An Exploration of Myles Horton’s Democratic Praxis: Highlander Folk School

Highlander Folk School is an adult education center located in eastern Tennessee that was formed in 1932 by Myles Horton and continues today. Myles Horton (1905-1990) hoped to create an independent adult learning center where people could come together and address their problems. He wanted to create a public space where people could learn from each other and use education as a means to challenge the unjust social systems affecting their lives. Highlander was built on principles of democracy; however, Horton resisted definitively defining democracy throughout his lifetime. In The Long Haul, he tells us people get angry with him for not carefully defining what he means by democracy, but he says, "I've never been able to define democracy. ... it's a growing idea." Horton began Highlander Folk School by relying on Dewey's concept of a democratic society as "a society which makes provisions or participation in its good of all its members on equal terms and which secures flexible readjustment of its institutions through interaction of the different forms of associated life." A democratic society is one with shared interests and fullness and freedom of interaction within the group as well as with other groups. In this article, the author revisits the legacy of Myles Horton in creating a school where "people could learn from each other and use education as a means to challenge the unjust social system affecting their lives." She interrogates both the practices undertaken at the Highlander Folk School and the "theoretical implications their practice has to teach one about a relational, pluralistic democratic theory." She ends with a number of recommendations for public schools that might make them more democratic social institutions.