Johnstown High School - Spectator Yearbook (Johnstown, PA)

Page 16 text:

8 THE SPECTATOR your right to insist on each day and era bearing its own burdens. No one knows better than myself the power of a pur- poseful solidiiied sentiment in the High School. It is a sen- timent that usually gets things. What can I do, you ask, for the Bond Issue ? ' You can post yourself in every pos- sible way. You can build up sentiment among yourselves that will become a vital force of public opinion. You can convince others. You can write arguments that can be used in the campaign and which will clarify and render logical your own point of view. You can pass along suggestions to those in charge of the campaign. You can draw posters for window display. You can disseminate information through handbills, pamphlets, and your own fund of knowledge among the voters. To youth we look for the spirit of progress and enter- prise. You above all should be partisans of a better and big- ger Johnstown. In you hope, optimism, courage, ambition surges with an abandon of ardor. Thow yourself heart and soul in this great cause, for you will win. Xxx

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TI-IE SPECTATOR 7 coming when class rooms will be lined with bookshelves, with cases, and material racks, so that real supervised study may be broadly and scientifically done. In the second place, the present high school does not answer the demands made by the accepted standards of the new education. The Modern High School takes cognizance of all the children of all the people. It is democracy's school. lt is just as much a universal school as the elementary school. It must provide types of activity just as varied in its intellectual and skill elements as life itself. It must make its appeal not only to the noviti- ates of the learned profession but also of the skilled trades, agricultural and commercial pursuits. Such a high school must be built to make: its manifold varied curricula possible. The modern High School also must make ample pro- vision for the health training of its pupils. There should be spacious grounds for games and motivated bodily activities. There should be both boys' and girls gymnasium and a com- modious swimming pool. After school hours these and other facilities should be thrown open for the use of the employed boy and girl and for the parents. There are other possibilities of the Modern High School such as Normal School Training, Junior College Training, Continuation Courses, etc., that an adequate building will provide. Are not these things worth striving for? Should they not enlist every boy and girl with something of the Crusader spiritpto bring them to pass? Surely that boy or girl's finer sensibilties and aspirations must be dulled whose impulses do not glow with an overpowering warmth, in con- templation of this program. The High School boy or girl has a future interest in this bond issue and its success. Our school problems have been accumulating. You soon will be shouldering the burdens of civic responsibilities. Do you want this accumulating process to continue into your day until you face problems of dimen- sions that inspire only hopelessness and despair? You have

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ff. ,. THE SPECTATOR 9 Cflhr Emu illlillinn Bnllar Iflnnh Zlmmr Wilbert C. Wehn, 19M The building program, adopted on June 25, 1917, by the Board of School Directors, has finally gone a step toward realization, thru the action of that same board to increase, with the sanction of the voters, the bonded indebtedness of the city S2,000,000, the money so bonded to be used for the betterment of the educational facilities of our city. Though the amount is large in itself, it is not a desperate undertaking, nor too ambitious for za. progressive city like Johnstown, when the building operations of other cities are taken into consid- eration. Buffalo has authorized S8,000,00 for school purposes, Detroit, S3,292,000g Minneapolis, S p4,750,000, and Harrisburg, 31,225,000 1 The need for such increase is imperative. The school authorities are facing a crisis which permits of absolutely no dalliance. A comprehensive, conservative building pro- gram is the only outlet from prevailing, threatening condi- tions, and such aiprogram has been adopted and is now call- ing for the support of the people of Johnstown and the stu- dents in its schools. There are at present seventy-one rooms inadequately equipped, inadequately ventilated, and inadequately heated, housing 2,130 pupils, or about 15.519 of the school enroll- ment in 1918. Some of these rooms are single rooms, par- titioned so as to make two rooms, others are basement and hall rooms, and one whole building is artificailly lighted. Besides these, an abandoned school house and a store room have been put into operation. The schools at tl1is time are alarmingly crowded. The Vocational School is accommodating its maximum number of pupils. The High School houses about 17.872 more than its comfortable capacity. The Garfield Junior High, thru the elimination of the industrial shops to the Twentieth Ward Vocational Building, can hold out one more year. A platoon system is in use in the primary grades whereby a teacher