Bishop Ireton High School - Flight Yearbook (Alexandria, VA)

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What? Why? How? What happens to matter if it can't be destroyed? Why are the tiny amounts of chemicals we call vitamins so vital to our own life processes? How can someone say what an atom is like-or that there is such a thing? ls someone pulling my leg when he says that there was once an ocean where Las Vegas is now? Questions are the substinence of the Science Department. The answers, however, are not always expected from the teachers-though often the questions come from them. With courses designed to stimulate the student, the instructors in this department graduate him with an understanding of just what the scene is in this physi- cal world. More than that, the student who has taken these courses has learned a little of the art of taking fewer things for granted and questioning more. A pebble in a pond, a drop in a ripple tank-the environment is dif- ferent but Dan Coakley and John McCallum are still led to investi- gate the motion of waves and try to formulate a theory of light. The color of the solution after adding the magic chemical tells Leon- ard Sims and Richard Harlow that they have followed all of the steps. This photograph, of their latest top security project, leaked out of the Science Department. Our experts have determined that Nlr. Rich, Mike Decowski, and Mike Wellings are examining a parabolic sound reflector.

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He And Him Man is the subject. Perhaps for that reason, science is a poor word to use in connection with him. His ac- tions are often unpredictable, erratic. Yet, despite the complexity of man, the function of the social scientist is to find several common denominators from which man can be studied. World History is the initiatory stage. Here, the freshman is introduced to a world view. The student is urged to try for an appreciation of man's dependence on the past. He is what he is because of what was. In the junior year, the student makes an in-depth study of his own heritage in Amer- ica. Finally, the senior receives a type of citizenship course. Government is a complex study. There are so many legal devices, loopholes, checks and balances built into the American system, that a year's study makes the front pages of the newspapers only a little less superficially understandable. As a last challenge, Sociology is offered as an elective. Now history be- comes personal, the common, not the great is em- phasized. All in all, man, his folly, achievements, fail- ure, grandeur, is the subject and the object of social study. Even from outside the room, one can see what kind of tests Mr Gordon gives in history. Pooling their efforts, Steve Reichart, Neil O'Callaghan, and Jack Kirby nervously look over their Government notes for the test next period. .Q 4 What do you know about Logotherapy, Mr. O'Brien? asks Fr. Ha gan in Sociology. FranklfyJ, nothing, quips Bob O'Brien.

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lVlore Than Dust The teachers of the English Department vividly dem- onstrate to the student that English-the language and the literature-is much more than the names and words of people who today are nearly dust or less than dust. Rather, the student learns these peo- ple were alive and thinking and still are very much alive in their ideas and style. And they have experi- enced the very same agony, or joy, amusement or anger, or love-the exact same emotions that we have once felt. But the course doesn't end with the demonstration that writing is not a dead language. lt cultivates a real appreciation the medium, the English tongue, and develops a knowledge of how the student can use the invaluable tool to his greatest possible advantage. K f f'. ln lreton's culture tank, freshmen study one of Shakespeare's first period plays: Romeo and Juliet. Trying to translate one of Fr. Dean's speeches, Mike Dekowski turns to Mr. Webster. eftfiifg L .f Sp