"Providing an atmosphere of learning that challenges each student to achieve those skill levels that will allow him/her to compete in a global economy…" This is one of the objectives that the vocational school in McDowell County currently lists in its school's mission statement. "Global economy" is a term new to the late twentieth century, one that would not have had meaning when the vocational school in McDowell County was erected in 1945. The school's original objectives were to create a student prepared for a coal mining community, not for the global economy. To understand why parents and community members would want a majority of their students to prepare for this line of work, one must understand that coal mining was the only line of work many families had ever known. Coal mining was also the only way many community members saw that their students could be successful. Consequently, the changing needs of the coal companies in McDowell County had a direct influence on the changes in the curriculum of the vocational school.

The idea of training students for a successful life fits well with the history of education within McDowell County. West Virginia's educational system had a long- standing commitment to educating its young public school students, something that was not always practiced by West Virginia's eastern counterpart, Virginia. The development of McDowell County and its schools can be seen in a model that shows the progression that McDowell County has gone through as the coal industry became more entrenched. This model traces the progression from pioneer coal camps to booming coal towns to declining communities of increased poverty and decreased opportunities. When the coal industry was at its height, a vocational school was proposed and built.

Historian Crandall A. Shifflett has developed a model for the progression that most coal communities experienced in their development, and this progression describes the development of McDowell County. Unlike Shifflett, this paper will look at the urban ramifications of these phases. McDowell County was a community that was supported by coal, its number one means of income and employment. This progression is separated into three phases. The first is the pioneer or frontier phase, the second is the paternalistic phase, and the third is the declining phase.

The Paternalistic Phase
The pioneer phase went from the late 1800s to the beginning of World War I. The paternalistic phase started at the beginning of WWI, and lasted until the Great Depression. Although that is the time frame Shifflett gives to most coal towns, in McDowell County the time frame should be extended all the way into the mid 1970s. However, the part of the paternalistic phase we are most interested in is the part at the start of World War I. When the call went out across the country for young men to come out and show their patriotic spirit and fight for democracy in Europe, the young men of West Virginia were no different. With their employment base leaving the county, the coal companies went out to find their new employment base, and what they found was an older employment base. The employees were men with wives and sometimes families. Even if the newly married coal miner did not have children, when one has men and women living together, children are likely going to result. So things had to change in the coal communities. The communities became less rough and rugged and more nurturing. It was during this phase that coal companies started to take care of their employees.

Although such benefits are generally good, there was a cost. The companies that came in built roads, houses, company stores, better churches and better schools, but again, at what cost? The cost was the independence of the people of McDowell County. Where there were houses, the coal companies came in and bought the land, or mineral rights under the houses. The companies built "cookie-cutter" communities, and eventually the companies controlled where one could live and limited where one could buy goods. This was accomplished through the use of company scrip that was only good in the company store. As one drives the streets of War and Coal Wood today, one can still see the "cookie-cutter" format that was considered to be so important during the boom days of coal. Although conditions improved when the union came to McDowell County, there was still that large influence the coal companies played over a miner's life. The union mainly dealt with issues of safety within the mines. That was not all the union dealt with but many would say that is what the union really fought for. Before the union the miners were expected to get in the mines and work. Safety was not important; it was only important to produce coal, and if you wanted a job you had better get in there and produce.

Not all that the coal companies did was all bad. Unlike in the pioneer phase, when the companies did not look into miners' living conditions, companies did during the paternalistic phase. The rough and tough atmosphere of the camps turned into a more pleasant environment. The community was no longer male dominated; there were women and children now living in these communities. When there are families, houses generally become homes. The company store changed because there were homes, now in these coal comminutes, not just houses. With families comes a new population of people to take care of the home; for these new "homemakers" the company stores would carry furniture, fabrics, and also different styles of clothes.

The Decline Phase
Shifflett says that the declining phase comes shortly after the end of World War II in some areas. However, for the purpose of this paper the paternalistic phase was moved into the mid-1970s so that would push the declining phase to starting shortly after the mid-part of that decade. Howard Dorgan, the author of The Airwaves of Zion, best describes the declining phase: "from the start of the 1970s, numerous large shaft mines and coal-processing plants closed, leaving a sizable portion of the active mining operations of the 1980s in the hands of 'strippers', who use an abundance of machinery but few workers." So after this no longer did large numbers of people crowd the streets of Welch to shop, but they were looking for jobs. Not only did the jobs leave the area during this declining phase, but the people left as well. This is seen by comparing McDowell County's highest population in 1950 of 98,887 to McDowell County's population in 1990 of 35,233. That is a total population decrease of 64.4%. As one can see, after the coal companies moved out and the ones that were left were using a smaller number of workers and more machinery, the area was hit hard. Two photos found in The Airwaves of Zion best illustrate this point, and they can be seen below.

The vocational school was constructed in a factory style model, which was common for schools of that era. It was constructed with reinforced concrete and with factory style windows, typical of the urban areas where factories were the primary models for commercial buildings. Due to the child labor acts of the time, large numbers of students who were too young to work in factories were enrolling in schools. Therefore the building that would accommodate these large numbers was needed. This building style spread outside urban areas and can still be seen in school building styles today. An added bonus was that since vocational education is hands on work, it fit well with a factory style work environment.

In the fall of 1945, the Vocational School of McDowell County was opened with E. B. Heiny as director. "The subjects taught were machine shop, electricity and welding," and the following school year the curriculum was expanded to include "auto mechanics, woodwork and sheet metal." The oddity of the course offering is that a school that was created with so much support by local coal companies offered no general mining classes. Rocky Hagy, a former student of the vocational school during the early 1970s, suggests why these classes were not offered. "Mining was something that could not be done in a classroom, that mining is something you have to experience firsthand, that when you are underground you are in a world totally different than the above ground world. A world with a totally different set of problems and challenges." However, what coal companies did need were people that were to work on the above ground jobs that needed to be filled. The general mining classes would come at a later date when there was more of a need for formal mine training because mining was becoming more technologically oriented. Interestingly, it was this technically oriented mining that ultimately led to the demise of the mining workforce. In the 1950s machines started doing the jobs that had generally taken men numbering into the hundreds to do. This went down to just a handful of men to monitor and perform maintenance of the mining machines. Not only was there a need for training because of the technical part of mining, but because of the crackdown on safety by the federal government in the 1970s. This is seen even today in the eighty-hour course that miners are required to take before they can even go underground.

Students that attended the vocational school also attended the high school that was in their part of the county. These students' days were split into half days. Students attended the vocational school either in the morning or the afternoon, and the high school for the other half of the day. According to Hagy, "if you attend the east part of the county you would go to vocational school in the morning, and if you were in the northwestern part of the county you went in the afternoon." The half-day philosophy was not established by this school district but rather required by the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917. According to the act, the law stated that if "a high school student was taught one class by a teacher paid in full or in part from Federal vocational funds, that same student could receive no more that fifty per cent academic instruction." This part of the act led to students spending fifty percent of the time in a shop setting and fifty percent of the time in academic course work.

According to several interviews with former students of the McDowell County Technical and Vocational Center who attended the school from 1971 through 1974, an average day started at 8:00 am. Upon arriving at the Big Creek High School, in the city of War, students would check in at the high school and then would be bussed the 16 miles to Welch where the vocational school was located. Two busses ran from Big Creek High School to the vocational school. One bus was for boys only and the other bus was for boys and girls. When these two buses arrived at the Vocational School, the students would go straight into their prospective fields of study. Students chose these fields during a six-week orientation program when students met their instructor, who would be their teacher for their whole career at the Vocational School unless the teacher was replaced or left the school for some reason. Students would also be introduced to their field of study. At about eleven o'clock students would get back on the buses and would return to Big Creek High School for lunch and their academic classes. The Vocational school had about an hour before the next group of students from high school located in the northwestern part of the county would get there.

Students were exposed to a challenging curriculum while at the vocational school. As Rocky Hagy puts it, "We were there to work and so our instructors made us work. There was no time for sleeping." As with the start of any new project or lesson, it is important to have background knowledge of what one is about to learn. The Vocational school of McDowell County was no different. According to individuals who had been students at the vocational school, they were consistently instructed, through the use of methodology which included instructional manuals and books that were then applied in hands-on situations. The texts that were used described the objectives related to the project, and detailed new skills that were to be gained, and explained the safety issues related to the project. Rocky Hagy says that he had great respect for his instructor because of the time that his instructor spent on safety. The projects that the students did, whether they were welding projects or how to wire a house for electricity, always instilled in the students a strong work ethic. As Gui Wolf, a former coal miner and coal operator, puts it, "students coming from the Vocational School always were hard workers and understood how to get the job done." "Get the job done" is something that seems to echo with the students that attended the school. These individuals felt that they walked away from the school with a sense of how to use materials and a sense of how to get a job done and done right. The school allowed students to see a problem, take it apart, fix it, and put it back together. This was something unique to their program, and these students felt as if they were prepared for work in the mines.

This idea of doing work and working hard was not shared by everyone in the public or in the field of education itself. The interviewed graduates of the program stated that those who went to the Vocational School were thought of by teachers at the high schools as trying to get out of work. The hard work of the students is evidenced by the schedules which showed that there was no time for play at the Vocational School; instructors made the students work hard. If teachers and administrators felt this way about the students who attended the Vocational School, what did other students think? The non-vocational school students felt the same way, says Rocky Hagy, "they just left us alone, but it always felt as if they looked down on us." There was very little socializing between students that went to the vocational school and students that were on a different track. For example, Hagy said, "some of us [meaning Vocational School students and college bound students] would play on the same football team but there still would be that social class separation." This social class separation is not just a McDowell County problem, but rather it happens in every school system all over the country.

The Vocational School is still alive and well in McDowell County today, although probably not as well funded as it was back in the 1940s and 1950s. It has adapted for today's world, a world in McDowell County without a prosperous coal mining industry. There are still outside influences in the role of education in McDowell County. This time it is not from another state trying to influence the kind of schools the people of this county want, nor is it from a large industry like the coal companies that had such a heavy influence on McDowell County's Vocational education. This time the influence is coming to the county school system from within its own state. McDowell County since November of 2001 has been under direct control by the state board of education. McDowell County has been fighting a long time to make decisions that are best for her students; it looks as if the fight is not over.