Rebuilding the rural Southern community
Subtitle: reformers, schools, and homes in Tennessee, 1900-1930
By: Mary S. Hoffschwelle.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: University of Tennessee Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Knoxville
Language: eng
Number of pages: 233
Subjects: Rural development -- Tennessee -- History -- 20th century.; Rural renewal -- Tennessee -- History -- 20th century.; Education, Rural -- Tennessee -- History -- 20th century.; Rural schools -- Tennessee -- History -- 20th century.; Home economics, Rural -- Tennessee -- History -- 20th century.; Tennessee -- Rural conditions.
Description: In this book, Mary Hoffschwelle shines a much-needed light on the efforts of rural reformers. She focuses on Tennessee because its varied geography and the large number of rural reform programs it hosted make it a particularly rich subject for study. Also, the state typified the burdens of poverty and racial division that characterized the South as a whole, and, as the author shows, such problems attracted considerable attention from reformers.

Since reformers regarded education as the key remedy for many southern ills, including its economic and racial difficulties, Hoffschwelle pays close attention to the efforts to rebuild, sanitize, and prettify country schools in Tennessee, both for black and white students. She examines school architecture and planning as well as the ways in which schools were organized and consolidated.

She also considers how home economics programs were designed as a bridge between home and school life and thus shows how education reforms were extended into the domestic realm. In her closing chapters, she addresses the role of home demonstration programs in domestic reform and traces reformers' efforts to expand the "consumer ethic" of rural women.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [211]-228) and index.
Table of contents: title: The progressive impulse and Southern rural education; title: Consolidation and new school buildings : reforms for white rural schools; title: "Building an ideal" : model schools for African Americans; title: Building a bridge between school and home life : home economics for rural schools; title: Better homes on better farms : home demonstration and domestic reform; title: Domestic consumption and competition : a new ethic for rural homes; title: Legacies of rural reform.