Appleby College - Argus Yearbook (Oakville, Ontario Canada)

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terests of the boy ' s future. Somehow this must be accompHsh- ed without creating any resentment from the boy. The first step would be to do away with those activities that qualify as recreation. The best acti- vity is one which will contribute to the boy ' s cultural development. Recreation already takes up a large part of most peoples ' spare time, and has little to offer in the way of culture. Once this is done the list would include several very benefi- cial activities. The list would then be divided up into different cate- gories depending on the nature of the activities. Each boy would have to choose two activities from se- perate lists. The lists would be di- vided up so as to assure that a boy could not pick two similiar acti- Tim Pike

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Thursday Activities ... another editorial ' ' Get up and get moving! UWi ■K p H(MKS ? H The Thursday Activity Program has survived a three year period of experimentation with only mo- derate success. At the end of the third year it seems unhkely that the program will become permanent in the Appleby schedule unless a few essential changes are made. The purpose of the program is to provide the boys with free time which they can use constructively. Ideally, it would have worked on a laissez-faire system. It was expect- ed that the boys would take an in- terest, and get involved in the various activities on their own free will. Such has not been the case for the vast majority. Too many people have chosen to ignore the many opportunities which are of- fered. They would rather spend Thursday afternoons asleep on their beds or tuned into Mork and Mindy (the latter has become the most popular activity from 8:00 to 8:30). The fact is that too many people do not know how to manage their free time. Three years of the program made this quite evident. For such a program to be a suc- cess everyone must get involved. Up to now there has been little evidence of complete participation simply because people lack the initiative. The obvious solution is to make activities compulsory. This step has already been taken, but there is still some difficulty in getting everyone to attend. Many people have developed a certain prowess for avoiding their acti- vities once they have signed up for them and many more have manag- ed to pick two activities that meet on a limited basis. The latter is the ultimate display of total lack of initiative. It is clear that the answer to the problem of how to make Thursday activities successful is not an easy one. Simply making the program compulsory does not provide the solution, though it does take us one step closer. If we consider the present system of freedom of choice to be extreme then the other extreme is to desig- nate each boy to two activities, which the school feels will help him to develop into the best person possible. The latter extreme is too harsh and would create a great deal of opposition. However it is closer to the answer than the pre- sent system is, because it exposes the boy to activities which will be most beneficial. This is the ulti- mate goal of the program, and therefore the best system will be structured around making certain that the activity is in the best in- 132

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Public Speaking ff This year ' s public speaking com- petition consisted of the usual mix- ed bag of offerings. There was a whole spectrum of speeches of va- rious levels of hilarity ranging from Colin Richard ' s Party Etiquette comedy routine to Andrew Newell ' s talk on Stars. Between these two extremes there were speeches of a more contem- porary and immediate nature. Mark Mull did an admirable job of analyzing the effects of nuclear power, after which Chris Thompson amused us with his Satire on the Appleby College Development Fund. Doug Campbell began the evening with his talk on writing and delivering a speech, - something all the com- petitors were adept at. Perhaps the only thread of simi- larity holding the speeches together was the high quality of each pre- sentation. It must have been hard for the judges to decide on a single winner, but they did decide, and Richard WooUey, who spoke on Sex and Violence in Nursery Rhymes , was announced the win- ner. Richard went on to represent the College at an Independent Schools competition at UTS in May. Special thanks should be extend- ed to the judges, Mr. McManus, Mrs. C. Dorion and The Band also deserves an honourable mention for their very successful attempts at entertaining us during the inter- mission. Martin Baggaley