Commerce High School - Commerce Yearbook (Cleveland, OH)

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limit of the capacity of the building.” This enrollment included both boys and girls and showed the popularity of the new movement. The beginning was most encouraging, and the problem of practicality gains in interest at every turn. At present, every available space in the building is occupied as a class room, and while music is taught, the classes for this subject arc obliged to take some recitation room that may chance to be vacant for one period. The school has a well appointed gymnasium which is used by the boys and the girls on alternate days. A lunch room has been furnished ample for the accommodation of all desiring to procure food at the school building. There is one large study room which, on occasion, must accommdate itself to being a hall for entertainment. The school is handicapped by lacking a room for library purposes, but a Carnegie library in the next block will soon minimize the lack. The Board of Education has subscribed in the name of the school for many of the best literary, educational, and business publications of the country, and from these the progress of the world is kept in mind, and an occasional recitation is devoted to world topics. Thus it will be seen that Herculean efforts are making and for the past year have been endeavoring to bring this great living machinery into the smoothest working order. Vital problems must be solved. The High School of Commerce considers as an important factor in education the duality of the individual. The gaining of knowledge by the mind and the storing of the same for future use are both as valuable to the student as the gaining and laying up of capital are to the business man. But the commercial education demands far more than the use of the mind as a store house. Knowledge gained should be practically used, until it becomes assimilated with the individual, and in this way much of the machinery for storage purposes is rendered useless. Thus instead of a theoretical, our aim is to advance a practical education. But the practical application must be so arranged as to bring educational processes before the pupils as life issues. Education must be made earnest and of absorbing interest. “The old order changeth yielding place to the new.” In the early days of our nation, as our Superintendent has reminded us, generalized labor made practical problems of life general. Lands must be measured, trees must be felled, houses and barns must be built; all this and more must be accomplished at the hands of the people. Spinning, weaving, garment making, cooking, and every variety of work, all were done at the home. Home education then was of paramount value when every member of the family had some duty to perform. Today specialization has eliminated home training, and most of our education is relegated to the schools. But while in the years gone by practical problems were more general, much more energy was required to accomplish the world’s purposes. Wear and loss, occasioned 9

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 tjstorp IN introducing the High School of Commerce to the public, The Annual quotes largely from the School Curriculum. “The High School of Commerce. the outgrowth of the century’s needs, had its immediate origin in the report of the Educational Commission appointed by President Orth, of the Board of Education, in February, 1906. The sub-committee of this commission, to whom was referred the technical and commercial phase of public education, was known as the ‘Committee on Schools and the Bread Winners,’ and was composed of Charles S. Howe, C. A. McCormick and Francis Prentiss. After due deliberation, the committee made its report recommending, among other advanced measures, the establishment of a High School of Commerce. “Regarding this work, the committee had this to say, ‘The majority of the boys and many of the girls who graduate from our high schools go into business. The average boy who goes into business life knows very little about business methods. He perhaps knows a little bookkeeping, a little stenography and a little typewriting, but this is about all he has had. It is possible to give a student in a Commercial high school a course of study which will train him in business methods, which will make him an enthusiast in business and which will render him of immediate use to his employer. “ ‘As the college course broadens the mind and enables a man to think along many lines, so a thorough commercial training will broaden the mind and enable the student to reason, to think and to understand throughout his business career.’ “Acting upon the recommendation of the Educational Commission, the Board of Education decided to establish a High School of Commerce. The building at the comer of Bridge avenue and Randall road, formerly occupied by the West High School, was remodelled and equipped for a High School of Commerce.” Thus it is seen that the school from its inception has been planned with a definite purpose in view. The ideal of a high preparation for business gives the key to the needs of the school. The building up and bringing about results started in no haphazard way but is an intentional and systematic outgrowth of the effort to supply the needs of the business world. “The doors of the new school were opened for the admission of students October 4. 1909, and the school started with an enrollment of 437, almost the 8

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by unsystematized effort, caused unsatisfactory results. Today the problem is to secure the best results and minimize the expenditure of time and labor. Dealing with the novelty of untried processes, the High School of Commerce must make experiments, hence its first year has been occupied with problems of a vast nature. What of the old methods must be omitted, what of the new are of vital importance can be decided only by practical demonstration. The school has from the first endeavored to set the standard of business education high, to aim at meeting the wants of the century, and to advance cautiously but continuously until the commercial education shall in a measure be commensurate with the world’s commercial interests. 10