit
or in one course. They can be achieved
only if the programs of pupils at every
level from the primary grades through
the secondary school provide experiences
designed to build them up. Therefore,
the final effectiveness of resource-use
education will depend on the extent to
which the philosophy underlying it per-
vades the school’s curricular and extra-
curricular activities and the concepts fun-
damental to it are woven into the dif-
ferent units and courses with continuity
and consistency.

This does not mean, of course, that it
may not be desirable at some point, prob-
ably at the junior high school level, to
offer a course in which students have a
chance to draw together, interpret, and
integrate their earlier learnings about re-
sources and their use. In fact, it seems
to be the opinion of a number who have
studied this matter that such a course may
not only be desirable but essential.

Another consideration to be borne in
mind is that while the subject fields of
health, home economics, science, and so-
cial science will furnish the basic facts
and concepts concerning resources and
their use, the fields of art, music, lan-
guage, and literature have invaluable con-
tributions to make, especially in develop-
ing those attitudes and appreciations with-
out which knowledge might never be ex-
pressed in action. The materials de-

veloped by the Sloan Experiment in
Kentucky to bring about improvement in
dietary practices through the education
of children suggest ways of utilizing all
these fields in an integrated approach.
For instance, in a songbook We Will
Sing One Song, which is illustrated in
color, there are familiar tunes with new
words written to stimulate the interest of
children in raising and eating healthful
foods.

Even more, perhaps, than some other
aspects of a school’s program, resource-
use education must grow out of the needs
of the pupils concerned and must have
both roots and results in the community
situation. Its nature, purpose, and pro-
cedure all demand this. Therefore, among
the considerations to be kept before those
who are initiating or expanding such a
program is the necessity for identifying
as soon as possible the needs of the pupils
and of the community in terms of their
use of their resources. To be sure, cer-
tain resource-use needs are common to
all communities. Those in the South
have wider areas of common needs and
problems. Fortunately, these have, for
the most part, already been identified and
authoritatively set forth in publications
easily available to teachers and adminis-
trators. However, in some communities
certain needs may be more acute than
others and if these are duly recognized,
they can indicate both the point of be-
ginning and the first lines of emphasis for
the resource-use education program.

Questions such as the following may be
helpful in discovering needs :1

1. What community problems or unmet needs
seem to be due to the inadequate use of re-
sources f°

2. What better ways of using these resources
might be adopted?

3. How can the community be helped to adopt
these ways?

4. What can the school do to help bring
about the use of these better methods of re-
source user

5. When and how can it start to do so?

Public School Approaches to
Resource Use

The action of a group of teachers and
other citizens in the Gilbertsville School

* Adapted from John E. Ivey, Jr., Channeling
Research Into Education, A Report of the Com-
mittee on Southern Regional Studies and Edu-
cation (Washington: American Council on
Education, 1944), pp. 20-21.

[ 140 ]

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teachers in action

area of Marshall County, Kentucky, illus-
trates the use, on a cooperative basis, of
some such approach as these questions
suggest. In November, 1944, more than
150 people had an all-day meeting at the
school to study ways and means of mak-
ing the school’s program contribute every-
thing possible toward the improvement of
living in the community. Concrete needs
with respect to health, housing, soil, live-
stock, crops, and recreation were outlined
and plans for helping to meet them were
made. For instance, needs in regard to
livestock called for such specifics as im-
provement in quality by using purebred
sires, provision of ten months’ pasture,
and control of diseases by testing, vac-
cination, and sanitary practices. Health
needs were outlined as including the pro-
duction of adequate food for the family ;
this need was further particularized as
needs for a fruit garden, a vegetable gar-
den, poultry, milk, butter, beef, and pork.
The experience of a tenth grade civics
class in a consolidated school in the Ken-
tucky village of Stamping Ground sug-
gests how pupils may join with their
teachers and parents in identifying com-
munity needs. This civics class, after
reading Improving Our Community's
Homes and Preparing to Serve in Your
Rural Community, prepared by the Uni-
versity of Florida’s Sloan Experiment in
Applied Economics, decided to make a
survey to ascertain what the people of
their town thought were the most needed
improvements in their homes and in the
community. A questionnaire for this pur-
pose was prepared. The most frequently
noted needs were better recreational fa-
cilities for young people, better sewage
disposal, natural gas for cooking and
heating, and improvement in housing.
The activities of this class illustrate, not
only participation in identifying certain
needs, but also participation in helping
meet the needs identified. The civics
class is building up a background of
knowledge to help in improving the hous-
ing situation. It is preparing a bulletin
containing information on construction
and on the location of materials needed
for the improvements. Later, members
of the group expect to help with some of
the actual construction. Other groups
are working too. The Future Farmers of
America are trying to make arrangements
for natural gas to be piped from George-

Courtesy of Soil Conservation Service

High school science and geography students in
South Carolina study erosion problems on
farms near their school. The local Soil Con-
servation Service technician is guide. He dis-
cusses good and bad examples of soil conser-
vation.

town, the county seat, eight miles away.
The biology class is planning to work on
the sanitation problem.

Other schools in other places are car-
rying on promising programs. A_ sixth
grade group in the B. B. Comer School
in Talledega County, Alabama, developed
an interesting and significant unit on soil.
One rainy day someone in the group no-
ticed how the water on the school ground
was running off in many little streams,
later converging in one which was cutting
a fairly deep trench. A discussion ensued
about the washing away of farm land.
From the discussion a unit developed
which gave opportunities for studying not
only ways and means of conserving the
laud, but also for comparing the living
conditions of people on good soil and on
poor soil. Maps were drawn to scale
showing the eroded areas in the county,
state, and nation. Letters were written
to the government and to the planning
board for bulletins, maps, and other ma-
terials. A model of a well-terraced farm
was made for a display window. A model
of a poor farm showing eroded land
caused from the lack of terracing and
other good practices was made on the
sand table.

[ 141 ]

teachers in action

Other studies made in connection with
the unit brought out the important rela-
tionships of: (1) forests to the soil and
to a balanced water supply; (2) soil to
the nutrition of animals and of people
fed on plants grown in it; (3) poor land
to poor people; and (4) poor people to
poor land.

In the course of learning about the
natural resources of their state, an eighth
grade class in the Broughton High School
of Raleigh, North Carolina, made a spe-
cial study of soil. Members of the staffs
of the district and state offices of the Soil
Conservation Service supplied pamphlet
material, slides, and films. They made
several visits to the school, and conducted
an excursion to a nearby farm which was
once badly eroded but which is now the
scene of various practices designed to re-
store the soil and maintain its fertility.
After having a unit on soil conservation,
a ninth grade civics class in the same
school joined the eighth grade group in
initiating a project to stop erosion on the
worst section of the school grounds. Par-
ticipation by other groups was sought
with the result that there is now under-
way a program which has enlisted the
grounds committee of the Student Coun-
cil, the class in public speaking, the school
newspaper, members of former civics
classes, the grounds committee of the
Parent-Teacher Association, the school
principal and the superintendent, the
city parks and recreation director, and the
Soil Conservation Service.

South Mill Creek School, an eight-
grade, one-room rural school in a sparsely
settled mountain area in Kentucky, un-
dertook last fall to stimulate more and
better fruit growing in that community.
The third grade read the book Fruit, Nuts
and Berries of the Smith Family Series
prepared by the University of Kentucky’s
Sloan Experiment in Applied Economics.
As a result of this study, the class sug-
gested planting a small orchard and seed-
ling bed on the school grounds. Other
grades were invited to join in the activity.
Discussion as to what, where, and how
to plant revealed the need for more in-
formation and so a study of science
books, agricultural bulletins, nursery cata-
logues, etc., followed. Then suitable lo-
cations for the orchard and seedling bed
were chosen, cleared, and cultivated. A

few small trees from the community were
transplanted and others were ordered
from a nursery. As their work pro-
gresses, the students plan to share their
learning with their parents.

A one-teacher school in a Tennessee
county was among four schools chosen
for an experiment to test the feasibility
of taking elementary school children on
field trips to test demonstration farms of
the TVA-Extension Service agricultural
program to observe good farm and home
practices. School and agricultural ex-
tension officials worked out the arrange-
ment. Among those participating were
the county superintendent, the elemen-
tary supervisor, the county agent, the as-
sistant county agent, the chief education
officer in the western area of the Tennes-
see Valley Authority, the teacher, and the
farmer and his wife. An information
sheet, given ahead of time to the teacher
to help her in planning with her children
for the visit, suggested some of the learn-
ings possible from such an excursion.

A group studying the institutions of
society in general and of their community
in particular might become concerned
about why their community’s institutions
are no better than they are. In trying to
answer this question, they might be led to
discover and appreciate that interaction of
nature and culture which is such a funda-
mental concept in resource-use education.
Still another approach to resource-use
education in public schools lies in courses
or units involving the study of occupa-
tional opportunities and needs in the local
community, the state, and the region.

Examples of Teaching Techniques

Resource-use education presents a need
and an opportunity for classroom use of
audio-visual aids, demonstrations, experi-
ments, field trips, and other educational
techniques. A seventh-grade class in an
agricultural parish near the Mississippi
River made a first-hand study of erosion
through field trips, visiting certain places
near the school where damage caused by
erosion could be plainly seen. The class-
room study included book work and the
use of bulletins and pamphlets obtained
from government soil conservation de-
partments. Students got experience in
chart making, graph reading, and work-
ing with percentages and large numbers

[ 142]

teachers in action

by studying and making for class use
charts showing the high costs of erosion
and amounts of soil lost by it.

Another seventh-grade class experi-
mented with growing plants in an effort
to show the effect of water, sunlight, and
soil type on plants. Identical seeds were
planted in small containers of different
types of soil brought from the farm homes
of the children. Other seeds were planted
in identical soil, with varying amounts of
water ; others received varying exposure
to sunlight. The experiment was accom-
panied by a great deal of study of the
types of soil best suited for crops grown
in that locality. The soil samples brought
by the youngsters were later tested by
high school students in a chemistry class,
and recommendations were made for soil
improvement.

A teacher of high school science makes
excellent use of audio-visual aids in
teaching resource use. Each time a class
takes up a new subject that concerns re-
sources, the teacher collects pictures and
charts showing the resource and its use.
Students learn how the use now being
made of the resource corresponds with
the supply in reserve. The teacher also
points out correct and incorrect methods
of putting resources to use. For ex-
ample, during the study of sulphur, charts
from the sulphur companies and maps
from state geological surveys are used to
show where and in what quantities sul-
phur is found. The importance of this
resource is, of course, studied in connec-
tion with its extraction: A trip is also

made to sulphur mines in the state.
Movies are used in the study of forests
and of coal.

In the study of soil, these classes see
enlarged photographs taken by the United
States Department of Agriculture. These
are actual scenes in the state, where soil
is being used properly or improperly.
Reasons for poor soil and wasted soil are
studied as the pictures are explained, and
ways to remedy the situation are dis-
cussed. The opaque projector is useful
in showing pictures to the entire class.
A picture or chart in any book may be
thrown on the wall for examination and
discussion by the class.

Experiments are useful. A mound of
dirt with water poured over it makes a
laboratory model of the process of ero-
sion. A bucket of river water allowed to
stand shows how much soil rivers carry
away.

The foregoing descriptions of activities
and possibilities in resource-use education
are only suggestive. There are many
others which might be reported or pro-
posed. And there are, to be sure, still
others which are equally promising but
which have not yet come under observa-
tion. Here there is no attempt to analyze
and to evaluate the features of those de-
scribed except to point out that they are
indicative of things that can be done and
need to be done. As time goes by, there
will evolve a richer and broader body of
experience to guide in the development
of richer and broader resource-use edu-
cation programs.

| 143 |

teachers in action

Preparing Teachers Through

Community Experience

by HERMESE JOHNSON ROBERTS

The teacher education institution faces
a threefold task in providing pre-service
resource-use education for teachers. The
institution must provide for the prospec-
tive teacher experiences which will en-
able her to identify resource-use needs
important to the ends of education. The
institution must develop for the prospec-
tive teacher study experiences to meet
resource-use needs. The institution must
teach the prospective teacher how to bring
other faculty members and community
leaders into teaching focus. If this three-
fold task is accomplished, there need be
little concern that the pre-service teacher
may not know how to take resource-use
education into the schools and thereby
favorably shape the attitudes of the young
people of our nation.

Identifying Resource-use Needs

How can a _ prospective teacher be
taught to identify resource-use needs
which should be considered in education?
Shall she be given assignments to burrow
into dusty tomes on library shelves and
explore the learned treatises on conserva-
tion problems? Our suggestion is rather
that the prospective teacher be sensitized
to needs for resource-use education
through practical experiences.

\hat teacher training institution in our
region cannot take prospective teachers
on a field trip not ten miles from the
college campus and observe muddy and
flooded streams, abandoned fields and
farms, gullies, burned-over areas, and
other evidences of misuse of resources?

Can we not recognize in these phenomena
indices for education in intelligent utili-
zation of our human and material re-
sources ?

Nor is casual observation the complete
answer to the problem. The methods of
identifying resource-use needs may be
summarized briefly as follows:

1. Observation, i.e., gaining first-hand infor-
mation through contact or direct experience.
The observation may be formal or informal.

2. Interviews with people or agencies who
are the original sources of the information de-
sired, such as industrialists, farmers, etc., or
with people who by profession, occupation, or
special interest are in a position to have the
desired information.

3. Documentary research which involves stud-
ying records accumulated in local governmental
or organizational files. Some of these materials
are open to public inspection and others can
probably be reviewed through permission from
the authorities concerned.

4. The questionnaire, which requires careful
planning and forethought. Items in question-
naires should be clearly stated so that there can
be no doubt as to information requested.

5. The schedule or check list of items con-
cerning information to be obtained. This
method lends itself particularly to use by pre-
service teachers. «It can guide observation
which may be extended over a period of time,
as would be likely in the program of the teacher
education institution. Then, too, it lends itself
to group use because it is so systematized that
overlapping and serious disagreements can be
checked, or corrected.

These methods may be used separately
or in combination, as exemplified by the
following actual pre-service experiences
in identifying resource-use needs :

Hermese J. Roberts is instructor in education at Southern University,
Scotiandville, Louisiana.

She has been high school teacher; principal

of the Peach County Training School, Georgia; instructor in education
at Fort Valley State College, Georgia, and Bethune-Cookman College,
Florida; and director of teachers’ workshop, Columbus, Georgia. Mrs.
Roberts is a consultant on the advisory committee guiding production
of the regional volume on southern resources and problems. She
served as a member of the Georgia Committee for Cooperation in

Teacher Education of the American Council on Education.

| 144]

teachers in action

Students of Southern University, Louisiana,
made community housing surveys using a com-
bination of interviews and schedule techniques.

Students at Dillard University, Louisiana,
used the interview technique in identifying re-
source-use education needs in the community.

Students at Bethune Cookman College, Flor-
ida, studied their home communities for ex-
amples of resource waste to identify areas
where resource-use education was needed. Com-
bining the method of observation with inter-
view and conference, they invited some local
authorities to visit their classes and confer with
them on resource-use and waste prevention.
They compiled little booklets, made posters, and
produced other educational materials on re-
source-use education.

These and similar experiences are ef-
fective ways of providing the pre-service
teacher with experiences which will help
her to identify resource-use education
needs and prepare her to carry out simi-
lar activities when the task of teaching
rests squarely on her shoulders.

Resource-use Study Experiences

The identification of resource-use edu-
cation needs should lead directly to the
development of study experiences to meet
those needs. Can we not envision limit-
less_ possibilities of experiences with
which students might be provided in or-
der to meet the needs revealed and iden-
tified by some of the techniques outlined
above?

Attention should be called to the many
opportunities of learning by doing, of
teaching through provision of direct ex-
perience with things, of first-hand dis-
covery in the immediate observable en-
vironment, and of direct experimentation
with the various methods and processes
of resource utilization.'

The following examples of study expe-
riences are but a few of the many pos-
sibilities that will provide the pre-service
teacher with functional learnings in re-
source-use education :

A group of pre-service teachers studied the
problem of erosion in Peach County, Georgia,
and, with the teacher of agriculture, planted an
eroded area with pine seedlings. This growth
is now about four or five feet in height and
besides conserving the soil, has provided val-
uable pre-service experience for students who
now have the full responsibility of teaching.

_ Pre-service teachers at the Fort Valley State
College, Georgia, made extensive use of their
study of food production. A detailed descrip-
tion of their activities will provide the best

‘The Miami Workshop Committee, “Conser-
vation and Consumer Education,” The Educa-
tion Digest, Vol. 10 (December, 1944), 26-28.

example of pre-service resource-use education.
Prospective high school teachers of mathematics
used the food production survey schedules as
vital source material for the regular class ac-
tivities. They tabulated the data into com-
parable units by use of a conversion table. This
involved practical and meaningful drill material
in mensuration, equations, graphs, etc.

Prospective high school teachers of home eco-
nomics applied the findings of the food produc-
tion survey to increased conservation of foods.
The survey showed that the families in greatest
need actually conserved the least amount. They,
therefore, undertook the following experiences
and activities: (1) reviewed the findings of the
food survey to note differences between need
and production of foods; (2) studied the facili-
ties the families represented had available for
canning or dehydrating; (3) invited an expert
to demonstrate food preservation; (4) carried
on demonstrations in the community; (5) vis-
ited a family successful in canning ‘and noted
the condition of the conserved food.

Prospective elementary school teachers who
worked on this Education for Production proj-
ect found from their survey a marked difference
between the amount of poultry and poultry
products needed and the amount produced.
They, therefore, with their critic teachers and
pupils, planned and carried through to a suc-
cessful conclusion a school-community enter-
prise on poultry raising. A detailed record of
this activity may be found in the book Educa-
tion for Production. In this book may also be
found complete outlines of the application of
survey findings to the teacher education pro-
gram.

Study experiences provided by the fol-
lowing exercises can be used by the pre-
service teacher as activities to develop her
own knowledge and as assignments in
guiding her pupils in resource-use educa-
tion :

1. List ways in which you and people in
your community are dependent upon each of
the natural resources.

2. List cases of resource conservation or re-
source waste in your community.

3. Have a poster contest showing effects of
resource waste or contrasting effects of re-
source use with resource waste.

4. Conduct projects with school and commu-
nity such as: _ ;

a. Stopping erosion
b. Providing wildlife shelters
c. Gardening or poultry projects.

These activities may serve to suggest
many other study experiences in resource-
use education for the prospective teacher.

Faculty and Community Cooperation

If there is to be effective work in re-
source-use education, the pre-service
teacher must be imbued with responsi-
bility of not only teaching subject mat-
ter, not only seeing the child in relation

[| 145 ]

teachers in action

Photo by Vernon Winslow

A pre-service teacher identifies resource-use
needs through a community survey. She uses
observation, interview, and schedule techniques.

to his environment, but also bringing the
school, home and community, and other
faculty members into teaching focus.

Members of the college faculty not di-
rectly connected with teacher training
may be called upon to cooperate in the
study experiences ot the prospective
teacher. Examples of this from material
already presented in this article are:

The teacher of agriculture was called upon
to assist the prospective teachers in community
service projects, in school beautification proj-
ects, and in pine reforestation projects.

The instructor in statistics and mathematics
was called upon to assist the prospective teach-
ers in the tabulation of their surveys and inter-
preting the mathematical implications and prob-
lems involved.

The sociology instructor assisted with the
techniques for community surveys.

The health education instructor lectured on
health hazards and devices in the community.

These are only a few examples of the
ways in which other members of the fac-
ulty of the teacher education institution
may be brought into teaching focus.

A slightly more difficult problem is en-
countered, however, when it becomes a
question of seeking community coopera-
tion. This problem, though more in-

volved, is not hopeless and can be solved
as P. R. Pierce suggests:

In seeking a sound method of approaching
community leaders, the school looks first to
natural ties with public education. Civic, edu-
cational, and social agencies are most frequently
found in this classification. Having objectives
which can often be implemented by the school,
the leaders of these organizations are more
susceptible to approach on a give-and-take basis
than key people in many industrial and profes-
sional fields. Invitations to librarians, county
agents, scout executives, playground directors
to address assemblies, give demonstra-
tions are virtually certain to meet with
prompt acceptance. Any reasonable request for
assistance by a community agency should be
received gratefully and granted promptly. .. .
Another group having promise for early de-
velopment of school-community relations are
key people in the established professions.2

Nor should we ignore the humble folk
in the community who may have contri-
butions to make to resource-use educa-
tion. The school should develop connec-
tions with the community leaders and
citizens wherever there is an opportunity
to do so.

Edward G. Olsen outlines. some practi-
cal ways to bridge any gaps that may
exist between the school and community.
Among these are resource visitors, inter-
views, field trips, service projects, and
surveys, all of which can be utilized as
exemplified in this article in the prepara-
tion of the pre-service teacher.’

If persons, agencies, and organizations
in the community, and all members of the
college faculty who can assist in the proj-
ects will converge in a concerted attack
on the problems of resource-use educa-
tion, the prospective teacher will be well-
equipped to go forth to do her bit.

Major Problems

It might be helpful to point out here
some of the pitfalls to be avoided and the
major problems needing immediate at-
tention if we are to achieve offective pre-
service experience in resource-use edu-
cation.

We must avoid the pitfall of having
resource-use education come into the
teacher education curriculum as a new
subject instead as a modification and
elaboration of existing subjects. This

? “Selling a Community on Its High School
Program,” Progressive Education, Vol. 22
(January, 1945), 16-21.

* School and Community (New York: Pren-
tice Hall, Inc., 1945).

| 146 ]

ne amerneel

folk
tri-
1ca-
1eC-
and
nity

Cti-
nay
lity.
ter-
and
| as
ara-

ions

the
roj-
rack
1ca-
vell-

1ere
the
at-
pre-
~du-

ying

the
new
and
This

‘hool
22

ren-

a

teachers in action

can be done by incorporating the wealth
of materials available and pertinent into
courses already being taught. Resource-
use education might be made the objec-
tive of some of the field trips and com-
munity activities now provided for pro-
spective teachers. Practice teachers should
be shown how to include it in their les-
son plans for science, for social studies,
etc. Resource-use education should be
an integral part of the program rather
than an added or a superimposed area of
instruction.

Tied closely with this first problem is
the inflexibility of our teachers’ college
programs. In most cases the curriculum
is so inflexible that it is practically im-
possible to secure an adequate allotment
of time for the thorough consideration of
resource-use education. Part of this in-
flexibility is due to teacher certification
requirements. More of the blame, how-
ever, lies in the jealousies of the teachers
of established subject matter areas who
look askance at the new rival for the
honors now accorded the ancient and
revered disciplines. This probably calls
for a re-education of college teachers in
these fields, but until this is well on its
way, resource-use education will suffer
from the suspicious glances of the stub-
born conservatives.

Another problem demanding attention
is the insufficiency of trained personnel.
Still another pitfall to be avoided is that
of making resource-use education voca-
tional training. We must, of course,
ever emphasize the study of “the elements
of human relationships and _ personality
and of the manner in which each of the
social institutions constitute essential re-
sources, even for the conservation and
use of natural resources, in the service of
humanity. It is not enough to make our
curriculum and planning synonymous
with the understanding of material nature
and the development and conservation of
natural resources on the ground that the
sole aim of resource development is for
the use and pleasure of man.’4 But we
must not confuse education in resource-
use with vocational training.

Another major problem is the danger

‘Howard W. Odum, “The Sociologist Looks

at Resource Education,” The Nation’s Schools,
Vol. 35 (January, 1945), 22-23.

of losing sight of our educational objec-
tives in our zeal for resource-use educa-
tion. We should ever inculcate through
precept and practice the philosophy that
all education is designed to produce per-
manent desirable changes in the child,
school, and community. Nor should we
lose sight of the prospective teacher as
part of this interaction. For her we
should direct all resource-use education
experiences toward: (1) the formation,
development, and application of an ever-
broadening philosophy of education and
life; (2) the habit of applying the scien-
tific method to every phase of the work;
and (3) a desire to further study and
develop valuable materials to be utilized
in the practice. Thus we will avoid the
pitfall of losing sight of our educational
objectives for the pre-service teacher.

3v far the most important problem
needing immediate attention, if we are
to achieve effective pre-service experience
in resource-use education, is teaching the
prospective teacher how to translate her
knowledge into actual classroom practice.
She must be taught how_to incorporate
resource-use education into the daily
learning experiences of the children whose
destiny she guides.

If these major problems be constantly
kept in mind as we strive toward effective
pre-service experiences in resource-use
education, we shall more perfectly attain
our goals.

In conclusion, we recapitulate :

The pre-service teacher needs to know
how to identify resource-use needs which
should be considered in education. She
needs to have study experiences to meet
these needs. It is the duty of the teacher-
education institution to provide her with
experiences which will help her to iden-
tify resource-use needs and to develop
study experiences to meet them by bring-
ing into teaching focus all persons and
experiences that can contribute to this
objective.

Only by consistent and conscientious
attempts to serve in this threefold role
can the teacher education institution pro-
vide the pre-service teacher with the
knowledges, skills, habits, and attitudes
essential to an understanding of the place
of resource-use education in the school
program.

[ 147 ]

teachers in action

New Perspectives for
Teachers in Service

by WILLIAM S. TAYLOR and KENNETH R. WILLIAMS

Every school today is being encouraged
as never before to formulate a philosophy

-a statement of what it is doing, what
it thinks it should do, and what it plans
to do. Such a statement should include
a description of the school’s attitude to-
wards community needs and resources,
its concept of its relationship between lo-
cal, state, national, and world problems,
and its viewpoint with respect to the im-
portance of the individual in a world
society.

It is a wise school that develops a care-
fully formulated philosophy of education.
Kach school should be free to determine
its own philosophy, through participation
of the staff and extensive discussion of
basic principles. This philosophy should
meet the needs of the pupils and of the
community which the school serves. The
school’s philosophy, when understood,
accepted, and frequently referred to, can
chart the way to the improvement of the
administrative and supervisory organiza-
tion, staff, plant, library, curriculum, in-
structional program, pupil activity, meth-
ods of evaluation, and outcomes. A
school philosophy should be subject to
continuous restudy and re-evaluation. As
teachers formulate a philosophy for their
school, and afterwards as they continu-
ously rethink their program, they insure
to themselves an opportunity for growth
in in-service education.

A forward-looking staff of teachers,
however, will not be satisfied to do all of

Kentucky.

sion on

the thinking on this problem. They will
want the help that can come from parents
and friends of the school ; from specialists
in the state department of education and
in the institutions of higher education;
from the state departments of health and
conservation ; and all other agencies and
organizations concerned with the develop-
ment of a sound educational program for
the children of the state. The teachers
will seek resources wherever they can be
found and will use them in the develop-
ment and refinement of an educational
program that will yield the largest pos-
sible returns to all of the citizens in the
area served by the school.

Resource-use education is probably the
latest educational term to come into fairly
general use. The concept of resource-use
education, however, is far from new.
Good teachers for years have been using

the resources of their communities to
make education meaningful. Biology
teachers for half a century have used

streams, fields, and woodlands as sources
of materials to make biology interesting
and helpful. They have invited laymen
into their classrooms and on field studies,
people with helpful information about
birds, wild flowers, trees—any kind of
information to make the subject more
interesting and more worthwhile.
Teachers of agriculture, home eco-
nomics, industrial education, and business
education were probably the next to draw
heavily upon the resources of their com-

William S. Taylor is dean of the College of Education, University of
He has been professor of education, University of Texas;
head, Department of Rural Life, Pennsylvania State College; and
member, Pennsylvania State Department of Education.

Mr. Taylor

has served as president, Kentucky Education Association; president,
National Association of Colleges and Departments of Education; vice-
president, American Vocational Association; and chairman, Commis-
Curricular Problems and Research. He is chairman of a
committee producing a volume on the resources of Kentucky.

[ 148 ]

will

ents
lists
and
ion;
and
and
lop-

for
hers
1 be
lop-
onal
pos-

the

the
irly
-use
1eW.
sing
; to
logy
ised
rces
ting
men
lies,
yout
| of
10re

eco-
ness
raw
om-

y of
Kas;
and
ylor
lent,
rice-
mis-
fa

teachers in action

munities to make work in these fields ef-
fective. They believed that the commu-
nity should be used intelligently in the
education of persons who were to enter
farming, homemaking, industry, and busi-
ness. This was necessary, they felt, if
education in these subjects were to re-
sult in the kinds of information, under-
standing, skill, and practice desirable for
vocational efficiency.

Gradually it became evident that re-
source-use education in other fields could
be just as helpful. Health education,
education for citizenship, music education

as a matter of fact, education in all
fields—could profit from the resource-
use philosophy.

The Need for In-service Education

But for years only the alert, intelligent,
wide-awake teachers drew upon the re-
sources of their communities to make
education more stimulating and more
challenging to their pupils. This was to
be expected, for most other teachers had
not been taught how to use resources
other than those found in books. The
only source to which the vast majority of
them had been sent, as students in college,
was the college library. This is an ex-
cellent source but should never become
the only source. Students who have
learned the value of other resources while
in college will find it decidedly easier to
draw upon community resources when
they go out as teachers.

It must be evident to all who are con-
cerned with teacher education that the
great majority of teachers in the public
elementary and secondary schools of the
South today have not been sensitized to
the problems of resource-use education.
If this problem is to be brought to them
understandingly, it must be on an in-
service basis. How this could be done
most effectively was a question that faced

University of Florida.

the South in the late thirties and early
forties.

For about eight years the South has
been diligently at work at the problem
of making the school serve its area more
effectively—of using the resources of the
community to increase the meaning and
the effectiveness of the educational pro-
gram. The first great stimulus to this
emphasis came from the Southern Study
when the staff of the Study began its
program of improvement with three high
schools in each of eleven southern states.
These schools, many of which were su-
perior when they became a part of the
program, profited from the stimulation
that came from helpful visits by the staff
of the Study and other interested per-
sons, and from the opportunity to study
their own problems in summer confer-
ences. Many of them became even more
community-minded and drew heavily on
the resources of their areas to increase
the effectiveness of their instructional
program.

It is doubtful if any single factor has
done as much as World War II to bring
about in-service programs of resource-
use education. When the need for more
food for ourselves and for other nations
became acute, the South embarked upon
a new effort to aid in winning the war
and in feeding our allies. Summer work-
shops were organized in county school
units, in which the teachers were brought
together to study how education in their
particular county could be made to serve
all of the people in the county more help-
fully. The teachers tried to learn all they
could about the needs of their communi-
ties and what resources were available to
help meet these needs. Health officers,
teachers of vocational agriculture and vo-
cational home economics, county agents,
home demonstration agents, county of-
ficials, representatives of the commission

Kenneth R. Williams is dean of the College of Education at the Uni-
versity of Georgia. He came to the University of Georgia as assistant
professor in the College of Education in 1937. He was professor of
school administration and director of war training courses for the
Army Air Forces and the Army Specialized Training Program at the
Mr. Williams is co-author of The Education
of School Administrators.

[ 149 ]

teachers in action

on conservation in such fields as forestry,
wildlife, and soil conservation, and in-
terested laymen were invited to work with
the teachers in discovering the needs of
the community and in planning a com-
munity-wide attack that would aid in
meeting them.

In-service Education Brings Results

It is generally agreed among persons
who participated in these programs that
they were unusually effective. The teach-
ers learned how to use the resources of
their communities by actually using them.
In all of these workshops the problems
of producing and preserving foods, im-
proving housing, conserving clothing,
building better health, and of using all of
the resources of the area helpfully and
intelligently were paramount.

The final test of such teacher-education
programs is, of course, what actually
takes place later in the local school areas.
The great majority of the teachers who
had participated were using the resources
of their communities to make learning
programs more effective. In some in-
stances a new garden vegetable was intro-
duced, such as soybeans or broccoli. In
other schools emphasis was placed on the
repair and painting of homes or on the

Photo by Farm Security Administration

“The final test of such teacher education pro-
grams is, of course, what actually takes place
in the local school areas. ... In one county
a vigorous effort to improve sanitation re-
sulted in the establishment of a county health
department and the employment of a health
officer and a nurse.”

beautification of home sites. In one com-
munity forsythia was planted in every
garden; in another, jonquils. The cam-
paigns for better sanitation produced bet-
ter health conditions generally. In one
county a vigorous effort to improve sani-
tation resulted in the establishment of a
county health department and the em-
ployment of a health officer and a nurse.
Tangible results were evident in nearly
all communities, particularly in the pro-
ducing and preserving of food. But the
outcome that has given greatest promise
of lasting value is the practice of think-
ing, planning, and working together, de-
veloped by the school and the community.

A Cooperative Program in Kentucky
Another means of in-service training
in resource-use education came as a re-
sult of grants from the General Educa-
tion Board to some of the southern states.
One of the effective programs stimulated
and promoted by such a grant was begun
in Kentucky in 1943. Each of seven
teacher-education institutions in the state
was requested to select a county and to
work with the teachérs in that county for
a period of years. The objective was to
improve school and community relation-
ships and to help the teachers use all
available resources in developing a sound
educational program for the people—
children and adults—served by the school.
At the close of the summer session in
1943 the seven institutions, the cooperat-
ing school systems, and members of the
staff of the State Department of Educa-
tion were invited to come together at the
University of Kentucky to make plans
for a cooperative study in teacher educa-
tion. This study was to give special em-
phasis to resource-use education and com-
munity school planning. The program to
be undertaken was carefully studied.
Help was sought from subject-matter
specialists in the sciences, government,
sociology, business, agriculture, and home
economics. Specialists from the Tennes-
see Valley Authority and from teacher-
education institutions where effective
work was being done were invited to
share their philosophy and experiences
with those attending. Plans were made
for visits to institutions, to school sys-
tems, and to governmental agencies that

[ 150]

—.

com-

every
cam-
1 bet-
1 one
sani-
of a
em-
1urse.
early
pro-
it the
omise
hink-
r, de-
unity.

Ky

ining
a re-
duca-
tates.
lated
vegun
seven
state
id to
v for
as to
ition-
e all
ound
ple—
-hool.
on in
erat-
f the
luca-
t the
plans
luca-
| em-
com-
im to
died.
atter
nent,
10ome
ines-
cher-
ctive
d to
ences
made
sys-

that

a

teachers in action

would give further insight into the prob-
lems of resource-use education and com-
munity planning.

In the ensuing year visits were made to
the Holtville School in Alabama and to
Carroll County in Georgia. A conference
was held at Eastern Teachers College in
which Dr. H. A. Morgan was invited to
consult with the participants on the prob-

lems of building a_ better Kentucky
through better education. All the while
each institution was working with its

cooperating school unit in an effort to
improve its educational program.

At the close of the summer session in
1944 a second conference was held. In
this meeting attention was centered upon
the characteristics of a community school.
Committees analyzed the characteristics
of a good community school and formu-
lated a program of work for the follow-
ing year. Visits were planned to the
Vine Grove community school in Ken-
tucky and to the laboratory of the Sloan
Experiment in Applied Economics at the
University of Kentucky. Workshops
were to be held in some of the cooperating
counties, and in each unit some form of
in-service education was to be carried
through the entire school year.

A third conference for all the partici-
pating units was held in 1945; the theme
of this program was the qualifications of
the teacher in the community school.
In February of the following year, rep-
resentatives from the colleges and the
cooperating schools spent three days in
the Knoxville area studying the TVA and
its program. Each participating institu-
tion also held a conference on its campus
with its cooperating county and other in-
vited school units to determine how the
institution could make its teacher-educa-
tion program more effective.

Another conference of the seven insti-
tutions and their cooperating school sys-
tems will be held in August, 1946, to
evaluate the program and to plan the next
steps in in-service education to be under-
taken in Kentucky.

Other Approaches to In-service
Education

Another means of in-service education
that promises to have great value is the

Photo by Farm Security Administration

“Tangible results were evident in nearly all
communities, particularly in the producing and
preserving of food.”

effort of individual states to prepare and
distribute materials dealing with their
resources. Kentucky and Louisiana have
already completed books on their re-
sources, and Virginia has a study in proc-
ess. The Kentucky study, titled Ken-
tucky’s Resources, Their Development
and Use, contains chapters on soil, water,
forests, wildlife, flowering plants, state
parks and recreational areas, minerals,
human resources, and science—the link
between Kentucky’s resources and her
future. More than 200 persons worked
together in producing this volume, which
will be made available as a sourcebook
for teachers in every Kentucky school.
All three studies, stimulated by the Gat-
linburg conferences of the Committee on
Southern Regional Studies and Educa-
tion, have proved to be valuable aids to
in-service education in the states where
they were prepared.

In an effort to stimulate growth of in-
service teachers in the field of resource-
use education, some states have established
commissions or committees on resource-
use education, with professional staffs.
The purpose of such groups is (1) to
coordinate the efforts and utilize the
abilities of the agencies within the state

[151]

teachers in action

with resource-use funetions, and (2) to
assist teachers in service in the improve-
ment of instruction in this area.

Another type of attack at the state
level has been the establishment in the
state department of education of a posi-
tion of supervisor or coordinator of re-
source-use education. The persons ap-
pointed to these positions are assisting
teachers in service in the development
and use of resource-use materials and
in the acceptance and implementation of
the philosophy of resource-use education.
The assistance rendered to teachers by
these representatives of the state depart-
ments of education given largely
through workshops in resource-use edu-
cation and in direct work with teachers
or groups of teachers in their schools and
communities.

is

Under the guidance and stimulation of
the Committee on Southern Regional
Studies and Education, the states in the
southern region are conducting summer
workshops in resource-use education to
which teachers from the elementary and
secondary schools of the several states
are being invited. The workshops will
assist the teacher (1) in better use of
agencies in her community, (2) in more
effective use of materials, and (3) in ex-
pansion of her knowledge of resources.
The teachers attending these workshops
will become key people in each state’s
effort to improve resource-use education.
Follow-up assistance will be given teach-

.

t—~

ers throughout the year by members of
the workshop staffs and by members of
the state department of education staffs.

In a number of instances teacher-edu-
cation institutions will hold such work-
shops “off-campus.” In these workshops
the teachers of a school system may work
intensively on the problems of resource
use in the environment in which they will
be working throughout the year. Such
workshops will provide rich opportunity
for direct identification and use of re-
sources available in the community.

In at least two southern states, Geor-
gia and Kentucky, teacher education in-
stitutions are conducting continuous
workshops throughout the school year in
one or more counties. In such work-
shops teachers have been assisted in more
immediate implementation of the re-
source-use concept and in the improve-
ment of their use of materials and tech-
niques.

These illustrations of the South’s attack
on its educational problems through re-
source-use education could just as well
have been taken from other southern
states, for the attempt to make education
meaningful through the use of all avail-
able resources is southwide. Resource-
use education is already yielding rich
dividends to an area that has too long
been wasting recklessly its heritage of
forests, water, minerals, scenic
beauty—and its people.

soil,

s of

s of
affs.
edu-
ork-
hops
vork
urce

will
Such
inity
-re-

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uous
ar in
-ork-
more

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1 ré-

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ation
ivail-
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teachers in action

Citizens Consider Their Community

by JEAN and JESS OGDEN

The meeting was in what would ordi-
narily be called an “abandoned school.”
It was “abandoned,” however, only in the
sense that the education of the children
who formerly attended it had been taken
over by the new consolidated school sev-
eral miles away. Other community af-
fairs, cultural and recreational, continued
to center around the little old building,
made more attractive and comfortable by
the voluntary work of the citizens to
whom it now belonged.

The subject of the evening was “Tim-
ber Resources of Fluvanna County.” The
program had been planned by a local
housewife. She presided at the meeting,
which was attended by some 125 men,
women, and children of that small rural
community. She began with scripture
reading, singing, and salute to the flag.
Then came an ice-breaker. It took the
form of bingo—but bingo with a differ-
ence. Everyone was asked to list the
names of trees he knew that grew in the
county. These trees, instead of numbers,
became the basis of the hotly contested
game. Prizes were awarded.

Then when everyone had begun think-
ing in terms of trees, the program gradu-
ally became more serious. The son of
the chairman recited a poem on the sub-
ject of the evening. A teacher who was
a life-time resident of that community
read a report on timber in relation to
other resources of the county, which she
had prepared in a countywide workshop
in the community deveiopment conducted
earlier that year by the Extension Divi-
sion of the University of Virginia. The

soil conservation technician was called
on to give a few facts about the relation
of trees to soil. Then came the part we
had been asked to contribute—and the
only part we knew about in advance of
the meeting—two short films, on conser-
vation and utilization of timber resources.

Playing and Learning

The whole thing took about an hour
and a half. It was a good meeting and a
responsive audience. When we told the
chairman so, we took occasion to ask,
“But how did you get so many to come
out for this kind of program?”

“Well,” she replied, “It wasn’t entirely
for this. They want what comes next.”
And then we noticed that in the few min-
utes during which we had talked with her,
the seats had been pushed back against
the wall, three young people were tuning
their fiddles, and couples were already
forming sets for a square dance.

This kind of meeting had become a
custom of that community—education fol-
lowed by recreation. Only those who
came for the former were admitted to
the latter. Out of such meetings had
come many community improvements, in-
cluding extension of electric power lines
and the location nearby of a commercial
cannery to take care of the tomato crop.
Local people did the planning and pro-
vided most of the program. Such devices
as adaptations of bingo, quiz programs,
and spelling matches were used to lighten
the “educational” program. Specialists in
various fields were invited, when needed,
to give information or advice; but they

For the past five years Jean and Jess Ogden have

themselves.

will be published soon.

been working with the Extension Division of the
University of Virginia on a specific experimental
program to find ways of helping communities help
They write the New Dominion Series
and their latest book Small Communities in Action
Mr. Ogden was director of
education of Hull House in Chicago and Mrs. Ogden
was director of the Bryn-Mawr Summer School for

Women Workers in Industry.

[ 153 ]

teachers in action

were only a part of the whole. The meet-
ings were serving an important recrea-
tional need, but they were also resulting
in an alert and informed citizenry.

In few communities can just this com-
bination be found; but in many there are
citizens who are, in one way or another,
getting together to consider needs and
problems in relation to resources and
agencies that are available.

From Conversation to
Community Action

In Washington County, Virginia, it be-
gan with dinner-table conversations fol-
lowed by informal evening discussions of
three or four citizens interested in de-
veloping their county. They invited
others to meet with them. Talk con-
tinued. It ranged over a wide field—local
educational problems ; need for low cost,
modern housing; recreational needs; ex-
tension of public health and medical care
programs; rural electrification; need for
planned industrial development to sup-
plement agriculture. It extended itself
frequently to the world economic situa-
tion, but one woman—the one who started
the talk—always brought it back to the
implications for Washington County and
its citizens.

This informal discussion group of citi-
zens had no official standing except that
which is implicit in a democracy. “Under
whose authorization did you meet?” is a
question which puzzles them. Theirs was
the responsibility and theirs the authority.
After three months, the original group
had grown to ten—and the ten were
ready for organization. A committee was
appointed.

The committee decided that the county
was “rich in natural resources and beauty,
in human resources and _ intelligence.”
But there was a big job to be done “to
develop and advance agriculture, indus-
try, roads, and other resources.” They
were sure it “could be accomplished by
the cooperative efforts of all the people of
the county and that some organization
should be set up charged with the re-
sponsibility.”

That was in the summer of 1944. Now
more than 500 citizens are continuing the
talk about the county—but they are doing
it in small committees that feel the re-
sponsibility not only to plan but also to

put into action the results of planning.
Committee interests include schools,
roads, utilities, agriculture, and industrial
development.

Each committee studies and _ plans.
With the help of the committee on pub-
licity and meetings, it then lets the county
know its findings. The entire association
gets behind the plans when time comes for
action. In one isolated district construc-
tion of 74 miles of line is now under way
bringing electricity to homes and farms.
Extension of the county-owned water
system is under consideration. But care-
ful study must be given to source, quan-
tity, and similar matters before plans be-
come action.

The recreation committee has as much
interest in the three rivers of the county
as has the industrial committee. State
and national parks are very fine, they
say, but equally important is development
of small and easily accessible picnic and
play spots all over the county. In the
midst of so much natural beauty of
streams and mountains, this will not be
difficult—especially with human deter-
mination added to natural resources.

While members of the organization
have been evaluating their county, they
have not been unmindful of state and re-
gional agencies upon which they might
draw for help. The county is on the edge
of the Tennessee Valley Authority area.
A meeting with TVA _ representatives
brought out the fact that considerable
help in surveys and long-range planning
is available from that agency. The State
Planning Board was also consulted.
Members of the local organization met
with representatives of both these agen-
cies “in order to secure for Washington
County the greatest assistance from
both.”

The County Board of Supervisors, at
the request of the executive committee
of the citizens’ group, has designated the
organization as the official planning body
for the county. Last fall. a full-time
executive was employed, to be paid from
membership fees. But the officers stress
the fact that neither they nor the paid
executive can bring about maximum util-
ization and development of county fe-
sources. Only an alert and enlightened
citizenry can do this. The 500 citizens
already concerned see it as their job to

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teachers in action

Photo by Farm Security Administration

“This informal group had no official standing except that which is implicit in a democracy.
‘Under whose authorization did you meet?’ is a question which puzzles them. Theirs was the

responsibility and theirs the authority.”

stimulate and enlighten others—and they
are making real progress. What began
with women’s talk and dinner-table con-
versation has become a force in the
county.

Telling the People

Wherever citizens—a few or large
number—are considering their commu-
nity needs in relation to resources, there
emerges early in their deliberations the
need for “telling the people.” They must
be told in ways that are meaningful and
persuasive. They must know what is
and what might be, in such a way as to
make them want to do something about it.

County papers are usually very helpful.
Some progressive editors have even de-
voted special editions of the Southside
News (Virginia) or the Clayton Tribune
(Georgia) or the Centreville Press (Ala-
bama) to material on local resources.
Others use columns, such as “This Week
in Alabama,” supplied by agricultural or

other agencies. Almost any will use ar-
ticles prepared by local citizens’ councils
or committees about their findings and
programs.

For communities that do not have a
local paper or for people who do not
read newspapers and magazines, citizens
groups are experimenting with other uses
of the printed word.

“We are desperately in need,” a Gooch-
land County farmer wrote to the Exten-
sion Division of the University of Vir-
ginia last spring, “of help in telling peo-
ple about what is happening to their soil
and what they can do about it. We are
fighting an uphill battle for the soils of
Goochland as these same soils are
fiercely charging down hill.”

Then, apparently having re-read what
he had written, he appended a little foot-
note to that last sentence: “I think that’s
pretty good, don’t you?” We did. That’s
one reason the Extension Division of the
University of Virginia is convinced of

[155 ]

teachers in action

the value of collaborating with the per-
sons living in communities where printed
matter is to be consumed. The farmers,
for example, not only know many of the
things that should be said to their neigh-
bors about soil but they can help say
them.

The man who wrote the letter referred
to above is a member of the Board of
Supervisors of the Thomas Jefferson Soil
Conservation District with which the Ex-
tension Division recently began a coop-
erative venture in “telling the people” of
the five counties which comprise the dis-
trict. The Soil Saver, a little four-page
bulletin written and edited by a member
of the staff in consultation with the super-
visors and technicians is mailed out each
month to every family in those counties.
It states simple facts about soil in simple
language. It also suggests persons in
various agencies upon whom the farmer
may call for help. Thus the farmers in
these five counties are being told about
their most precious natural resource—the
soil—and at the same time about the
institutional resources and agencies at
their disposal. The local banks are pay-
ing for this. They consider it a good
investment.

It is too soon to know whether this
indirect collaboration with the people
through the elected officials in a Soil Con-
servation District is as effective as the
more direct collaboration with a county
council out of which it developed. The
Louisa County Citizens’ Council Bulletin
is worked out by committees of the coun-
cil, edited by the staff of the Extension
Division, and mailed directly to every
family in the county. Each issue is the
result not only of “research’”’ by commit-
tee members but also of careful analysis
of that research in order to state it in
terms that will be meaningful to their
neighbors. The process of making a bul-
letin means that several citizens are thor-
oughly “educated” in the subject it covers
—and this process may be more impor-
tant than the product.

Self-study Becomes a Habit

It began in this way. About twenty
leading citizens of the county were in-
vited to meet with members of the staff
of the Extension Division to consider
their county’s needs and resources. At

the second meeting five subjects were se-
lected for special attention—forestry, soil
improvement, nutrition, health, and rec-
reation. A committee was appointed to
investigate each and to report back to
the larger group the following month.
Forestry was the subject in which there
was the most interest, since timber is the
most important source of income for the
county. The forestry committee, there-
fore, was asked to report first.

It may be significant that these citizens
were, at first, largely obliging the people
from the University who were doing
some experimenting in “helping commu-
nities to help themselves.” At the first
meeting of the forestry committee, how-
ever, the emphasis shifted. Members
became so much interested in the ques-
tions they listed that their concern was in
finding answers rather than in helping the
Extension Division with its experiment.
Two typed pages of questions were listed
at that meeting. They were directly re-
lated to Louisa County. What per cent
of the income of Louisa County is from
timber or timber products and industries ?
Has the county the authority to pass leg-
islation placing a minimum on the size
of timber that can be cut for commercial
purposes? Will it be possible and prac-
tical to get the sawmills operating in the
county to agree not to cut timber below
a certain stumpage? How much faster
is timber being marketed than it is
growing ?

As the committee went to work finding
answers to its two pages of questions, in-
terest increased. A sense of urgency be-
gan to be felt. When the result of “re-
search” was reported back to the citizens’
group which had appointed the commit-
tee, it had an enthusiastic reception.
Three subjects were selected and referred
back to the committee for further inves-
tigation.

This time the committee was asked to
bring in specific recommendations on (1)
steps leading to control of fires in Louisa,
(2) practical methods of reforestation,
and (3) most advantageous cutting prac-
tices from point of view of husbanding
Louisa’s timber resources.

That spring (1943) was one of the
worst in many years as far as forest fires
were concerned. It was probably this

[ 156 ]

teachers in action

fact that determined the immediate em-
phasis of the forestry committee. It
obtained from the state forester and dis-
tributed through the schools a large sup-
ply of bulletins on forest fire control. It
placed posters in stores and other public
places. It decided to conduct an intensive
educational campaign before the begin-
ning of the fire season the next spring.
This included an essay contest in all
schools. Cash prizes were provided by
two local lumber companies and two serv-
ice clubs. Preparation for the contest
centered the attention of school children
on the matter during the year. Prize-
winning essays were printed in the Cen-
tral-Virginian. Several neighborhood
meetings were planned at which movies
were shown and information given out.
A plan was made in cooperation with the
state forester for instruction in fire-fight-
ing methods.

As the next spring approached, it was
decided to circularize the county with
leaflets urging caution. Available mate-
rials were studied. Nothing seemed just
right. Most of the pamphlets covered
too much ground and were too general.
So the committee decided to select those
items that were pertinent to their county
and print their own leaflets. Four of
these were prepared, each stressing one
idea only. They were headed, respec-
tively: “Burn Brush Early,” “Burn
3rush Safely,” “Be Careful with Fire,”
“In Case of Fire.” Each bulletin had less
than 100 words. The information per-
tained to fire in Louisa County. The
type was large. Pictures were used. The
bulletins were sent by mail personally
addressed to the head of each family at
intervals of one week during February
and March. In October another bulletin
on forest fires carried special precautions
for hunters. The next spring a sixth
leaflet was distributed. Moving pictures
of burned-over areas were taken and
were shown later throughout the county.

Products and By-products

The committee has no way of estimat-
ing the effectiveness of this educational
campaign but it knows that fires have de-
creased. According to the state forester,
decrease in Louisa County has been
greater than for comparable counties in
which there was no such campaign.

But something else resulted from the
campaign. The locally prepared bulletin
had been effective. Other committees de-
cided to use the device. The Louisa
County Citizens’ Council Bulletin re-
sulted. Seventeen issues have been pre-
pared and distributed in the past two
years covering such subjects as food pro-
duction and conservation, locker retrig-
eration, a medical care plan, buying cer-
tified chicks, and soil conservation. It
was the one on soil that attracted the at-
tention of the Thomas Jefferson Soil
Conservation District and led to the ex-
periment with the Soil Saver.

A similar job of collaboration between
the Virginia Federation of Women’s
Clubs and the Extension Division re-
sulted last fall in the publication of a
study guide entitled Community Quiz;
Some $64 Questions. It is now being
used by local clubs throughout the state.
An editorial in the Richmond Times-
Dispatch evaluates it as follows: “The
federation’s quiz book contains the stuff
which may ferment Virginia imaginations,
if proper conditions for the magic process
are cultivated. Its questions concern the
state’s past and present and how its peo-
ple can use Virginia's resources to build
a better future. The answers are not in
the back of the book, for that would be
too easy. One must go to the sources of
patient students who have studied the
problems over the years, and in going to
them, catch the spirit of their research.”

As citizens learn “to go to the sources
of patient students” and to relate the re-
sults of their research to community
needs, they find the way to a richer life
for themselves and their communities. It
is to this end that the Extension Division
of the University of Virginia has for the
past two years offered the services of
staff members in local workshops “to en-
courage and stimulate community groups
to consider the resources and assets of
their counties against the needs, wishes,
and desires of the group for their com-
munities; then to think and plan con-
cretely to create a more satisfying per-
sonal and community life by using and
organizing their resources within the
framework of tested and workable prin-
ciples and practices of community organi-
zation.”

[ 157 ]

teachers in action

The Minister and the Land

by VLADIMIR HARTMAN

In the past decade there has been a re-
newed interest in the rural church and
in the community of which it is a part.
Many ministers have seen that adequate
resources are the essential prerequisites
for any long-term effective church pro-
gram. A church cannot minister to peo-
ple when they have moved because of
inadequate land holdings, worn-out soil,
or for the lure of economic opportunities
in another region. Through studies of
their own communities, many ministers
have come to greater understanding of
community needs and of a realization of
the relationships which are essential.

New Awareness in Church Leadership

Throughout the United States today,
there is a new awareness on the part of
religious leaders concerning the place of
the rural church in the total church pro-
gram. These leaders know that the rural
areas are the seed beds of population and
of the future members of the church; the
quality of life in these areas, then, is a
significant determinant of the quality of
our total citizenry of tomorrow.

The church is doing much to train
those preparing for rural leadership; it
also has an effective though limited pro-
gram of in-service training for those al-
ready in the field. In recent years many
of the theological seminaries have added
departments of rural church and rural
sociology which are equipped to give men
specialized training. Theological sem-
inaries are now encouraging college stu-
dents who plan to do rural work to ma-
jor in agricultural economics, rural so-
ciology, animal husbandry, and _ related
fields. Some theological seminaries with-

Southern Churchmen.

North Carolina.

out rural sociology departments make it
possible for students to receive some of
their training in a college of agriculture,
where they receive credit applicable to
their theological course. Other semi-
naries also give graduate scholarships for
this kind of specialized training.

The Committee on Town and Country,
composed of representatives from the
Home Missions Council of North Amer-
ica, the Federal Council of the Churches
of Christ in America, and the Interna-
tional Council of Religious Education,
has sponsored studies of “the church and
the land” in many sections of the coun-
try. This committee coordinates the
rural work of approximately thirty de-
nominations and has sponsored two na-
tional convocations of town and country
ministers. The committee published a
monthly bulletin on the town and country
church. Many interdenominational lead-
ers are doing field work with rural min-
isters under the Committee’s direction.
Schools and institutes are held for rural
ministers in cooperation with agricultural
colleges, agricultural and social agencies,
denominational schools, and denomina-
tional groups. Many of the denomina-
tions have rural church committees with
executive secretaries and directors of
rural church work who are in continuous
contact with the rural ministers. Through
these channels there is available to rural
ministers training in the importance, con-
servation, and proper use of all resources.

The Catholic Church, through the Na-
tional Catholic Rural Life Conference,
has embarked upon a rural program. It
is building this program around the fam-

As field secretary of the Council of Southern Mountain Workers,
Vladimir Hartman works in the field with rural ministers of all de-
nominations in the southern highlands.
man of the Rural Reconstruction Commission of the Fellowship of
He is an ordained Baptist minister.
fall of 1944 he directed a work conference in resource-use education
for rural ministers at Western Carolina Teachers College, Cullowhee,

Reverend Hartman is chair-

In the

[ 158 ]

a

teachers in action

ily and is seeking to establish and per-
petuate communities on the land.

Another service to rural church leaders
has been that of the Christian Rural Fel-
lowship. In 1935 this organization began
a monthly publication The Christian
Rural Fellowship Bulletin. The aim of
this organization has been a noteworthy
one: to promote christian ideals for agri-
culture and rural life; to interpret the
spiritual and religious values which in-
here in the processes of agriculture and
in the relationships of rural life; to mag-
nify and dignify the rural church ; to pro-
vide a means of fellowship and coopera-
tion among rural agencies—all this, to-
ward a christian rural civilization.

Resource-use Objectives of
Rural Ministers

The Friends of the Soil, of the Fellow-
ship of Southern Churchmen, has done
much to make men conscious of their
stewardship of the soil. The objectives
of this organization are synonymous with
the objectives of rural ministers every-
where who are aware of life’s common
trinity: God, the Earth, and Man:

(1) To lead men to regard the earth as
holy and to cultivate a reverence toward
it and especially the life-giving soil upon
which the well-being of our people de-
pends

(2) To strengthen and fortify the
rural church as the servant of God in its
task of bringing redemption to the land
and its people

(3) To declare by work and deed the
message of the Christian religion regard-
ing the right use of the soil and of the
just relationships that must exist between
man and man if we are to build here a
nation of free people

(4) To strive for such economic and
social arrangements on the land as shall
afford justice, security, and a more abun-
dant life for those who till the soil

(5) To seek to use the land for the
preservation of the home and the enrich-
ment of the family

(6) To work toward the development
of a policy of diversity and abundance in
agriculture and to seek a healthy balance
between industry and agriculture in the
region

(7) To sponsor such legislation as will

enhance and promote the welfare of rural
America; to cooperate with federal and
state agencies engaged in improving the
health and economic security of our peo-
ple upon the land, and all other agencies
that are working toward a just rural
order

(8) To work for reforestation, soil
reclamation, flood control, crop diversifi-
cation

(9) To honor publicly those who have
performed exceptional services in rural
areas.

Friends of the Soil has done a valuable
service for ministers through two book-
lets, A Primer of the Soil and Stewards
of the Soil.

On August 24, 1945, a statement of
principles on “Man’s Relation to the
Land” was made public. It was signed by
seventy-five Roman Catholics, Protes-
tants, and Jews, representing the National
Catholic Rural Life Conference, The
Committee on Town and Country of the
Home Missions Council of North Amer-
ica, the Federal Council of the Churches
of Christ in America and the Interna-
tional Council of Religious Education,
and the Jewish Agricultural Society.

The “Lord’s acre plan,” which is now
being used by rural churches of all de-
nominations throughout the world, is do-
ing much to help rural people see that
the earth’s resources should be conserved
and used for the highest good of man-
kind. As rural people work together on
such projects, they become aware of the
spiritual significance of natural resources.
They feel that the “earth is the Lord’s”
and that they are God’s fellow workers.

Taking the Seminary to the Corn Field

The Home Missions Council of North
America, in cooperation with agricultural
colleges, denominational schools, and re-
gional organizations, has been doing much
through conferences and institutes to
make rural ministers aware of the re-
sources which are in their communities.
They are taking the seminary to the corn
field and to the rural preachers. Much
work has been done among southern
Negro sharecropper preachers who have
had little training. In the southern moun-
tains less than one in nine of the preach-
ers is a graduate of both college and

[ 159]

teachers in action

*y +. as es
fe ee e*

Courtesy of Farmers’ Federation

The churches today are helping rural ministers see the “relationship between good churches,
good homes, and good land; to see the relationship between soil erosion and soul erosion.”

seminary. Eighty percent have attended
neither college nor seminary. Two out
of five of these men have not completed
elementary school ; one in twenty-five has
not been to school at all and several can-
not even read. It is these men that the
Home Missions Council is most anxious
to serve. Within recent years many of
these men have participated in the con-
ferences on “building the kingdom of
God in the countryside” and “the minis-
ter and his community.” In these con-
ferences the leaders strive for the follow-
ing goals:

(1) To help the preachers discover the
resources of their communities which can
be used and developed. These resources
are three: natural, human, spiritual.
There is a relationship between and an
interdependence of these resources. They
are all good. They come from God.
(Many untrained or semi-trained minis-
ters speak of the “spiritual” and the
“worldly” as mutually exclusive, divid-
ing life into separate categories. )

(2) To train them in the use and

stewardship of the resources so that they
may know the relationship between good
churches, good homes, and good land; to
see the relationship between soil erosion

and soul erosion. It is important for the
ministers to see what land means in terms
of human values when it is conserved.
They are taken on field trips where they
can hear from farmers stories of reha-
bilitation and reclamation. One old min-
ister said during a conference: “This is
the first time I have ever recognized the
relationship between God, Man, and the
Land.”

(3)To get rural ministers and other
rural leaders together for the purpose of
discussing areas of community improve-
ment. Rural ministers in the South should
know and understand the programs of the
county agent, home agent, Farm Security
Administration supervisor, soil conserva-
tionists, foresters, public health officers,
public welfare workers, and other leaders.
It is advantageous for ministers to learn
from others who are working with the
same people. The rural leaders who

[ 160 ]

teachers in action

know the preachers can tell them how
they feel about the church and its pro-
gram. The preachers are given an oppor-
tunity to express themselves. This is a
two-way educational process which cre-
ates understanding, sympathy, and good-
will.

(4) To help them recognize the possi-
bilities of their churches as community
centers; as an integrating and coordinat-
ing force interested in the total welfare
of man and the improvement of commu-
nity life.

(5) To help create a fellowship be-
tween ministers within an area across de-
nominational lines.

The Preacher as Community Leader

In order for a minister to do effective
work it is imperative that he have a com-
plete understanding of his community
and its resources. He must be aware of
the social and economic trends within his
community and its relationship to other
communities. He must know how his

people earn their living and what their
level of living is: what the primary in-

terests of the people are; what resources
they have. A knowledge of community
needs is basic if the minister is to envisage
its possibilities. The job of enumerating
all elements in the community is a never-
ending task, but a preacher who is en-
couraged to study his own community
will be better able to see his role and per-
form it much more effectively. Once a
preacher becomes conscious that his work
is in a community rather than with just
the members of his own “flock” or con-
gregation, his understanding of steward-
ship will be broadened. He will become
aware of new relationships; religion will
be part of all life and not just a segment.
This new conception of stewardship will
be related to the land and to all the com-
munity institutions as well as to “money,
time, and talents.” Perhaps for the first
time in his ministry the preacher will de-
liver a sermon on “the sacredness of the
soil” or “the holy earth,” and he will find
joy in its preparation and delivery and a
fine response from his people. A preacher
has a heart-warming experience when he
becomes aware of the soul-soil relation-

ship.

teachers in action

The Librarian Looks

At Resource Development

by MARY U. ROTHROCK

“This region is bursting with problems
caused by lack of information about
proper land-use,” said a land-use special-
ist to a group of librarians a short while
ago. His statement supports.the familiar
observation that a man’s judgment is no
better than his information. It helps to
emphasize both the need for resource-use
education and the importance of educa-
tional materials in solving the problem.
Materials are indeed a central problem
of resource-use education. The problem
actually lies not so much in the mate-
rials themselves as in how they can be
got first into the hands and then into the
thinking of the people who need them.
Librarians, among others, are responsible
for making materials about community
resources readily available to everybody.
They also share the responsibility for
getting ideas from printed pages into
human minds.

Supplying Tools for
Regional Development

Sound regional development is achieved
only through the efforts and abilities of
the people who live in the region. Gen-
eral understanding of wise resource use
is required. More than that, the people
must supply technological skills, manage-
ment abilities, and creative imaginations
for resource development. Books, pam-
phlets, films, and similar materials are
essential tools for cultivating these quali-
fications; and libraries—in communities,
schools, colleges, and research agencies—

are the institutions developed by our so-
ciety for administering them.

Infinite variety characterizes the mate-
rials which treat of one or another phase
of resource use. Advertising leaflets, sci-
entific reports, picture stories, research
bulletins, posters, film strips, films—all
are media for resource-use education.
But these are incomplete and segmental
in their treatment. Usually they empha-
size only one phase of the total problem.
A balanced, comprehensive understanding
of resources and their interrelationships
emerges only when the skilled teacher,
using a variety of materials, selects and
combines pertinent facts and ideas to
meet specific recognized needs.

This exercise of conscious choice—the
opportunity to evaluate, to select the bet-
ter and reject the less good—which is in-
herent in the library’s relatively large as-
sortment, is itself a useful educational ex-
perience. After having made this selec-
tion, the teacher may then with confidence
add other more specialized material from
whatever other sources there may be
available. But it should be borne in mind
that the library, with its established rou-
tines for checking lists of publications, for
buying, arranging, and distributing all
sorts of printed matter, should be ex-
pected to provide, maintain, and circulate
the comprehensive general collection of
materials for resource-use education for
its community, whether the community
be school or college, city or open country.

Education for resource development is

Mary U. Rothrock has been specialist in library service with the Ten-

nessee Valley Authority since September, 1933.

Prior to that she

was librarian of Lawson McGhee Library, the city and county library

of Knoxville,

Tennessee.

Miss Rothrock is president-elect of the

American Library Association and is a member of the Tennessee and

Southeastern Library Associations.

She is author of Discovering

Tennessee, a book on the history of that state.

| 162 |

teachers in action

concerned with the entire population, not
those of school age alone. It is a prob-
lem whose solution lies as much in adult
education through individual reading,
club programs, and other informal means,
as in classroom instruction of youth.

And at this point it is important to re-
member that most of the books which
adults will have an opportunity to read
about resource use and regional develop-
ment will be books from libraries; there
is no other source available. Very few
significant books on these subjects get
into the hands of the general public ex-
cept from library shelves. Furthermore,
the community which lacks library service
is usually deficient in telephones, radios,
book ownership, magazine subscriptions,
and other means for dissemination of
ideas. Educationally it is a hot spot.
How Well Prepared Are
Southern Libraries?

Since libraries occupy this. strategic
position, it is necessary to ask how well
prepared they are to discharge their re-
sponsibility. Not very well. Statistics

are not readily available for the entire
group of southern states, but in seven
Tennessee Valley states, which may be

regarded as typical, it has been found
that (1) two thirds of the population lack
libraries which contain currently signifi-
cant materials on regional resources and
problems; (2) book collections in both
public and research libraries are many
million volumes short of the national
average; (3) per capita expenditures for
public libraries are less than one third the
national average; (4) thousands of new
library buildings are needed; and (5)
library personnel is inadequately in-
formed about the resources of the region
and the printed materials which relate to
them.

It is uncomfortable to face this picture.
But encouragement may be taken in the
fact that, like the man on his back, li-
braries are looking up. Within the past
decade in these seven typical states, the
number of people who have library serv-
ice within reach has increased from
6,600,000 to 12,700,000. The number of
books in public libraries has grown from
4,000,000 to 7,000,000 and the number of
books borrowed from public libraries has
increased from 19,000,000 to 31,000,000

a year. State aid has stimulated the crea-

tion of new county and regional libraries,
and bookmobiles travel many thousands
of miles of country roads every month.
There is reason to believe that statistics
for the other southern states are similar.

Even these general statements are
enough to indicate that libraries, public,
school, college, and research, have a tre-
mendous—yes, tremendous—potential
power for helping bring about general
community understanding of wise re-
source use. Encouraging though this is,
the fact remains that libraries are not
now making full use of their strategic
opportunities for extending public knowl-
edge of resource-use development. Some
of the limitations in facilities—such as
buildings, financial support, and book col-
lections—have been mentioned. There
are other difficulties, less tangible perhaps
but no less real, which have their origin
in professional traditions.

Obstacles to Library Effectiveness

This whole field of resource-use edu-
cation bristles with specialists. Public
health officers, county agents, foresters,
teachers, librarians—craft-minded through
educational experience—hold tenaciously
to their specializations; they sometimes
find it hard to enter whole-heartedly into
cooperative efforts to present an over-all
picture where specializations dissolve and
the whole emerges. Moreover, even when
they see the logic of this with respect to
a specific situation, they are still acting
within the framework of state and na-
tional specializations which obstruct
wholly effective cooperation.

Librarians must make some difficult
decisions before they are ready to become
all-out administrators of resource-use ma-
terials. First, historical tradition from as
far back as Alexander the Great makes
them conservers, rather than diffusionists.
Tradition depicts the ideal librarian as
one whose books are safely locked up,
one to whom the widespread dissemina-
tion of ideas is a matter of little concern.
The compulsions of modern life have
cracked this tradition; in large measure
it is repudiated, yet it lingers somewhere
in the subconscious mind and contributes
something to the total library attitude.

Again, librarians are schooled to main-
tain judicial poise—to preserve evidence
impartially on all sides of a controversial
subject. Thus the librarian is slow to

[ 163 |

teachers in action

Photo by Tennessee Valley Authority

What is his problem? Beekeeping, poultry
care, nutrition, or just relaxation? The library
can help.

become a crusader, even for a cause to
which in her heart and mind she may be
wholly devoted. And, further, from li-
brary school on she is drilled in the con-
viction that library service is for the vol-
untary seeker—that anything which sa-
vors of compulsion upon the reader vio-
lates somehow the spirit of freedom
whose preservation is a cherished pur-
pose.

A substantial obstacle to the effective-
ness of libraries for resource development
lies in the fact that librarians, like teach-
ers, too often lack concrete subject knowl-
edge of the resources of the region in
which they live, and of the printed ma-
terials which relate to them. The li-
brarian may know how to buy, catalog,
and circulate books; but not what books
to buy, catalog, and circulate. Similarly
the teacher may know how rather than
what to teach. Remedy for these limit-
ing attitudes seems to lie in broader pro-
fessional education; in the re-education
of specialists in service—librarians, teach-
ers, and other specialists as well.

In short, the librarian like the teacher,
the health officer, the county agent, and
other specialists is caught and shaped in
the mold of her specialization. Those
who are concerned with the total problem

of resource use must recognize and find
ways of overcoming these barriers of
attitude as well as those arising from
deficient facilities.

Perhaps the heavier responsibility at
this point rests on the librarians because
of the peculiar characteristics of their
profession. For, as a public health offi-
cer observed three or four years ago to
a library group, “Libraries are great cata-
lyzing forces. Librarians can direct the
results of research to the respective dis-
cipline to which they pertain. Through
disseminating the information, they can
do the coordinating on this great job. It
is important to lower the death rates from
diseases, but it is still more important to
get down to the bottom of the problems,
to learn the factors involved and how to
remove the basic causes of trouble. That
is fundamental.”

Breaking Down Barriers

Efforts are being made by library
schools and other agencies to meet these
and other problems of continuing profes-
sional education. Training institutes for
county and regional librarians, library
clinics, and workshops are held each year
in most of the southern states. They
offer appropriate and effective opportu-
nities for presenting to librarians in serv-
ice the subject of resource-use education
—with the whole story of its problems
and its promise.

Evidence that librarians are awake to
the importance of resource development
may be found in the organization in 1941
of the Tennessee Valley Library Council.
The Council’s purposes are: (1) to study
the basic social and economic problems
of the Tennessee Valley states; (2) to
serve aS an interpretative and liaison
group in directing the efforts of libraries
toward the solution of these problems;
and (3) to promote the cooperation of
libraries among themselves and with re-
lated agencies to these ends. Restrictions
on travel and other difficulties prevented
meetings of the full council during the
war years. In May, 1944, however, a
small group of librarians from Tennessee
Valley states met at Gatlinburg to discuss
some of the barriers which operate
against significant contributions by libra-
ries to general understanding of regional
problems. As means of strengthening li-

| 164 ]

teachers in action

braries in the Southeast the group pro-
posed conferences, institutes, and other
forms of in-service training, detailed
studies of specific problems, and a general
study of library resources, needs, and
goals, with suggested action programs.

In spite of war-time restrictions, a
number of states have made substantial
progress with institutes, conferences, and
other in-service training devices. A spe-
cific plan for accomplishing the third pro-
posal—a study of library resources, needs,
and goals—will be the subject of discus-
sion in a special called meeting of the
Council in May, 1946.

Libraries Aid Resource Development _
To this point we have said that mate-
rials are a central problem of resource-
use education and that the library is an
institution created by society to adminis-
ter educational materials. We have iden-
tified some obstacles in library facilities
and attitudes, and have pointed out some
encouraging factors in regard to effective
library participation in resource-use edu-
cation. It is only just to say now that
more than a few libraries are already ac-
tive in resource-use education. :

Most school and public libraries main-
tain pamphlet collections and clipping and
picture files from which teachers’ kits
can be assembled quickly to meet special
instructional needs. Whether the subject
is coal, lumber, soil conservation, or
health, the school teacher, club program
chairman, or community leader in most
cities and many towns is now able to turn
with confidence to the library and find
pictures, pamphlets, magazines, and books
which expand his subject and give it its
place in the whole field of regional de-
velopment. In a growing number of
cases the library can provide slides or a
projector and a carefully selected film.

A few years ago, Cherokee, Clay, and
Graham Counties, North Carolina, which
are served by the Nantahala Regional
Library, found themselves on the thresh-
old of a rapidly developing tourist busi-
ness, for which they were not prepared.
The regional librarian took initiative in
helping plan and organize a series of
meetings which were attended by local

merchants, hotel managers, filling station
operators, and other businessmen to study
the needs of industry and what commu-
nity changes should be made in order
that the region might reap full benefit
from this new _ recreational resource.
When the Murphy, North Carolina,
Town Council proposed issuing a map
and descriptive folder of the region, it
was the library which assembled and ar-
ranged the facts and helped see the folder
through the press.

This library has exerted leadership in
other ways, too. For several years it
had cooperated with local clubs in ar-
ranging monthly exhibits in the library,
built around subjects of current interest.
One such exhibit was of minerals and
gems native to the region, another of
products manufactured in the three coun-
ties, a third of local handicrafts. Even
if these exhibits had been less impressive
than in fact they were, they still would
have served the important purpose of en-
gaging the participation of many indi-
viduals in focussing attention and interest
on the effective use of local resources.

“See these books on bee-keeping ?” said
a bookmobile librarian in another state.
“The home demonstration agent said at a
club meeting last week that this county

Photo by Tennessee Valley Authority

“|. . most of the books which adults will have
an opportunity to read about resource use and
regional development will be books from li-
braries .. .”

[ 165 ]

teachers in action

is one of the best counties in the United
States for bees, and that it produces only
one-seventh of the honey it needs. So I
went back to the library and got these
books. I think we can change that situ-
ation in a year or two.”

Experiences in regional libraries of
western Tennessee and Kentucky have
been similar. Physical changes resulting
from dam construction and the formation
of lakes by impounded water are changing
men’s ways of making a living. In some
instances, former occupations are being
given up and new ones adopted. In
others, lagging businesses get new stimu-
lus from changed conditions. In West
Tennessee, for example, the University
of Tennessee Junior College Regional
Library reported demands for books on
roadside markets, on management of
restaurants and tourist courts and, from
a local pottery, on designs for earthen-
ware.

State
miles

At the same time, the Murray
College Regional Library, twenty

away in Kentucky, was organizing a ma-

terials bureau to serve the teachers in
the rural schools of two of its counties.
A visitor to its headquarters office at any
time will observe stacks of pamphlets and
bulletins collected from state and federal
departments, industrial concerns, insur-
ance companies, educational institutions,
churches, labor organizations, and many
other sources, on a hundred different
phases of resource development. And he
recognizes that these materials will find
their right destination, not through hap-
hazard distribution, but by the consciously
planned administration of a librarian in
touch with the instructional program of
the schools and acquainted with the ma-
terials useful for it.

These are only a few specific illustra-
tions of ways in which librarians can as-
sist in resource-use education. They could
be multiplied manyfold. The ways in
which the librarian can help are innumer-
able provided she recognizes the library’s
responsibility as the community’s mate-
rials center and her own responsibility as
one member of the community’s educa-
tional staff.

teachers in action

The County Agent

Teaches Resource Use

by HARRY B. WILLIAMS

The use of resources to satisfy human
needs and desires is in one sense a process
of overcoming barriers between man and
his resources. Some of these barriers are
placed in the way by nature—the earth
and rock overlaying a valuable mineral.
Modern technology has steadily reduced
natural barriers to resource use. Some
of the obstacles, however, are placed in
the way by man himself. These inciude
ignorance, inertia, tradition, prejudice,
and monopoly. Resource use is as much,
or more, a product of the relations be-
tween man and man as of the relations
between man and resources.

Against the natural barriers to resource
use a community—or a region, a nation,
or the world—can level the weapons of
modern science and technology. Against
the human barriers it can—in a democ-
racy—level the weapons of democratic
community action. These weapons are
not so precise as those of science and
technology, but they are as old as culture
and they are becoming more precise and
better understood with the gradual ma-
turing of a science of society. That they
can reduce the human barriers is shown
by every story of full, balanced, and ef-
ficient resource use to satisfy human
needs and desires. They include knowl-
edge and understanding, skills, leader-
ship, organization, cooperation, and mo-
tivation.

Leadership for Community Progress
Knowledge and skills do not just walk
into a community and announce them-

selves, however; organization does not
spring full grown from the brow of main
street ; cooperation does not “just grow”
like Topsy; motivation does not push
people through the barriers to resource
use until it is translated into specific ac-
complishments—it can push people
around in circles as well as straight ahead.
All depend upon people’s attitudes toward
what resources are and how they should
be used. Leadership is a vital factor in
the process of knitting these forces into
a pattern of effective resource use. [ead-
ership acts as a catalyst to organize hu-
man aspiration into action.

Leadership is not the only factor of
importance, by any means. Here, how-
ever, we are not concerned with analysing
all the complex human relationships in-
volved in resource use. Nor must we
discuss the intricate questions of leader-
ship as a social phenomenon. We are
interested in one process toward commu-
nity resource development, resource-use
education, and how one leader, the county
agent, can be a vital spark in that process.
We know that leadership, by leading peo-
ple the wrong way, can help make the
barriers higher instead of lower, and that
there are many pitfalls into which leaders
can slip. We also know that county
agents—like any leader—are beset by
most of the problems and given to many
of the pitfalls. But we are interested in
the opportunities of the county agent as
a community leader in resource-use edu-
cation.

The county agent—like the minister,

As research assistant in the Institute for Research in Social Science,
University of North Carolina, Harry B. Williams is collaborating with
state Agricultural Extension Service leaders in a study of the use of
educational methods and materials by county agents in North Carolina.
Mr. Williams is on leave from the Tennessee Valley Authority, where
he was specialist in educational research on the Training and Educa-
tional Relations Staff and, before that, administrative assistant in the

Personnel Department.

| 167 |

teachers in action

the school teacher, the local librarian, the
community planner, and others—is a
teacher of resource use at the crucial level
where knowledge, skills, attitudes, moti-
vation, and action achieve their true and
integral unity. Resource-use education
in its regional, national, and world aspects
is a process of the large society, and as
such it tends to share the usual division of
labor between research, teaching, plan-
ning, and administration. At the commu-
nity level, highly specialized divisions of
labor tend to break down in the need for
unity of action as the community faces
whole, not subdivided, problems. At this
level community leaders, while having
areas of special competence, clientel, and
interest, must be able to operate more ef-
fectively through the broad range from
research to action.

Helping People Help Themselves

The position of county agricultural ex-
tension agent was set up to carry out the
purposes of the Smith-Lever Act of
1914. This Act of Congress authorized
and provided for a program to “aid in
diffusing among the people of the United
States useful and practical information in

subjects relating to agriculture and home
economics ; and to encourage the applica-

tion of the same... .” This program is
a cooperative one between the counties,
the states, through the land-grant col-
leges, and the federal government,
through the United States Department of
Agriculture. The county agent is the
joint employee of these three levels of
government. His is the job of working
with farm people, day by day, to carry
out the purpose of the Act. The Act is
interpreted to mean that the job of the
county agent is to help people help them-
selves.

The range of the county agent’s activi-
ties is nearly as great as the range of
needs, problems, and opportunities of
America’s farm people. He helps farm-
ers learn to handle practical problems—
culling chickens, vaccinating livestock,
laying out terraces, registering animals,
understanding government programs. He
helps them in short-time and long-time
planning—planning crop rotations, build-
ing up soils, developing permanent pas-
tures, building sound herds and flocks,
planning land use, using the farm wood-
lot. Through 4-H Club work, he helps

youth become good farmers and citizens.
He helps in neighborhood, community,
and county plans for group action on a
wide range of activities to conserve and
develop resources, raise levels of living,
and enrich rural life. County agents have
helped stimulate industries to process, and
markets to absorb local products resulting
from agricultural development programs.

The methods by which the county
agent carries out these activities are
usually called “extension methods.” They
are teaching methods—methods of edu-
cation. Extension methods include meet-
ings, visits to farms, farm tours, visual
aids, printed materials, correspondence,
the use of newspapers and radio, personal
interviews, the use of voluntary leader-
ship, result demonstrations, and method
demonstrations—and all combinations of
these. Demonstrations are the core of
extension methods, for in them a farmer
teaches and convinces himself, and his
neighbors share this process. As Seaman
A. Knapp said, “What a man hears he
may doubt. What he sees he may pos-
sibly doubt. But what he does himself,
he cannot doubt.”

The county agent must know the coun-
ty, its history and traditions, its institu-
tions, its natural resources, and its peo-
ple. He must know the community and
neighborhood leaders and—as the tremen-
dous work load of war years re-empha-
sized—how to secure their help. He must
know group membership patterns, social
and economic groupings, farm tenure pat-
terns, the educational level of the people,
and much more.

For in one way, a fact may not be a
fact when the agent is meeting with a
neighborhood group or talking to a farm-
er, because its meaning and its acceptance
are conditioned by so many factors. A
shiny new research fact from an agri-
cultural experiment station—a new and
better seed combination for permanent
pasture, for example—is a babe in the
woods of tradition, prejudices, misinfor-
mation, folkways, and other social reali-
ties. It is the county agent who leads it
through the woods into the minds and
practices of farm people, across the bar-
riers and into patterns of resource use.
This is the essence of his responsibility,
to make scientific information under-
standable, meaningful, and motivating to
people who can use it to help themselves.

[ 168 ]

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teachers in action

Courtesy of North Carolina Agricultural Extension Service

The resource-use facts and principles the county agent teaches are not academic considerations;
they are directly related to the everyday tasks of developing better living on the farm. Here
a county agent teaches farmers to treat peanut seed to control disease.

He must interpret the new fact, make it
clear, fit it smoothly into the people’s way
of living, working, and thinking, guide it
into fruition on the farms of the county.

Favorable Conditions for Teaching

This complexity of conditions is a dif-
ficult and trying problem. , It is also the
county agent’s great strength as a teacher
of resource use. Knowing these factors
and having the knowledge and skills to
meet them, he can teach resource-use
facts and principles much more effective-
ly. He can be a powerful force in that
crucial area where knowledge and action
become one.

As a teacher of resource use, the coun-
ty agent benefits from working within a
functional learning situation. The re-
source-use principles and practices he
teaches are not academic considerations.
The farmer is using resources every day.
The county agent helps him to use them
scientifically, evoke their fuller fruits,
and ensure their replenishment. If they
are successful, it means a more comfort-
able and satisfying life for the farmer.
In this situation, the teacher is not both-
ered by false dichotomies between prac-

tical and theoretical, or liberal and voca-
tional. The county agent, therefore, has
a striking opportunity to make resource-
use education meaningful.

A third favorable condition the county
agent has as a teacher of resource use is
that the Smith-Lever Act allows him con-
siderable freedom from legislative re-
quirements and limitations. This gives
him freedom both to use and teach a
broad range of subject matter and to use
a wide range of educational methods,
materials, and media with which to
achieve his objectives. He can take ad-
vantage of the functional learning situa-
tion and his relative freedom to emphasize
electrification, housing, health, forestry—
whatever aspects of resource use that
need attention, and all aspects in terms of
balance and interrelationships.

On every farm and in every commu-
nity—in every region, nation, the world—
the task of resource development is many-
sided. If you touch one problem or one
resource, it leads to others. Soil building
is related to water conservation and this
to forest conservation; the health and
vigor of the people are basic to all commu-
nity growth and this is related to many

| 169 |

teachers in action

things—housing and sanitation, diet, soil
quality, crop diversification, poultry and
livestock, stream pollution; electricity is
a tireless servant to farm and community
resource use; local industries and occu-
pations may be vital to a balanced agri-
cultural program ; the services of schools,
government, community planning,
churches, and other institutions have
their responsibilities to resource develop-
ment.

The county agent cannot be an expert
in every phase of activity to which agri-
cultural problems lead. In the Extension
Service, the agricultural experiment sta-
tion, the state agricultural college, and the
United States Department of Agricul-
ture, however, is a great pool of. scien-
tific knowledge and expert skills, upon
which he draws. There is continuing re-
search on agricultural problems ; there are
specialists in poultry, agricultural engi-
neering, animal husbandry, forestry,
agronomy, and in many other subjects ;
there are agricultural economists and
rural sociologists, experts in extension
methods, and others.

His role in a team that can bring the
services of a variety of experts to bear on

problems, therefore, is a fourth condi-
tion favorable to effective teaching of re-

source use. He helps the people to iden-
tify needs and problems, and to focus the
sources of assistance upon them. His
effectiveness depends to an important
degree upon how well he mobilizes these
resources at the right place, at the right
time. It likewise depends upon how well
these resources are organized to serve
him, how well they are geared to the
needs of farm people.

The Need for Cooperation

In developing community resources,
then, we see the opportunity for the coun-
ty agent to function as a leader, helping
to develop and mobilize knowledge and
understanding, skills, organization, coop-
eration, motivation, and leadership. He
is helping to stimulate and organize the
energies and abilities of people in attacks
upon the barriers to effective resource
use.

His is not the only responsibility, nor
can he hope to meet all needs, cover all
areas, and reach all groups. The leader-
ship of many others is needed. If a
community is to develop its resources ac-

cording to the natural and social balance
among them, it becomes a eooperative,
democratic job. The county agent has
the opportunity to cooperate in this proc-
ess in at least four ways: as a specialist,
a coordinator, an organizer, and a moti-
vator.

The first need for cooperation, of
course, is among the people of the com-
munity, with the county agent and other
community leaders furnishing technical
competence, leadership in organization,
and motivation. It is, at the same time,
a need for cooperation between the peo-
ple of the community, on the one hand,
and the experts and leaders, on the other.

A further need is for cooperation
among the experts and leaders. As we
have said, people and communities face
whole problems, not subdivided problems.
This requires not only the unification of
knowledge and action, it requires the
coordination of the help people receive.
They want and need whole answers to
whole problems.

If a community decides to tackle its
health problems on a large scale, this may
require the knowledge and skills of doc-
tors, nurses, public health experts, agri-
cultural experts, housing experts, engi-
neers, and others. The county agent is
frequently called upon to help in health
programs, for the relationships of health
with diet and diet with soils have become
increasingly clear. The people do not
have the technical knowledge to synthe-
size a half dozen separate reports. Nor
can they support a half dozen separate
programs. This synthesis may be sup-
plied by a top expert of some kind, but it
is best when the various experts work
together, blending their special compe-
tences into a balanced solution.

It should be added that cooperation is
needed not only among experts in dif-
ferent fields, but also among experts in
the same field. The multiplicity of agri-
cultural programs implies a strict divi-
sion of jurisdictions, competition for the
farmer’s time and loyalty, or cooperation
and coordination among programs.

Community resource development in-
volves the basic principles of democratic
planning—identifying and agreeing upon
objectives, identifying and agreeing upon
problems, identifying and agreeing upon
solutions. If the interrelationships of re-
sources and of problems is a fact, experts

[ 170 ]

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need to work together. If the wisdom of
the folk and the hope and promise of
freedom are true, resource development
must take place within the framework of
understanding and participation by the
people.

It would be a serious mistake to assume
that the responsibility for initiating co-
operation rests solely on the county agent.
Other community leaders—school teach-
ers, ministers, local and county officials,
citizen group leaders, health experts, and
others—should actively seek the county
agent’s cooperation and contributions. It
becomes partly a matter of each commu-
nity leader, including the county agent,
identifying the places in the program he
represents that would be strengthened by
the help of others, of identifying the
sources of help, and of seeking that help.

There are many ways, for example, in
which the county agent can help the pub-
lic school teacher demonstrate resource-
use facts and principles. These include
preparation and adaption of materials
and audio-visual aids, visits by the coun-
ty agent to the classroom, cultivating
school gardens and raising pets, erosion
control on the school grounds, beautifi-
cation of the school grounds, surveys,
and field trips.

Test-demonstration farms of the TVA-
Extension Service agricultural program
may soon be used by children of rural
schools in the Tennessee Valley as study
laboratories. It is believed that observa-

tion over a five- or six-year period will
afford school children an opportunity to
learn farm management under scientific

methods. This is an example of close
cooperation between the school teacher
and the county agent to make resource-

use education vivid and meaningful. In
this case, it will also involve the coopera-
tion of state and regional organizations.

Areas of Opportunity

We might dwell upon the problems
county agents face, and the short-comings
some county agents have demonstrated.
We are interested, however, in seeing the
opportunities and challenges of county
agents as teachers of resource use. There
are at least six areas of opportunity that
challenge the county agent in this task.
Stated briefly, and with no reference to
priority, these are:

1. To emphasize agriculture as a part
of total, balanced resource use

2. To reach all groups, or help others
to reach all groups

3. To cooperate with other agencies
and groups which are contributing, or can
contribute, to community resource use

4. To use the best available educational
methods, procedures, materials, and media
for the needs of his program and the peo-
ple he serves

5. To understand the people and the
natural resources in his county, and es-
pecially to know the needs of these people

6. To understand and use the social
realities of his county—local patterns of
leadership, community and neighborhood
organization and functions, group mem-
bership, customs.

In these ways the county agent con-
tributes to a community program of re-
source development and use that assumes
the form of a balanced, over-all pattern.
It begins and it grows as a program of
the people with the help of leadership.
And it is a continuous educational process.