Dover High School - Crescent Yearbook (Dover, NC)

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the yoke of High School government, and to form new plans and projects for their future prosperity. Such has been the experience of the Class-the Class of 1920 of the Dover High School-and such is now the necessity which constrains its members to alter the for- mer systems of our existence. The history of our career as a Class is a history of repeated advances, victories and achievements, all having in direct object the establish- ment of absolute independence for each individual mem- ber of the Class. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid audience: The Board of Education and Woman's Betterment of this Dover High School have provided for us the school building, With all its appurtenances, the same to be for- ever set aside as an institution of learnnig-a place Where all young men and Women in search of educational ad- vantages may. meet together for the purpose of being instructed in such branches of knowledge as they may seem to need. . The very ablest of instructors have been engaged to impart their Wisdom along all essential lines of thought to the classes thus congregated together, and these have for four years patiently endeavored to instill into the minds of those placed in their charge, the germs of prac- tical thought and learning that they have found neces- sady to fit them individually for contract With the outside World. Kind and considerate parents have made it possible- even, in some cases, perhaps, obligatory, for us to attend the school regularly and punctually, and have given us all the assistance and encouragement Within their power in our daily pursuit of the facts of life that make up its one great composite truth, which all men are faithfully seeking-the Way to live! A Great care has been taken in the arrangement of the school curriculum that such branches as should be found to be of the greatest advantage to the greatest number should be most diligently studied. No pains have been 39

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CLASS DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE When in the course of youthful events, it becomes necessary for the class of nineteen-twenty to dissolve the educational bands that have connected us for eleven years with the Dover High School, and to assume, among the men and women of the world, the separate and equal stations to which our own wise nature and our new diplomas entitle us, a decent respect for the opinions of our kind requires that we should declare the causes that impel us to our graduation. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all young men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by nature with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of education. That to secure these rights, high schools, colleges and other educational organizations are instituted among young people, deriving their powers from the attendance of knowledge-seeking boys and girls, that whenever any grade of education proves inadequate to these ends, it is the right of the student to alter or to forsake it, and to seek out a new institution, which bases its instruction on such branches and presents its information and training in such form as today shall seem most likely to effect their acquiring of a higher education. Prudence, indeed, dictates that the teachings and train- ing in this way long established should not be changed for light and transient causes, and accordingly, all school history has shown that each successive class of boys and girls ar emore disposed to study on, while information is obtainable, than to step forth unthinkingly to assert themselves by abolishing the forms to which they have become accustomed. But when a long train of good and sufficient reasons, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to push them out into the real world of practical thought and action, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off 38

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spared to make the course of study and the plan of its pursuit all that it should be in every way, a well regu- lated institution. As a class, we--fee-lr that we 'have worked very hard. We have not done our work extraordinarily well, perhaps- not being boys and girls of exceptional brilliance-but we do have the supreme satisfaction of knowing that we have tried hard, and that we have done our very best. In every stage of our progression, we have been com- mended for success in the most flattering terms, our re- peated examinations have been rewarded only by repeat- ed credits. A student whose attainments are thus marked by every merit that may attend a graduate is unfit to longer be the pupil of even a High School. Nor have any of us been wanting in attention to our associates. We have warned them from time to time of the approach of this Commencement, when our school would no longer extend a Warrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our attendance and development here. We have appealed to their natural energy and ambition, and W have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to meet all ex- aminations which would inevitably interrupt our connec- tions and associations. They, too, have not been deaf to the voice of study and opportunity. We must, hereafter, acqueisce in the necessity which announces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, classmates no more, but our dear friends. To be it now and forever known to all men that our instructors, after much needless examinations, profitless discussions, one with the other, and serious, but quite unnecessary consideration, have arrived at the astound- ing conclusion that it is altogether beyond their power to teach us anything more. We have thoroughly mastered all there is to be metg we know all there is to know: and there is no longer any place for us in the institutions we have attended so faithfully, and loved so long and well. 40