Croswell Lexington High School - Pioneer Yearbook (Croswell, MI)

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Ex Cathedra WHEN I see a girl leaving high school who has taken many years of language and then has to deal with so many tilings in life not touched upon by her prepara- tion. I feel that she has not had a square deal in edu- cation.—Prof. M. V. O’Shea. University of Wisconsin. The American public school is the stomach in which our large foreign immigration is to be digested. There are those who lVar that th food will destroy the stomach, but as for myself I have r.o fear so long as our schools continue to fulfil their mission as they are now doing.—Rev. Newell Dwight Ilillis. That a public school building may be ns d economically it ought to be used all of the time—summer and winter, morning, af- ternoon and evening—and it ought to be used for the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people. Otherwise a large part of the people’s investment in the building is wasted. To use a school building only from nine to three, five «lays in the week, nine months in the year.—in other words, to allow it to remain unused more than one-half the working year.—is not only to waste the people’s money, hut to deprive of the benefits of its use many thousands of persons of all ages who might otherwise take advan- tage of them.—Supt. V. 11. Maxwell, New York ( ity. On the playground the child lives, while in school he prepares to live. That is why it is true that if you can tell me how a child plays, I can tell you how he will work. That is why it is true more people go to the bad through wrong play than through wrong work: and why play ranks with work, food and sleep as a necessary part in the balanced life of the child. The playground is cheaper than the reformatory; that is why it is as necessary that children have adequate and suitable play as that they have ade- quate ami suitable schooling. The play life of a people indicates more than anything else its vitality, morals, intelligence, and fit- ness to live.—Hr. Luther H. Gulick, New York City. School life should enable a hoy to say. ' I can.” In the high- er institutions of learning where formerly students Pstened to lectures hv the hour, doing nothing, they now spend their time in labratory work. So the elements of many trades should be brought into the elementary schools—not to train for a particu- lar calling, hut to train and develop the mind in a broader sense. This will cost a great deal of money, for no education is so cheap as hook education. Get the children to work because of tlieir in- terest in work. The old idea that all that the children got out of work was discipline is. I am happy to say. passing away. Voca- tional guidance must be d vdopcd on a large scale. It is not new. Benjamin Franklin’s father took him around to the differ- ent industries of Boston and asked him what he liked best. lie cliose the printer’s trade at the age of eleven—a fortunate thing for him and for others. Something of this kind must he done in this plan of vocational guidance. — Ex-President ('lias. W. Eliot. Harvard University. The schools must offer incentives and stir enthusiasms. Am- bitions must be awakened and pointed to their goal. When hoys and girls are disposed to do whet is decent, let us try to have them do what they want to do. lest the spark be quenched ami they lose the purpose to do anything at all. If one is long on sport and a little short on work, let us give in somewhat to his love of sport in the hope that lie will begin .to like companion- ship with us and reciprocate by giving in to the work which we must require him to do. It is not always well to hold a slow and poky, studious and comfortable hoy up as a model to a live and trying one. It is better to hump them together so that their dif- fering virtues and drawbacks will he somewhat transfused. The unexpected often happens in this country, and the teacher may well be cautious lest the time come when the urchin who distract- ed him because he could manage a horse better than he could

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Nellie M. Hobbs Tall and slim and most divinely fair. “23” KIDO Mabel J. Kenney She walks as though tin hand won playing. Hail to t he Thief.

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ii book shall invite him to ride in the president’s ear oil the rail- road. It is h; tter to see that it takes something of a hoy to man- age a horse, and use that fact to get him into the intricacies of the I took, so that the time will come when he will bless his old teacher for it. ami the teacher may he able to ride in that private ear without any disturbing recollections. - Commissioner A. S. Draper, New York. The new hygiene has before it a great field in which it is des- tined to splendid accomplishments in conserving the physical soundness of the rising generations. Medical inspection through its detection and exclusion of contagious d seases is preventing much misery ami saving many lives. The school doctor in his study of the physical welfare of the children will make easier, happier, and more successful the lives of many thousands of pu- pils. But when this has been said the limited possibilities in this fi 1 1 have to Home extent been indicated. Th » long yearned-for royal road to learning is not always to be found through the sur- geon’s knife. “It has not been demonstrated that if you cut out a child’s tonsils, fit him with a pair of eyeglasses and clear him of adenoids the school term will be cut in half, the general level of education will surge up and the city will save nrllions of dol- lars.” The old-fashioned virtues of industry, application, intelli- gence and regularity still hold sway, and amor.g the reasons for |M or scholarship are still to be found such old standbys as age upon starting, absence, laziness, and stupidity.—Leona id P. Ayres. Bussell Sage Foundation. . In our eagerness out here in the Middle West to herald to the world the magnitude of our corn and wheat crops, the super- iority of our beef cattle and thoroughbred swine, and the tremend- ous productiveness of our domestic hen, we are prone to lose sight of the real issue, namely, the splendid crop of strong sons and fair daughters that the country is producing. In their joyous na- tures we behold at once the bright sunlight of hope and the beau- tiful how of pronvse of our future greatness And glory. Droughts and deluges may destroy our growing crops, disease and degener- ation may play havoc among our cattle on a thousand hills and our treasured porkers in the alfalfa fields; yea. our boasted do- mestic hen may even occasionally cease her productive labors—all these calamities might conceivably come upon us each in its turn, and yet our glory not be dimmed . provided, only, that our grow- ing boys and girls be so trained and safeguarded in the home, so educated and disciplined in the school, the church and the other institutions of the country, that they will develop into well-round- ed. magnificent specimens of manhood and womanhood. — Prof. William A. McKeever, Kansas State Agricultural College. I am sure that we have now' all waked up to the fact that it is not well to have a system of education which tends to educate people away from their life work; and it. is a very had thing to have a system of education which makes men look down on skill- ed. trained muscular exertion, the skilled and trained work of the body. Too often we now see the son of the skilled mechanic, of the blacksmith, or the carpenter, feel that lie is rising if he be- comes a third-rate clerk. Now that is an unfortunate condition of things. We ought to do our best to see that reward and re- spect com in greater proportion than at present to the man who does the best form of manual labor. Personally it has never been any effort to me to give that respect for the man who did a hand- icraft with such skill as to show mastery of his m.iseks. mastery of his physique. There ought to he generally the attitude in the country which will prize as they ought to he prized the abilities ot the carpenter, the smith, the skilled workman, the skilled me- chanic of any kind. He is exactly as much entitled to credit and to respect as any man who succeeds in any other profession, and. by giving him the special training in the special schools, a special training which will bring a special reward, we are doing our part to restore the equilibrium of regard in which professions and trad- es are held in the community.—Theodore Roosevelt. There arc three classes of the laity who pass criticism upon