Horton, Myles (1905–1990)

Myles Horton was an organizer, educator, activist, and philosopher who lived and worked at the Highlander Folk School, now Highlander Research and Education Center, in Tennessee. Horton created educative experiences for himself and others that were rooted in progressive philosophies of education. He believed that people would become democratic decision makers and become politically literate as they participated in struggles to change their world. Highlander was Horton's vehicle to organize and educate, and in later life, he shared his beliefs and struggles with educators and activists around the world.

Myles Horton was born in 1905 in Savannah, Tennessee, to two schoolteachers. Horton's education in public schools was supplemented by his educative experiences in interaction with the social fabric of the community. Horton's family and all of the families around them were poor. However, Horton's family emphasized service to one's neighbor, which inspired Horton's philosophy of education.

Myles Horton did not follow a traditional path through higher education. Instead, he created an experiential education that took him across the globe and through a variety of disciplines. Horton attended college from 1924 to 1928 at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee. He majored in literature, specifically the English classics. He was president of the Student YMCA and attended a Nashville religious conference, where he first interacted with African Americans and international students. Horton was surprised that the students were limited to the conference spaces because public spaces were intolerant of racial or ethnic minorities.

Also during college, Horton worked in a community called Ozone to organize children's Bible schools and held evening sessions with adults. He was called an educational leader by these adults and expanded his sessions to a larger audience in Cumberland County. There, Horton realized that he lacked specific pedagogy for doing this work and he left the county to pursue his own learning before continuing the educational program he had begun.

After graduating from college in 1928, Horton worked as a student YMCA secretary for the state of Tennessee. He began studying southern history and learned about the southern Populists, a movement in the 1890s by farmers to improve their social position. He did not study education per se, which may have led to his ideas diverging from traditional education theory. However, he was an observer of people and movements, and began holding interracial meetings in the community.

Horton studied theology at the Union Theological Seminary and sociology at the University of Chicago to formulate a problem-centered education program. Horton attended the seminary from 1929 until 1930 and learned about socialism, the progressive education movement, union movements, and critical theory. He continued to be inspired by Dewey to correct unfair privilege and deprivation by taking into account the needs of a community when designing an educational program. George Counts and Edward Lindeman were also influential on Horton's ideas for a nontraditional adult education that occurred within labor unions and other organizations. Horton left the seminary and continued his studies in sociology at the University of Chicago for 1 year in 1930. There, he worked with Robert Park on how to use conflict as a basis for social analysis.

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