Deering High School - Amethyst Yearbook (Portland, ME)

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CARLETON L. WIGGIN, Principal lt is customary at mid-century to pause, review the past, and make some predictions about the immediate future. In the past fifty years man has literally invented a new World in which to live. The accumulation of scientific knowledge has been without precedent. There seems so much to learn that it is easy to become confused or to accept without criticism the beliefs and practices of the majority. It is well to remember that in spite of the rapid pace of life there remain eternal and constant truths. It is to be hoped that through your being together and through your reading you have, in some measure, increased your acquaintance with these truths. The great necessity of the future is for the individual to resist being swept into the hysteria of such mass movements as those of the past fifty years which have brought us to the brink of ruin. ' There is still need for individual conscience, human dignity, and adherence to estab- lished principles. One need not feel hopeless, for throughout history there have always been people of ability and good will to serve as beacons for those about them. May all of us, to the limits of our ability, accept such a challenge. aww Zi ..-

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- qc gan., .A , as DEDICATION Cast in iron and inlaid in the brick walk a few steps from the main entrance of Deering High School is this quotation from the Book of John: You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Daily the feet of students pass over it. Each year on Memorial Day around it are grouped those who take part in the outdoor assembly in honor of the school's war dead. Taps sound. Standing in silence with bared heads we listen as the notes drift off to echo. Who knows, we ask, what is truth and how free were those who died? It Was Jesus who spoke the words first, near the time of Gethsemane. He had made his choice. For him truth had been revealed in union with God. Then was the spirit freed from the chains of doubt and indecision. Then was his own mission revealed which led to the cross. Shaped to the world of men and affairs, this simple line has come to take on a new and significant meaning. It has come to express the ultimate, not only in the attainment of the spirit, but in the establishment of an educational ideal. It is the opening of doors to new fields of learning, to a fresh interpretation of the facts, to a renewed insight in a choice between good and evil. In a world that is torn between conflicting idealogies, con- tioned in its thinking by mass communication, it is the power to resist lies, misrepresenta- tions, untruths, and distortions. It holds that ignorance breeds hate, that freedom rests on the ability of an individual to choose, that knowledge must include both reasons for and reasons against. It is the clearing away from one's mind the cobwebs of misunderstanding -the rolling away of stones to let the little lizards of prejudice escape. It is the incessant reaching out beyond the power to grasp. It is vision clear and an intellect without compromise. ' Yet in one sense truth does not make us free. For truth, in its very attainment, forces us to choice. Could Christ, achieving the ultimate, have given us other than the message of the Cross? We are offered only a choice between truth and a repose founded on ignorance. For truth- must be lived. Only then will it have the power of regeneration. ELIZABETH RING.