The Arthurdale School : Cultural Intervention Through Rural Folklife Education in a Progressive New Deal Setting

This book chronicles the school envisioned by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1933 to serve Arthurdale, the New Deal government-created community in north-central West Virginia. Arthurdale was founded to house unemployed miners and their families and provide them with opportunities to receive healthcare and obtain gainful employment. Roosevelt had a particular interest in the education of children, feeling that education and social life were profoundly intertwined within a community. With that in mind, in 1934, she hired Elsie Ripley Clapp―an educator and leader in the Progressive Education movement―to design and implement the school, as well as oversee the social life of Arthurdale as a whole. In addition to covering the Arthurdale School's birth, life, and dissolution, Rosenberg discusses how the lessons of the school might serve the culture of education today, especially as an element of a comprehensive approach to community revitalization. Prelude A Note on Orthography Preface Acknowledgements Contents Abbreviations List of Tables Chapter 1: Introduction References Chapter 2: Approaches 2.1 From Here to There: How I Met Elsie Ripley Clapp and the Arthurdale School 2.2 Historical Ethnography 2.3 Ecological Psychology 2.4 Folklore/Folklife 2.4.1 Education/Progressive Education 2.5 Folklife Education References Chapter 3: Elsie Ripley Clapp: From Woman of Valor to Progressive Education Leader References Chapter 4: The Arthurdale School References Chapter 5: Life as It Was at the Arthurdale School and the Discovery of Folklife References Chapter 6: Collision and Demise References Chapter 7: The Arthurdale School under Elsie Ripley Clapp and Folklife Education: Where Transdisciplinary Curriculum and Social-Emotional Learning Meet with STEAM 7.1 Barbara Allen, A Personal Story References Chapter 8: Conclusion: Individuals and Community Redux References Chapter 9: Epilogue: The Force of Community—Protecting the Heritage of Arthurdale in the 1980s References Appendix A: Executive Order 7027 Establishing the Resettlement Administration Appendix B: Jan Rosenberg’s Educational Formation Index