Eagle River High School - Northern Trail Yearbook (Eagle River, WI)

Page 81 text:

THE NORTHERN TRAIL Why Graduate From High School? T HERE are many different view-points prevalent among people with respect to the value of a high school education. We often hear the remark from certain short-sighted people and ignorant individuals, Why should I go to high school? I can get along just as well without it. Let me, therefore, say a few more words proving to you that attending high school is not a waste of time or of no value to an. individual. Let us look at the matter from a financial view-point. A person not attending high school may put four hundred dollars in the bank in four years. You are ten times as liable not to do so as you are to do so. If you are one of the lucky ten you may get sixteen dollars a year for life. How little can be bought for sixteen dollars! If you don't go to high school you will probably have money to spend during the four years, but even so, will the use you make of it in the spending im- prove you later as a man or awoman? It.is shown by reliable statistics that two years after a person graduates from high school he is ahead of 1 the average individual who did not gradu- , ate. The ordinary person who finishes the eighth grade only can earn an aver- age of forty-five thousand dollars between the ages of fourteen land sixty years. The high school graduate can earn seventy- eight thousand dollars between the ages of eighteen and sixty years. To every average person then a high school educa- tion is worth thirty-three thousand dol- lars during this length of time. However, the financial advantages are the least to be considered. Most im- portant is the fact that whatever one learns in an institution is a matter of rec- ord. He hlas something that is market- able. It is like the pedigree of a pure- bred animal. There is a guarantee that you have successfully mastered some- thing during your lifetime. We have seen two cows stand side by. side in the barn. They looked very much, alike. They were Droxy and Roxy. Droxy gvave more milk than Roxy and it was as good in quality, but Droxy could be bought for seventy- five dollars while Roxy could not be bought for seven hundred and fifty dollars. Why? Droxy had no pedigree record. Roxy, with her guaranteed pure blood was sure to produce calves with mucha the same quality she had, but there was no know- ing what weak strain in Droxy's blood might produce a weakling now and then. Page seventy live

Page 80 text:

THE NORTHERN TRAIL lFrecl G. Melntyre MR. MCINTYRE has been janitor of our school since the completion of the new building. That he has drone his Work Well is attested to by the fact that. our building, in spite of seven years of use, appears as neat and clean today as it did the day it was completed. He is not the ordin- ary slouchy grouchy type of janitor one usually finds in our public schools. He takes a genuine personal pride not only in keeping the building pre- sentable at all times, but also himself. Having served as postmiaster in our community for some time, he is a man with some education which does not come amiss in the position he is now filling. Fred, as he is called by many, is 'an integral part of our school gi he is a cooperative and Willing helper and. ag friend to all. We hope he will continue to be janitor of our school for many more years as We feel he would be at hard man to repllace. Page seventy four

Page 82 text:

THE NORTHERN TRAIL Likewise, when two individuals, one a high school graduate and another not a graduate, try to sell their services to some employer in need of such services. The high school graduate can show a past record and a high school diploma. The other individual, who may be just as good from the standpoint of ability, has nothing to show. He has no pedigree. Who gets the job? The answer is self-evident. As a matter of fact, a non-graduate nowadays closes many doors in his own face. If one does not graduate from high school, he cannot go to college, he cannot go to state normal school, he cannot go' to first class law school, medical school, dental school, navy school of aviation, or army aviation school. He cannot get a first class position in a newspaper ofiice, or a place that is open to promotion in the bank, or a railroad office. It is an awful thing for a young man or woman to,shut and lock all doors to the best things in business or professional life. However, that is not all. The high school graduate. reads better. There are daily papers that few read who are not high school graduates. He not only reads bet- ter, he talks better because of his larger vocabulary, his broader horizon and his geater ease in expression. He is a better conversationalist also because he has a much wider range of topicsland conversation has come to be an important part of anyone's social, industrial, or commercial equip- ment. A high school education pays a life's divident in one's eiectiveness throughl conversational skill and art. IIA 'A -.been shown that one can think' better who has had a full course in hi u ' ' . One is never quite the same so long as there is a class over hi ,as he is when classes are below him. Not until then is one likely to 'hink as a leader. Until 'one is a Senior' he will be more or less a willing follower. He will not think of himself as a leader of the school as a'w1i'ple. But every Senior has somewhiat the responsibility of think- ing in 'terms of leadership. The high school has never included ten per cent of the people in its graduates, but these have furnished eighty per cent of the leadership in American thought. I - Last, but not least, is the fact that the high school graduate has learned to learn. An air in the training school for navy aviators was recently asked -quired high school graduates or more, and he replied: Because is not likely to know how to learn without at least that much schooling. It is not the fault of the elementary school, but lan eighth grade graduate has not, ordinarily, learned to learn. At the age when the pupil graduates from the grades there is still a lack of maturity and a lack of range of information which is acquired later in the high school. We might also ladd another important reason and that is the high school gives a person, in those most significant years, an important social comradeship. It is the only public institution that gives young people an opportunity to broaden their social horizon. In the gnades the social life of children usually has its well-defined restrictions and the children are purely local. Unlesseone goes to high school he rarely escapes his local comradeship. This is true in the large cities, especially, and it would pay, aside from purely educational advantages, to keep every person in the senior high school for the social and civic effect it would have on the city. Study the out-of-work life of the young people of any given locality in the years when they would otherwise be in the senior high- school. Study Page seventy-six