Granite City High School - Warrior Yearbook (Granite City, IL)

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month. As you all know the teachers of our city have formed a union and have been admitted into the American Fed- eration of Teachers. Now. if this bill passes it will be very easy to eliminate the poor teacher. A teacher who receives a very low wage cannot really be qualified for a position. With this new wage scale a teacher will have to fulfill all re- quirements before being given a position. The eliminating of the poor teacher will greatly increase the efficiency of the schools and raise the standard of education a great deal. Another bill that is before the national Senate at this time provides for the increasing from $4,000,000 the present amount of money for education to $10,000,000. which would make It possible for schools to better themselves in equip- ment of all kinds. In Illinois there is one great missing factor which makes it difficult to have unified education thruout the state, and that is the matter of text books. Thruout the state the parents of the children must buy all text books used by their children. There is the question of free text books coming up thruout the state. If free texts were furnished bv the state, in all probabilities there would be one standard thruout. which would make it possible for unified education. In Missouri free text books are furnished and it is a great advantage. h ree text books would make it possible for the poor people to educate their children to a higher degree. Many families in our city take their children out of school at an early age and start them to work In the factories, because they cannot afford to pay for the text books which are very high, altho now the price is regulated bv law. Now if free text books were furnished it is very probable that these same people would keep their children in school much longer rath- er than see them go to work. This brings up another problem and that is the keeping of children in school until they are sixteen. In this city the factories make it very easy for a child of thirteen or fourteen to get a job” at a fair wage and rather than go to school he takes this job and nine chances of ten he stays right there and his education goes no farther. Of course, there are ex- ceptions but this is generally the case. All children ought to at least finish the eight grades, in fact, go two years in High School or elsewhere. In this district there are quite a number of students attending our High School that live out in the rural districts and have to pay a certain fee annually. There is a plan being worked upon by which our schools would become a township high school. This would greatly increase our district and make it possible for students to come in from the country at a low cost, while also lowering the city tax. Everywhere one hears of our crowded condition but it is impossible to realize how crowded we really are unless you have seen all the students packed in this auditorium some morning before sessions begin. We have 300 students attending here and only 240seats in which to accommodate them. For the last three years a great majority of our students have had to sit two in a seat, and certainly such condit ions are not conducive to the best re- sults. Next term your students will be more crowded than ever before. A census of the eighth grade shows there will be approximately 400 students attending High School. Now. in order to admit all these students it will be necessary to run two shifts. The first will be from 7:45 until 12:30, composed of upper classmen and the next shift will be from 1 p. m. to 5:30 o clock in the afternoon. This will make it necessary to employ more teachers and the student will have to get Page Eighteen

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EDUCATION AND THE PROBLEMS OF GRANITE (TTY During my high school course, I have had an opportunity to become acquainted with the problems of our High School as well as of our city. , The great World War has brot out the need of Greater Education for all Democratic Peoples” and, now that the war is over our time can be centered on Education. When our great draft took place in 1918 it was found that a great per cent of the men were illiterate, in other words they were incapable of reading and writing their own narae3. Should this great country of ours be ignorant and illiterate? In our own town of Granite City there is a large percent of illiterate people also. Steps are being taken in our various plants toward the education of these foreigners by part-time study, a certain time being taken from their daily routine of work to teach them the English language. Illiteracy is always dangerous. Bolshevism with all its terrors is the offspring of illiteracy and menaces not only Europe but our country as well. It would be very easy for a person that could speak the language of the foreigners to get among the people who do not read the newspapers and lecture to them in a forceful way by enlarging on their wrongs and their rights to the wealth of the world and inciting them to revolution. Like an evil weed which grows where nothing else will, a revolt is likely to spread quickly and uprisings in which blood would be shed and lives be lost, is the probable out- come. It would be the innocent people that would suffer because of their ignorance, because of their inability to read the newspapers and get the straight” of the whole thing. In Russia Bolshevists have gotten the upper hand and are ruling the people in terror. The Russian peasants are just barely existing. There is no education at all. with the exception of the noble classes who have a fair education. Do we want such conditions in our old U. S. A.? If not we must take steps toward the education of the illiterate foreigners and prevent the possibility of such a plague as Russia has. Part time study is one way of preventing conditions such as exist in Russia. The children of these foreigners are at- tending our public schools and being educated fairly well. But it is the parents of these children that we must try to educate also. We have a night school in our city where classes in English are formed for the teaching of foreigners. But the aver- age foreigner, who goes to his work early in the morning and does a hard day ' s work does not feel like going to school at night after he is all tired out. So this part-time study in the various plants is the only way by which we can educate these men and this system is very effective and should be furthered in this community. As a whole, the people are investigating the matter and are rising to the occasion thruout the country, by appropriat- ing funds for education. In the recent election held here, the “Hicks Bill” was carried by a great majority whereby the per cent of taxe3 for educational purposes was increased from three to four per cent. Another bill which is being worked upon in this state is the Minimum Wage” Bill, which would make the minimum wage of a school teacher $80.00 per Page Seventeen

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all his work outside of school hours. Now the big question is. “What can be done to relieve the situation? One way to relieve it would be to build a Junior High School, or to transform this building into a Junior High School and build a new High School. This, of cou rse, takes money but it is absolutely necessary. A Junior High School would aid the situation in several ways. First, it would accommodate all the students of the seventh and eighth grades and the first year of High School, relieving pressure on the grade buildings as well. Secondly, it would probably solve the problem of Freshmen failures. Now if we had a Junior High School the students would be- come acquainted with the system of study in that school so that by the time they reached High School they would be thoroughly familiar with its workings and so less apt to fail Junior High Schools have proven successful wherever they have been established. In St. Louis they have their Junior High and it is very successful and 1 believe if such a school were built here it could never be built too large, for a town of this size. Many people object to sending their children to High School on the ground that we are too crowded to ac- complish good work, so you see that the problems of education are becoming greater every day. There is one more factor which in my opinion is very great and that is the Kindergarten. In St. Louis it has proven greatly successful, for it gives the small child a year of preliminary training before starting out on actual school work. In this city a child starts school at six years of age. Why not lower the age limit and give him a year of preliminary training? In Kindergarten the child learns the first principle of order. In many of our schools the child receives only a half day of schooling. Now isn ' t this wasted time? With the Kindergarten we would gain in the long run. for after starting school the child could settle right down to school work without wasting time on these preliminaries. Now. people of Granite City, we have tried to put before you some of Granite City ' s educational problems as they ap- pear to the students in the schools. Do you feel that they need attention? Do you realize that these are your problems wheth- er you have children in your home or not? Your problems because Granite City is your city and a part of the great coun- try which depends on the education of the masses for its security and prosperity? 1 leave for you to consider. ERNEST VEIHL, Valedictorian. Russell Moore: “He doesn ' t let study interfere with his good time.’’ Page Nineteen