Los Gatos High School - Wildcat Yearbook (Los Gatos, CA)

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Faculty Alice Mabyn Chapman Theodore A. Cutting W. T. Walton' 'ms ' Ethel Evans Mary C. Day Leslie A. Phillips Donna J. Todd F. F. Jeffers Wlnnle E. Chamberlain 6

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WE, the Graduating Class of nineteen hundred and seven- teen, 'wishing to show our lo'be and esteem for our friend and class teacher, do respectfully dedicate this issue of the Wild Cat to Mss Mary C1 'Day

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1 Views Ahead Bayard Taylor once wrote a book describing things he had seen and called it Views Afoot. I am writing of things I should like to see so I call it Views Ahead. The article is a new departure for the Wild Cat and is introduced at the invitation of the editorial staff who gave me carte Blanche as to my subject. It is addressed to both patrons and students since the views here expressed can be realized only if serious consideration is given them by both. I shall suggest two things as the most immediate needs of the high school. Last fall we opened the high school shop, fitting it at an expense of about one hundred fifty dollars. VVe thot, perhaps, one-fourth of the boys would be interested in the course offered. It proved much more popular than We cal- culated and students we thot would not care for it have entered and continued for the year. As two periods are required for a credit it cannot be contended that it was taken because of being easy. Whenever a practical problem has been given, such as building a room for the domestic science department, members of the class have asked for theprivilege of doing it. While many boys of the school are preparing for college, there are many, also, who call insistently for industrial and commercial studies. The latter have little inter- est in the academic subjects, but are as much entitled to the training for citi- zenship which the high school affords as the former. The Harvard investiga- tion as to the value of certain studies, such as mathematics, left these subjects with so little to stand upon that the advocates of the practical subjects have had a much better chance to present the value of these workaday doings. As- sociation is probably the greatest power in the high school to develop character and call forth ability, and association can be had only if the student is held in school. That his association may be of the right kind he must be kept at some interesting work. Hence, the extension of practical subjects to include more shop work, the construction of ONE well equipped shop for use of both grammar and high schools, the broadening of the course to include building of small farm buildings and farm equipment. the organization of a practical course in fruit raising, dairying, animal husbandry and general farm manage- ment is one of the really pressing needs of the high school. Such a course is altogether practicable and could be conducted by one good man. The shop can be constructed and equipped by the boys, the small amount of machinery necessary installed by them and the park offers ample means for elementary agricultural demonstration. To a large extent the park can be cared for by the students. It might not be so pretty but it would be more useful. This is no dream, it is just what has been accomplished in other schools under my supervision. In one such school the boys built a practical blacksmith shop, making many of the tools and installing forges for twelve boys where prac- tical work was continually going on. Farm horses were shod, neck yokes and double trees made, and one boy, who was lost in academic subjects, made a hay derrick, hewing every piece of timber and forging every piece of iron in it. and it worked successfully on a large farm. The same class built an open air school for a primary room of forty children at an expense of three hundred dollars, one-half the probable cost by contract, and it is still in use. If this work had been going on in our high school for the last few years several boys who have voluntarily dropped out to pursue a shifting course of unskilled labor or went elsewhere to seek the desired training would still be at homg with us, to their advantage and ours. 7