Fowlerville High School - Commander Yearbook (Fowlerville, MI)

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e i g lm S c lm o o GLENN GRIEVE The high school has been called the poor man's college, and as such it ought to take the place of college to those who are unfortunate, or fortunate as the case may be, to be compelled to defer their college course until such a time as they have mental stamina enough to take their college course with sense and seriousness. But our high schools must deal with real not with ideal condition of things and therefore we must face the fact that nine-tenths of our pupils do not enter college. It is then the duty of the high school to furnish the sinews for the student in his struggle with the busy world. Then things the high school should develop in its students are initiative, independence, integ- rity. A boy, a girl cannot be reared in a hot house until eighteen years of age and then be expected to thrive under unfavorable conditions. We mean by this that a school which is conducted on t-he theory that the pupil should have everything done for him, that he should be pampered and petted into the be- lief that life is a rosey path, one continuous round of pleasure from the cradle to the grave, is the school that breeds the social vampire and the parlor an- archist. The boy or girl who has all the wrinkles of life smoothed out for him, who never has had an obstacle to overcome has been cheated out of his birthright, and the parent or teacher who tries to shield the boy or girl from every nn- pleasantness falls far short of being an ideal parent or teacher. When the taxpayer of a locality furnish the means for the support of thc high school they have a right to expect certain results. They have a right to expect a graduate of their schools to be a little better prepared to cope with the duties of life. They have a right to expect him to be a little better citizen, a little more alive to the topic ot the day, to have a little nicer sense of civic honor than one without this training. A pupil who leaves our school, having completed his course, should not necessiarly be expected to be a walking encyclopedia and compendum of facts, but he should be expected to be able to do something and do that something better than one without the high school training. If he cannot wherein lies the benefit of our schools? If a boy graduates without being able to write a legible and intelligent business letter, with the common words spelled correctly, one of two things is certain, either the boy is a fool or the school is a failure, or both. If the.pupils of our senior classes cannot solve the problems that natur- ally arise in common business practice, the money spent in teaching mathe- matics has been thrown away. Unless the pupil can see more beauties in na- ture, unless he can feellthelleverlasting system that governs and controls this universe and can comprehend that he himself is but a unit of a stupendous whole, his science is wrong. So much for the pedagogical side of high school work. But after all what a pupil gets from books, while an important part, is not the whole of an education. The greatest lessons of life are learned from life. No amount of book learning will make a manly man. The home must do that. Therefore it is only justice to the school to say that the finished product

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GLENN GRIEVE IDALENE WEBB GOLDIE BAKER I tx K A72 N' LILLIAN ITSELL

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of the educational mill largely depends upon the condition of the raw material. The school can no more build agood man from a diseased boy tit matters not whether the disease is mental or morall than the sculptor can make a perfect statue from faulty marble. We can then come to no other conclusion than this: In order to obtain the best results the home and school must work in unison. It has been estimated that a high school training is worth several hundreds of dollars a year to the child in his after life. If this be so ought not the child be taught that he must give as close application to his school as the business or professional man does to his business or profession. Should he not under- stand that regularity and punctuality are the cardinal virtues? Should it not be impressed upon his mind that he cannot dissipate two or three nights in the week and expect to get from his school all that there is in it? The duty of the home is to see that the child attends and that he is in the proper physical con- dition to receive instruction. Very few children can master the high school course without constant and steady application of their work. If all external conditions are met there can be no excuse for the high school that does not measure up to the full standard of excellence. cience in the High School IDALENE WEBB ,.. During the last few years the position of science in the high school has steadily improved. As once taught by text-books, recitation and ex- t periments tif anyl by the teacher, the subjects X became a mere exercise for the memory and were soon forgotten. Now, with the aid of good lab- oratories where the student is taught to observe accurately and to draw correct conclusions from A l what he sees, the disciplinary value alone is 1 worth all the time spent upon them. lt is not the purpose of the high school to make every student a scientist, but rather to make the person live. The pupil is brought into closer touch with the things about him, his hor- izon is broadened and his hold on life intensified. Now and then a pupil develops a love of science for science's sake. He should be encouraged to continue his studies at college or university. Occasionally a parent says: I don't want my child to waste his time on chemistry, botany or Zoology. He is never going to be a a teacher nor go to any higher institution of learning. Give him something practical. The girl may make just as good bread ifshe does not understand the chem- istry of bread-inaking, and the boy make a very successful farmer and not know why the second crop of clover produces the seed, but it certainly will make work less of a drudgery to know why certain things in every-day life are as they are. The study of the natural sciences, especially, teaches one to ob- serve more closely and to discover for ourselves new beauty in bee and butter- fly, tree and flowerq in fact, teaches us to live so as to enjoy the world about us. XI, -. K