London Normal School - Spectrum Yearbook (London, Ontario Canada)

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on to the sea art of the District of Parry Sound in Northern Ontario I know well. Scattered through the area are many lakes, each with its own peculiar characteristics. One has crystal clear water with rocky shores rising precipitously to a great heigh t; one is dark and sluggish, deeply shadowed by pines and frequented only by overly-zealous fishermen; and one is really not a lake at all, merely a widening of a river into an overgrown pond fringed with weeds where black bass lurk. These and many others are tied to each other by a river known by the rhythmical Indian name Magnetawan. On occasion, I have sought out the sources of the stream and have discovered clear cool springs rising in the hills. Eventually, the lakes and their tributaries unite to form a great body of water flowing into Georgian Bay and on to the sea. As students your days have been spent on the waters of a relatively quiet lake. But soon as classroom teachers you will enter upon the full flood of your professional life. May you do so with zest and in a spirit of high adventure. With eager eyes, boys and girls in town and country are looking to you and your teaching for the vision and courage which may enable them, in turn, to launch themselves undaunted on the deeper currents of life. They must not look in vain. My best wishes go with you as you take up your responsibilities next September in the schools of Ontario. F. S. RIVERS DIRECTOR OF PROFESSIONAL TRAINING.

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suggestions from the minister of education s during my long career in education I spent thirteen years in teacher-training, I know- very well the problems encountered by the young men and the young women in the Normal Schools of Ontario. Indeed, for more than thirty years I have visited Normal Schools once a year and have talked- with staffs and students about the trends in education. You who are now enrolled in the Normal Schools of this Province have been wise in your choice of a profession and fortunate in the conditions under which you commence your teaching careers, for teachers are scarce in Ontario and will be scarcer in the near future. This does not mean that you can be complacent about your chosen work. On the other hand, it means that you must give the best you have in energy, in scholarship, in technique, in such a way that you will make a great success of your classroom duties. Let me suggest that a motto for teachers during the present turmoil might very well be a Biblical expression — Hold fast that which is good . Do not adopt any change in educational methods, or any educational procedure, which has not been thoroughly proved to be beneficial. For example, there is no substitute for ability to speak and to write good English, nor is there any substitute for accurate skill in arithmetical computation. Your pupils must be taught to read well and to write well and they must also be taught to be good Canadian citizens who know what democracy means and who know what a privilege it is to be free people in a free country. For these fundamentals there are no substitutes and you really must, if you hope to succeed, devote a great deal of attention to the suggestions I have made. You will find, as the years go on, that there is no satisfaction so real and so lasting as that which comes from worthwhile achievement and that means that we must all work hard. Pupils in our schools like hard work, as you will soon find, and there is no danger in competition in schools. Surely boys and girls must learn to work hard and must learn to enjoy competition, because as soon as they leave school they encounter both and they must be prepared for active lives. If you see that your pupils are well prepared for the positions they occupy when they leave school, and, if you make sure that they have been taught loyalty to Queen and country as well as loyalty to God and to their parents, you will have rendered praiseworthy public service and you will have done a great deal to develop the Province of Ontario and the Dominion of Canada. My cordial good wishes go with you as you take up your new duties next September. W. J. DUNLOP, Minister of Education.

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a message to the class of ' 52 rize fighters have a useful term. It is called leading with your chin . This year educa- tors seem to have led with their chins. For they have adopted a slogan, Education is everybody ' s business . Certainly, within recent weeks, almost everyone seems to have made the school system his business. On all sides the modern school has been lustily buffeted about. There are those who blame it for not teaching enough of manners and morality; there are others who blame it for usurping the place of the home, apparently for trying to teach too much of manners and morality. There are those who blame it for losing students because it failed to challenge and interest them; there are others who blame it for making work interesting instead oi making it arduous and drudging. There are those who blame it for ignoring the individual in the mass, and there are those who blame it for paying too much attention to the individual. There are those who blame it for neglecting the traditional core of fundamental skills, and there are those who blame it for failing to keep pace with the age of the electron. All this is healthy and right. It is right that those who pay the piper should call the tune. You are entering a job where you are the servants of the public. If your skin is too thin to bear the slings and arrows of public criticism, then I am afraid that teaching is not for you. And it is healthy that those who pay you should take a sharp interest in what you do. In one sense at least, education is only the tail upon the national dog — in the sense that it can move only as its owner wills it to move. So it will move further and faster when it is whisked with some irritation; not when it is wagged in mere amiability. It appears, then, that you are entering teaching at a time when what you do, or fail to do, is very much in the public eye. The public, your masters, will expect you to give their children those things which make life richer, without neglecting those things which are necessary if life is to go on at all. They will expect you to respect the right of every individual child to achieve his full stature as a person, without neglecting those limitations which the rights of all impose upon the rights of one. They will expect you to practise and to teach that all growth in freedom must be bought at a price; it must be bought in the hard coin of greater responsibility. Within these limitations, I hope that you will continue to explore new trails in your job. If sometimes the way seems hard and the criticism unjust, remember that you are in good com- pany. About twenty-five hundred years ago a certain teacher was accused of corrupting the youth of his time with new-fangled educational ideas. The name of this early progressive edu- cator was Socrates. F. C. BIEHL.