Community and Democracy in American Schools: Arthurdale and the Fate of Progressive Education

Abstract

Arthurdale, West Virginia, was created by New Deal policymakers as a resettlement community for displaced coal miners. Its schools were a landmark in efforts to bring Deweyan ideals of progressive education to bear on community life. This article examines the pedagogy developed at Arthurdale and the history of the homestead in order to illuminate the ambiguities of educators’ efforts to promote community. The very features that endowed Arthurdale's community-centered schools with effectiveness and vitality obscured the social divisions that shaped the lives of Arthurdale's inhabitants. In particular, community-centered pedagogy ignored inequalities of race and class, which played a pivotal role at Arthurdale. This study suggests that such distortions cannot be easily excised from progressive pedagogy. Rather, they were central to progressive notions of child-centeredness, activity, and culture. Invocations of community fostered learning and citizen involvement, even as they camouflaged wider social inequalities. Arthurdale thus illustrates the difficulties facing those seeking to reconcile the sometimes complementary, sometimes competing demands of community and democracy as educational ideals.