Foxfire-At 25

By Junius Eddy

Really sound educational ideas don't come along very often. Not enduring and replicable ones, anyway. So it's worth observing that a notable innovation in classroom teaching is 25 years old this year--and is still being replicated. Its adherents, friends and practitioners from around the country, will be gathering this month to celebrate the event in the north Georgia community of Rabun Gap, where the idea originated.

It is a teaching strategy grounded in the progressive tradition, owing much to John Dewey and his belief in the democratic classroom and experiential learning. Its crucible was a 9th-and-lOth-grade classroom where, in 1966, a young English-journalism teacher named Eliot Wigginton-fresh out of Cornell--was having trouble maintaining order in his classes. He was also wondering how to get his kids interested in learning English grammar in the first place.

He thought it might help to get them involved in working on a magazine--and what they finally came up with has made all the difference. It wasn't the usual high school literary magazine, but a kind of "oral history" journal that would take his students well beyond the doors of their schoolhouse in search of materials...