HEDGE SCHOOLS
Professor Clyde Willson speaking at the
Tennessee Hedge School on Reconstruction.
The Hedge School seminar program is to Southern education what the Hedge Schools were to Irish education three centuries ago. The Penal Laws of 1695 were designed by English officials in London and Dublin to expunge the native Celtic language and culture of Ireland. From the 1690s to the 1840s generations of young Irishmen received their education in little gatherings that spontaneously emerged throughout the country. Lessons were taught in dilapidated barns, sod huts, and often in the open air on the sunny side of a quick-set thorn hedge.
Although the schools were outlawed and severe penalties imposed on those who associated with them, they flourished for a century and a half, preserving the native language and religion as well as countering the effects of English historical revisionism. The national sentiments nourished in these schools came to fruition two centuries later in the formation of the Irish Republic.
The Tennessee League of the South sponsors Hedge Schools throughout the state on a periodic basis. We have conducted Hedge Schools on "The Real Lincoln," "Reconstruction," and "Agrarianism: Past, Present & Future."
No specific dates are currently set for 2010 Hedge Schools in Tennessee, but plans are being formulated and topics being discussed. Possible topics:
- Jesse James: An Unreconstructed Southerner
- An American Tradition; A Southern Practice
- Resisting Tyrants & Fighting Tyranny
- Championing the Underdog
- Declaring Independence
Professor Donald Livingston speaking at the
Tennessee Hedge School on The Real Lincoln.
If you have a suggestion for a topic or wish to help sponsor a Hedge School in your area, contact our Tennessee Chairman, David O. Jones.