Kenneth McFarland

McFarland then served as principal in Cherryvale and then superintendent of schools in Coffeyville and Anthony. While at the former position he also became recognized as a capable speaker, and began giving speeches to civic groups for additional income. He designed and built a trade school in Coffeyville named in his honor. The McFarland Trade School changed its name in 1965 to the Southeast Kansas Area Vocational-Technical School.

McFarland authored the speaking guide, "Eloquence in Public Speaking, How to Set Your Words on Fire" (1963). He also published 26 addresses recorded live. His speeches consistently used humor, as well as engaging speaking techniques of alliteration ("Take me to your ladder lady, I'll see your leader later") and vocal techniques to make for remarkable speeches such as his "Ropes of Gold," "The Lamplighters," "America's Opportunity," "Wake the Town and Tell the People," "Selling America to Americans," "The Eagle Has Landed," and "America's Opportunity."

From the 1950s McFarland was engaged as a public speaker and lecturer for the General Motors Corporation, and Reader's Digest. He received numerous awards from politically conservative civic and business-oriented organizations for his support of free enterprise and salesmanship.

In 1942, following conferral of his doctorate, he was appointed superintendent of schools in Topeka, the state capital. He was soon able to concentrate all authority over the school system, previously scattered among the school board's disparate committees, in himself. Once he had done so, he focused on two policy goals: reorienting the high school curriculum toward vocational education from a more college-preparatory approach, and keeping expenses down as much as possible. Many of the teachers he promoted to principal and assistant administrator positions were former coaches, who tended to have similar views of the role of education in local life as he did.

In the late 1940s McFarland began to take more time away from his duties as superintendent to go on nationwide speaking tours, the proceeds from which he used to assemble a large horse farm on the west side of Topeka where he and his wife lived. This increased prominence led to talk that he might run for governor. But, along with the continuing segregation at the schools and McFarland's authoritarian governance of the district, it also aroused resentment in Topeka. In 1951 his political opponents supported a slate of three candidates for the six-member school board to oppose incumbents who were staunch supporters of the superintendent.

Born in the small southeastern Kansas town of Caney, Kenneth McFarland received a bachelor's degree from Pittsburg State College of Kansas in 1927. He received his Master's degree at Columbia University in 1931 and a doctorate from Stanford University in 1940.

Kenneth W. McFarland (October 12, 1906 – March 6, 1985) born in Caney, Kansas was an educator, public speaker, writer and conservative commentator. An early conservative, Kenneth McFarland was the public school superintendent for Coffeyville, Kansas where he founded the McFarland Trade School. Later he was hired as superintendent of the Topeka, Kansas school system, the school system in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education 347 U.S. 483 (1954) McFarland was reportedly a staunch supporter of the political and racial status quo of the time.