Abilene High School - Orange and Brown Yearbook (Abilene, KS)

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ANNA HO PKINS Kansas State Normal and A. University of Kansas Normal Training B. if f-- 'W' rss., MARCIA STORY, B. S. Kansas State Agricultural College Domestic Science H. O. DRESSER, B. S. Kansas State Agricultural College Manual Training and Agriculture j wif wx' A' H- - ww-f...ra..1as,:s:,,-.w. a:t,sm,,,,.m,, ,Aw sn. Ottawa University Washburn ' College Science Muslc TEN

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he bilene High School HE Abilene High School consists of 240 young people and their eleven in- structors. These young people are here in the most formative, active and impressionable period of their lives. They are here for the purpose of be- ing trained for the years to comeg of being helped to see clearly what they wish to do, and how to do it. They are here in larger numbers than ever before in response to a rapidly growing conviction that the High School has something to of- fer them that will be valuable. This faith in the High School is everywhere in the country. We are not alone in it. Everywhere the High Schools of the state and the nation are full. The rapidly mounting enrollment evidences both a need and a faith-a recognized need of young people for training, and a faith that the High Schools can give it. This faith of the people in the High Schools throws on the teachers and supervisors in these schools a heavy responsibility. These teachers and supervisors must rise to the faith of the people. This feeling is characteristic of tl1e best schools of today. The dominant idea in the policy of the Abilene High School is the service, aid- ing and guidance, of the students as individuals. We believe that schools exist as institutions of service, that they are designed to aid individuals, not to benefit classes. The following quotation from a report by the teachers of Washington Irving High School for Girls of New York City, entitled, What We Are For, approximates the point of view in question: The community sends its children to us expecting them to be educated. lt raises money and pays us in order that the city may be up- lifted. The parents who support us do not subscribe to theory that a High School is an institution for preserving a course of study, or maintaining a system of usages, or keeping up a high standard, or training some youngsters to be leaders, or for supporting us. The people who are supporting us care little for these things. They do care for children. They pay for having the young people trained, not for main- taining a given grade of education. They send us bright, stupid, industrious, lazy, well-behaved, and impudent children, not with the idea that we shall teach those that are able and willing to work, not for a decision that such a child is unfit for High School, but for having each child improved. This is not chiefly a place for those who can succeed without help. Such need us less than the others do. A pub- lic High School differs from an elementary school chiefly in the age of its children. We are not elected, we are not paid, chiefly to train leaders. Everyone, rich or poor, is entitled to our services. Training the children we receive, and securing more to train is our business. We hope to break away from the traditional type of a study-centered lligh School. We are a person-centered High School. The per- son is the one we are teaching. ln a sense, we are responsible for the success of the student. That is chiefly what we are put here for. While the above is open to the criticism of extravagant statement, and needs limitation when put into practice, it comes close to the underlying and animating spirit of our school. And the truth of this statement is attested by the close and friendly companionship existing between our instructors and their pupils. A spirit of this sort testifies in the strongest way to the effectiveness of school organization and to the healthfulness of community educational conditions. The personality and influence of teachers act directly and without hindrance or lessening on the minds of students. This is the best possible of all conditions. It is to a school characterized by the above spirit and by the above conditions that we welcome all students ready to enter. To the parents of such students We are only too glad to offer our services in suggestion or advice as to lines of Work pupils should follow in school. We firmly believe that the time has come when every boy and every girl should receive the good the High School has to offer. The field of the school has become so wide, the training it offers covers so many forms of activity, that every one can be helpedg can be set further on the road to successful and happy living, and to this end we pledge our utmost efforts. TWELVE