Recalling When Entertainment Joined Education: “Chautauqua!”

(NYTimes) - ... Chautauqua was one of the great American popular educational movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Starting modestly on a campsite in western New York State as an effort to train Sunday school teachers, it expanded into a national phenomenon. The movement brought lectures by the great speakers, preachers and thinkers of the day (William Jennings Bryan was one of the hottest tickets) to the expanding middle class, along with folk music, historical costume drama and dance, all under a circus tent. Continued