byMichael Clark
A dissertation submitted to the Department of Adult Learning and Technology and the Graduate School of the University of Wyoming
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in EDUCATION
Laramie, Wyoming
December 2001
Acknowledgements:
I want to thank my wife, Pam, without whose example and emotional support I would not have been able to complete this program. This study is a culmination of four years of collaborative effort and is a joint dissertation in spirit, if not in fact. My family has been an influence in my educational pursuits. My grandparents John and Hattie Gibson, and Dave and Gladys Clark raised families during the social upheavals of the 1920s and 30s and typified those workers who sought social justice and the utopian ideal. My parents Sam and Johnnie instilled a love of lifelong learning and supported all my endeavors. My daughter April, who, while I was busy making a dissertation, was busy making me a grandpa. And so it goes. Also, I would like to express my appreciation to the members of the historic Utah Cohort, who made the long treks and the long hours in class a genuinely pleasant experience. I would like to thank Dr. Michael Day for pointing the way, and his right arm, Kris Brewer, for marking the trail. Finally, I want to thank all the University of Wyoming instructors who gave their weekends to bring this program to the boonies and all the members of my committee who have inspired me to make this dissertation a true research project of historical importance.
Dedication :
This study is dedicated to the seekers of utopia—whatever it may be. My king and conqueror, Utopus by name, a prince of much renown and immortal fame, has made of me an isle that erst no island was,frought full of worldly wealth, pleasure, and solace (More, 1516/1947, p. 181).
The Big Rock Candy Mountain
One evening as the sun went down And the jungle fires was burning,Down the track came a hobo hikin’ And he said, Boys, I’m not turning,
I’m headed for a land that’s far away Beside the crystal fountain,
So come with me, we’ll go and see The big Rock Candy Mountain.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain, There’s a land that’s fair and bright,
Where the handouts grow on bushes, And you sleep out every night,
Where the boxcars all are empty, And the sun shines every day,
On the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees,
The lemonade springs where the bluebird sings,
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain, All the cops have wooden legs,
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth And the hens lay soft boiled eggs.
The farmers’ trees are full of fruit, And the barns are full of hay.
Oh I’m bound to go where there ain’t no snow,
Where there ain’t no foe, the wind don’t blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain, You never change your socks,
And the little streams of alcohol Come trickling down the rocks,
The brakemen have to tip their hats, And the railroad bulls are blind,
There’s a lake of stew and of whiskey, too,
You can paddle all around ‘em in a big canoe,
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain, The jails are made of tin,
And you can walk right out again As soon as you are in.
There ain’t no short-handled shovels, No axes, saws, or picks.
I’m a going to stay where you sleep all day, Where they hung the Turk who invented work.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
I’ll see you all this coming fall
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain.--
hobo song circa 1928
Words and music by Harry McClintock
Preface:
These studies began as an assignment in a class on the History of Adult Education taught by Dr. Michael Day at the University of Wyoming. Dr. Day included utopian communities as one of several areas of study within the course of Adult Education. A required text for this course, Stubblefield and Keane’s (1994) Adult Education in the American Experience included utopian experiments as a section in a chapter on the spread of literacy. According to Stubblefield and Keane: To realize the promise of America required an educated and disciplined commitment to new values, represented by a variety of social and ideological viewpoints. These [utopian experiments] extended the notion of individual perfectibility to one of communal perfectibility, using education as the driving force of social change. The reformers planned to effect change in small communities, which would then become educational models for wider use. (p. 73)At first we were surprised to see this topic included within the field of adult education, but upon closer examination, we realized it makes perfect sense. As teachers ourselves, we believe a utopian lives in the soul of every educator. What else is education, if not a dream – utopian in the best sense of that word – a dream that individuals can be “transformed” (ala Jack Mezirow and Paulo Freire) in ways that will allow them to improve their lives, both individually and collectively; a dream that poverty, prejudice, and violence can end, that communities can be safer and healthier places to live and to raise families? As teachers, don’t we attempt to create a utopia within our individual classrooms—a place where students can feel safe and accepted, a community where students might get along with each other, an environment that will unlock the natural love of learning within every one of our students? It is small wonder that so many educators have also been leaders of utopian societies, or that leaders of utopian societies have been educators. From Plato to Robert Owen, from Bronson Alcott to Myles Horton, educators are synonymous with utopians, and their idealism is contagious. A single assignment to study utopians Frances Wright, Robert Owen, and B. F. Skinner grew into a review of the history of utopian experiments from Plato to Synanon. In the process of conducting this review, we became intrigued with the question of how utopian colonies, particularly nonsectarian communities, attempted to reinforce and transmit their core values among their members. We learned that many utopian colonies in America published newspapers, and we became interested in learning more about the connection between these newspapers and their communities’ values, particularly in those colonies that organized around political rather than religious ideals.
Michael’s Path to New Harmony, Indiana
The path that led Michael to New Harmony began with reading Pedlar’s Progress, the Life of Bronson Alcott (Shepard, 1937), which led to the utopian experiment at Fruitlands and to other experimental communities that attempted to put utopian philosophies into practice. While exploring these, Michael learned about the Owenite community at New Harmony, Indiana, and was interested in learning more. When he discovered that the University of Wyoming had the complete edition of the New Harmony Gazette on microfiche, he determined to explore the role of that newspaper as a tool for education in the utopian colony of New Harmony.
Pamela’s Path to the Colorado Cooperative Colony:
During Pamela’s exploration of utopian colonies, some friends mentioned that the community where they had previously taught in Colorado had begun as a utopian colony. She investigated this community and found only one unpublished and two published histories about it. The most recent, Marie Templeton’s (1975) work, The Visionaries: First and Second Generation Pioneers of the Pinon, Ute and Nucla Areas, consists of short remembrances of 21 former colony members. The earlier history, Spell of the Tabeguache, was written in 1957 by Ellen Zatterstrom Peterson whose father uprooted his family from their home in Minnesota to resettle at the Colorado Cooperative Colony in 1900. The unpublished study, “A History of the Colorado Co-operative Colony, and the Town of Nucla” was written by Frances H. Croke (n.d.) and tells the history of the colony primarily through articles published in the Montrose Enterprise and the Montrose Press. All three of these histories referenced a colony newspaper by the name of The Altrurian, which sent Pamela to the newspaper offices and to the library in Nucla, Colorado, to inquire as to this newspaper’s whereabouts. The Altrurian was not available in Nucla, but four copies were available at the historical museum in Naturita. A bit more sleuthing resulted in the discovery of two microfilm records of The Altrurian, one housed at the Colorado Historical Society, which includes 85 of the 135 issues published; and the other at the Kansas State Historical Society, which includes 124 of the 135 issues published. This discovery prompted her decision to make this community and its newspaper the subject of her study.Because the topics are so similar, because the impetus for doing the research was essentially the same, and because the topic of community itself suggests collaboration, this work began with a vision of doing a joint dissertation.
This vision evolved into two parallel dissertations, and finally into the current collaborative format with a co-authored first chapter and final chapter. Chapter 1 discusses the background, the significance of the study, and the methodology, all of which are the same for both dissertations. Though both researchers used the same methodology and were guided by the same research question, the research is unique to the two communities, and differences in writing style and research voice become apparent beginning with Chapter 2, where the authors diverge to study their respective communities and their newspapers in greater depth. Likewise, differences necessarily existed in the historical context of the communities, the analyses of the individual newspapers, the results of the analyses, and the conclusions drawn, all of which comprise chapters 2 through 6 of the individual studies. The authors reunite in Chapter 7 to compare their respective results. It is hoped that the reader will accept and appreciate these innovative studies.
