Wakefield High School - Oracle Yearbook (Wakefield, MA)

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THE YOUTH OF TODAY During the past year, prominent men and women have shown much concern about the future of the Youth of America. The general opinion seems to be that the hoys and girls of today are thoughtless, selfish, and pleasure- loving, that they do not appreciate the efforts of their parents to educate them, and that they will fail to uphold the principles upon which our country was founded. The Debater does not think that this opin- ion is (piite fair. In the first place, youth has always been thoughtless. This is a fault, of course, and commonly causes disaster, but it is a fault which is no more apparent now than it ever was. It is true that the majority of young people would rather go to a dance or a moving-picture show than to a lecture, but so would the young people of yes- terday, if they had been given the opportu- nity. They did not indulge in pleasures such as movie shows and automobile rides, simply because these forms of pleasure did not exist. Every youth partakes of the pastimes of his day. I do not think that there is any danger of his becoming a slave to those pleas- ures, because I think that he will learn to enjoy them just as people all through the ages have become accustomed to the particular pleasures of each age. Secondly, the youth of today is more serious than he appears. Nearly every boy and girl, no matter how mirth-loving he or she may be, has an ambition to be somebody in the world. That these ambitions are not idle dreams, and that these youths, in all probability, will make a success of their lives, is proved by the pres- ent records of scholarship in the schools and colleges. Never have the standards been so high as they are now. T. repeat it, I am confident that the Amer- ican Youth of Today will come out on top. K. C. Lest our readers will not fully appreciate our cover design and the desigits for the cuts placed at the head of the different depart- ments, we will give a brief explanation of them. If the reader examines the cover care- fully, he will find that the unit used is a con ventionalized form of the Mayflower, and that the unit of each of the other designs is also a conventionalized flower form. This gives us the key to the theme of all the designs used, namely, the state flowers of the New England states. The state flower of Massachusetts is the Mayflower and is, therefore, the form used for -the cover design. Most of us are familiar with the delicate trailing arbutus with its evergreen leaves, bristling shoots, and clusters of fragrant rose-colored or white blossoms. This plant is found most often in the sandy or rocky soil of the western part of the state and of Cape Cod. An examination of the cut at the head of the Editorial Department will reveal a. conven- tionalized forml of the violet, the state flower of Rhode Island. Perhaps no flower is a more general favorite than the modest, fragrant violet, which comes in the early spring, be- fore other flowers have appeared. The clover is used in the design at the head of the Alumni Department. In flower lan- guage it means, think of me and is, there- fore, very appropriate in this place. The clover is the state flower of Vermont. It is not generally known, I think, that this flower was the badge of the Second Corps, in the Army of the Potomac, in the Civil War. A little farther on we find the members of 15