Gainesville High School - Hurricane Yearbook (Gainesville, FL)

Page 17 text:

GAINESVILLE HIGH SFHOOL, 1915 monly used is the steam heat, steam being conveyed to radiators placed in the different rooms and corridors. These radiators are always placed under a window or near an outside door so that the inrush of air is imme- diately warmed. In some of the better schools wall ventilators are pro- vided which take the foul air up through the wall, also creating a cir- culation of the atmosphere in the room. Much care is being expended on the school building nowadays in re- gards to cleaning and preservation. Preservative oils should be applied to all woodwork once a week: this not only preserves the wood but keeps down the dust and makes cleaning and sweeping easier. Several dillerent mixtures of this oil are in use now, most of them contain a high per cent. of turpentine which is very healthy to breathe. Soap or water should never be put on woodwork in school buildings under any considerationg damp- ness causes growth of germs and also decay. The building should be thor- oughly swept or brushed every day and all trash and garbage collected from building should be incinerated so as to immediately kill germs which are carried about in many ways-as, for example, by flies, mosquitoes and other insects. All toilets and lavatories should be scrubbed and disinfected at least twice per day. Some people may think this is a lot of unnecessary routine work jotted down to fill out the composition, but if you will make our school a few visits you will find every mentioned detail thoroughly carried out. A large, spacious ground is very essential for schools and if graded and parked beautifully is one of its best drawing cards. lt should include basket-ball and tennis courts, foot-ball gridiron, base-ball diamond, and special playground for primary children. The grounds should have plenty of trees for shade and ornamental purposes. As much of the ground as possible should be sodded in grass to keep down dust, one of the best germ carriers known. In respect of buildings and grounds, our Gainesville High School is exceedingly well equipped. We have a large, commodious and comfortable building of modern construction, and our play grounds and athletic field are unequaled in the State, if indeed, in the South. A campus of many acres, shaded by beautiful trees, affords place for tennis and basket-ball courts, and our elegant athletic field just completed, contains an up-to-date race track of five laps, a foot-ball field and base-ball diamond. Our buildings are most carefully kept clean and sanitary, being regu- larly oiled and dusted and swept as modern sanitary methods demand. M. A. TUCKER. 15

Page 16 text:

in A Z I C I 7 I. Z 1 ,- -.'

Page 18 text:

GAINESYILLE HIGH SCHOOL. 1915 THE FUNCTION OF TIIE HIGH SCHOOL IN THE STATE'S EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM Previous to the period of twenty years past nearly all secondary educa- tion was entrusted to academies and private schools, but within the past two decades conditions have changed. 'the high school is no longer merely a preparatory school for university, but is coming to be more and more the final word in education for the great mass of people. During twenty years past the number attending high school has grown from three hundred and sixty-five thousand to one million and one hundred and thirty thousand, an increase of two hundred and ten per cent. as against an increase in population of but forty-seven per cent. A few years ago there were only twenty-live hundred high schools. Now more than eleven thousand exist. Hence it is fitting and necessary that the high school take full account of the conditions in the community and of the needs and requireinents of all those whom it professes to serve. The chief purpose of the high school, as of the elementary school and of college and university, is the development of intellectual power, the ability for independent thinking and skill in accomplishment. These things may be achieved tll1'UUgl1 the constant and systematic application to any ot' the studies provided in a liberal high school curriculum. Students with ditlerent purposes in life will of course find proportion- ate difference in the value to them of this or that branch of learning. It is not with the relative merits of various subjects that we a1'e concerned, but rather are we anxious to establish clearly the proposition that the high school must make provisions for satisfying all just demands made upon it, and tor meeting the constantly arising new conditions whether these be of a social, industrial or civic nature. It is generally agreed that it is nowise the specific purpose of the high school to provide for technical training in any line. Nor is it in anyway a part of the general plan to convert the high school into a purely vocational or trade school. Nevertheless it must be recognized that it is equally as serious a failure for the high school to re- fuse to take into account the value and necessity of those studies and arts which have an intimate contact with every day life, which lend a more di- rect and vivid interest to the average student, and which se1've, in short, to exemplify the relation between the theoretical and the practical, It is through a recognition of these facts, for example, that the boy who has found the ordinary routine of studies dull and uninteresting and who is on the verge of completing his education in the ninth grade, can be turned from his aversions to school life by a systematic course of instruction in the manual arts. The interest awakened in him through this means will 16