Education in Appalachia

happening to the people of Appalachia is shared by many individuals and groups. The pockets of extreme poverty, high unemployment, the outmigration of young people, school dropouts, malnutrition, and third-generation welfare cases certainly would confirm the concern of the national government. Martin County, Kentucky is typical of what is happening in much of the Appalachian Region, a ruggedly beautiful part of America embracing ten states and extending from Northern Alabama to Northern Pennsylvania. Although this paper is concerned primarily with problems in the education of the children of Appalachia, and especially in the mountains of East Tennessee and Kentucky with which this writer is more familiar, in order to understand these problems, it is necessary to know something of the history, culture, and the economy of the people. Here, in the hills of Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, are the last vestiges of a pioneer people who claim to be of the purest strain of Anglo-Saxon stock in America. Even today, in remote sections, philologists can find traces of Elizabethan speech. Some still call a paper bag a poke, and say heerd for heard, ketched for caught, and hit for it. This pronoun is pure Anglo-Saxon. With Chaucer, the children may say holpt, and form plurals by adding es as in beastes, postes, nestes. Here also, one may hear a jig tune from Scotland or a nursery song long forgotten in England

Appalachia · Economic growth · Government (linguistics · Happening · Political science · Poverty · Sociology · Appalachian Studies and Mathematics · History · Law