Henry Ford Trade School - Craftsman Yearbook (Dearborn, MI)

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FRIDAY. OCTOBER 8, 1957 THE CRAFTSMAN PAGE FIVE ly. He explains it by saying that he has nothing to bawl out the instructors for. I think the men in this school know pretty well what is right, and what is wrong. he said. Why call them together and preach to them? A student who had graduated from the school recently wrote Mr. Searle a letter. In it he mentioned that he had been some- what of a devil while in the school, but one day he learned a lesson. He had thrown three pieces of scrap paper at a waste- basket and purposely missed the basket to irritate his instruc- tor. The pieces were still on the floor when Mr. Searle walked into the classrocm. He stooped, picked them up, and placed them in the wastebasket, but said nothing. The student added that this had made a lasting impres- sion on his mind. Another said that one of the things he has been impressed with in the school has been the sight of Mr. Searle in the school cafeteria, carrying his dishes from the table like any school boy. Another graduate, now in an office, had studied in th9 tool making course. How did that help you in office work? I ask9d him. It taught me to think, he answered. The instructors tell me that when a boy leaves the school, Mr. Searle calls him in- to the office alone, and there wishes him well. Such contacts, rare as they sometimes must be, are sufficient to inspire the young men with ideas of what one man may do for another. He is never too busy to re- ceive an idea from a student. If the boy is sincere and the idea worthwhile, he likes to hear about it. He may say No at first, but if the student has determination, (which he is try- ing to discover,) and has rea- soned out his problem, Mr. Searle will say: Let's try it out and see if it works. He will be the first to tell you that he has had to grow with the school, to learn about industry, what had to be taught and could be. He himself is one of the school's best students. Before he came to it he had no particular experience in indus- trial education. Today he is an authority; many vocational schools and departments of schools are based on his work or largely influenced by it. Text- books of the school were to a large extent written under his supervision and approved by him; now they are used throughout the world. Mr. Ford'8 idea that a boy can study profitably when he sees what he is doing; when his textbook is experience in prac- tical work, forms the foundation of the school. Carrying out that idea has been the superin- tendent's Job. As a result, we have seen the development of apprentices of industry as a whole rather than the one-time narrow study of one particular trade without a working knowl- edge of the whole. He urges that a boy obtain as broad a knowledge of Industry as possi- ble, specializing later. More than this, he insists that skill without character is worthless. When he received an honor- ary master's degree from his alma mater, Williams College, he declared that the honor was the Trade School's not his. In the final analysis, we should go for our Judgment of this teacher to his students. In their school paper, The Craftsman, recently appeared such an analysis, prepared by the boys in an attempt to de- scribe their superintendent with- out mentioning his name. Here is what they wrote: He is liked by many. He is neat, courteous, a lover of nature, and a strong upholder of all that is righteous. He is a deep thinker and displays a great amount of tact in bringing out his point. Although the greater part of his time is tak- en up and about the Trade School, he still finds time to pursue his hobbies, among which are gardening, flori-culture, and fruit growing. Tact, diplomacy, and natural humor are features which account for his popular- ity. To this, speaking in a hum- ble way for the organization in which I am privileged to serve, let me say to you, Mr. Searle, that our gathering here today is proof that industry is not too busy, too wrapped in its own concerns, too hard, to pause this afternoon and pay this trib- ute for the manner in which you have carried out your trust. No words of ours, of course, are needed to tell you that you have dons well. We know you would prefer to go along quietly and modestly performing your service without all this furore and hul- labaloo. But since it is the unanimous wish of your students, your faculty, your directors, and all of us who know you, to do this thing, on their behalf I now congratulate you on the twentieth anniversary of your work as superintendent of the Henry Ford Trade School. Good luck, and God bless you. Senior Wins Scholarship at Wayne Isaia Red Petovello, a graduate of the January class of '36, won a four-year music schol- arship at Wayne University, De- troit, September 13, by playing on the alto horn an excerpt from a symphony he had never seen. Out of 700 entrants,.100 were given scholarships. From these, a concert band is to be formed. Isaia'8 musical ambition was aroused when he heard the school band play. Although his father forbade him to take trump- et lessons, Red began taking lessons while in the eight grade at Melvindale High School, under the supervision of Joseph Vandervest. The only way he could practice was at the home of his schoolmate. One year later Red in- vited his father to come to a school concert and hear him play a solo part. This his father did and was delighted by his son'8 showing, but was not for- ward in his Joy because of Red's disobeying him. His father died in 1933. Red is now working for a Bachelor of Arts degree in music at Wayne, attending three nights a week. Now connected with a ten piece dance orchestra, the tri- ple tongueing of Red and his trumpet is very pronounced. His ambition is to become a teacher of music or a leader of an or- chestra. The Better your Vocabulary, the Better you will read.

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PAGE FOUR THE CRAFTSMAN FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1937 Text of William A. Simonds1 Talk Good Afternoon, Boys. As I was driving over here this afternoon from Greenfield Village, the thought occurred to me that all of us who have gath- ered in this rotianda are here largely because we serve the ideas and carry out the purposes of the same individual. For a brief moment, before we commence our talk, I would like to tell you a story. It is about a lad who en- tered high school in Detroit early in September, and when the principal asked his name, he re- plied: Henry Ford. Is that so? replied the principal. Well, that'8 quite a famous name around these parts. The lad straightened his shoulders quite importantly. That doesn't surprise me, he said. I’ve been delivering papers around this neighborhood for the last three years! As I was driving along, the thought came to me that while many institutions bear the name of Ford , very few bear both his names. We have the Ford car, the Ford Rotunda, the Ford Sun- day Evening Hour, the Ford News, and so on, but except for the Hospital and the Agricultural Institute in England, your Trade School is one of the very few to share the entire name. That fact, it seems to me, should stimulate you to enter wholeheartedly into the spirit of the school, as I am sur9 you do. You could give no better return to the man who founded the School, to the president who has watched over its progress, to the Board of Directors who govern it, and to the faculty who teach it, than to apply your- selves diligently and get every- thing possible out of it. Un- less you yourselves are success- ful in the particular work to which you direct your efforts, the School itself can not be successful. The purpose of our meeting here today is to commemorate the completion of twenty years of uninterrupted service by your superintendent. Later this month your school itself will come of age, I understand, when it passes its twenty-first birth- day; indeed, I am quite sure that it is older than most of you who are today enrolled among its students. It is impossible for us to consider the teacher without considering the school at the same time, for the two are inseparately linked together; and we might go farther and say that we cannot consider the teacher and the school without first considering the students. When the school was first organized back in 1916, the pur- pose was to make it different from the usual one, which was a cross between a technical col- lege and a school. In the old time trade school, boys could get a smattering of knowledge but did not learn how to use that knowledge. Mr. Ford's ob- ject was to teach boys to be pro- ductive, a thing that has been sadly neglected by so many of our schools of that day and since. Many boys need support; they must work at the first thing which comes to hand; they have no chance to pick and choose. Compelled to enter life untrained, they are unqualified to fill a post in modem indus- try. Three cardinal principles were laid down to guide the Henry Ford Trade School: first, the boy was to be kept a boy and not changed into a premature working man; second, academic instruction was to go hand in hand with industrial instruction; third, the student was to be given a sense of pride and re- sponsibility in hi 8 work, by working on objects of recognized Industrial worth. The school began with six boys. I will not attempt to in- clude a history of its progress or of the details which you know much better than myself. The fact that the man who was chosen to carry out these principles has remained at its head for twenty years is sufficient evi- dence that they have been car- ried out. And that brings us to a consideration of the man himself. Any man who in the course of his lifetime has had an op- portunity to be of service to hi8 fellows, seeks no thanks for that service. He finds gratifi- cation enough in the performance of it; it is he, if he be sin- cerely interested in his Job, who daily gives thanks that hia lot has been so ordered that it permits him to perform that serv- ice. For most of us, opportuni- ties of that kind come all too seldom. Many who would like to serve are prevented from doing so by the very nature of their tasks. Occasionally we are able to improve the status or by word of advice direct the course of one of our fellows into a more fruitful channel; but for the most part, we are limited. Any words of praise, like those of thank3, are equally un- necessary to one who serves his fellows. Every last one of us enjoys hearing that we have done a Job well, but compliments can- not take the plane of the inward sense of accomplishment that rests within the man himself. If he and his conscience are at peace, if he knows that he did the Job well, neither criticism nor praise can alter that inward feeling. It would be embarrassing to Mr. Searle if we were to recount here any tabulation of his work, or express an opinion of its merit publicly. If you are fa- miliar with the story of the school, you know how it grew from one room In 1916 to twenty- eight rooms in 1928; from 1,000 feet of floor space to 160,000, from 6 pupils to many hundred. These, however, are mere statis- tics that do not satisfy our de- sire to know more of the man himself and what these twenty years have done to him. When I was assigned to the pleasant task of reviewing his work, I took the liberty of go- ing among his instructors and students to seek their Judgment. They did not know I was getting material for this talk, neither did he. One of the things that im- pressed me most in these chats wa3 the common sense viewpoint with which he seems to meet the multiplicity of little problems arising daily. He frequently quotes Elbert Hubbard's eleventh commandment: Don't take your- self too damned seriously. That is perhaps one reason why no teachers' meeting has been held in over a year, while in some schools they are held week-

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PAGE SIX THE CRAFTSMAN FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1937 Text of W. J. Cameron's Remarks This should be a lesson to Mr. Searle. A man can't go on doing what he has done for 20 years without his reputation catching up with him. There's nothing sudden or accidental about his exposure-- he has been under surveillance for a long tirae--day in and day out for a long time, Sir. His older students are experienced men now and able to draw their own conclusions. They have com- pared notes with his younger students, and all the evidence points the same way. Educators have came here to look into this matter; magazine writers and newspaper reporters have been on his trail; the keen eyes of industrial leaders have been watching him. There isn't a chance for even a Scotch verdict,—the case has been proved up to the hilt. And the findings--without a dis- senting voice--are these: That the said Frederick Searle is a Man, a Teacher, a Friend:—a Conciliator, a Counsellor. He is the Helper of slow minds and ambitious minds; the Aider of all who would make something of themselves. And there is not a word that we can say to modify the verdict. I am glad to share in this occasion, and I thank whoever it was that invited me. It seems that when the invitation first came I did not understand what it meant--thought it was a re- quest for a speech, and I avoid speeches whenever possible. But when I later learned what was afoot, I would have come even if I had to crash the gates. My acquaintance with Mr. Searle is as long as my service with the Company, and through the years I have learned not only to respect his character as a man, but also to admire his vision and ability as a teacher. I am quite sure that he would not approve all this em- phasis on himself personally. He and I and all the rest of us are keenly aware that the op- portunity given him to guide and administer this school, and giv- en me to do my work, and given you to improve yourselves--that this opportunity was not created BY US: it was created FOR U3 by the man who has created opportu- nity for so many other millions of persons during the last 34 year8, and what we have had to do was to make the best possible use of the opportunity offered. That is always in the back of our minds when some little praise comes our way individu- ally— What could I have done if Henry Ford had not made the op- portunity for me? That is not only true here but everywhere. Mr. Ford him- self might say of HIS great work: What could I have done, if gen- erations of men and women had not built this great America for us; if generations of scientists and engineers had not labored to lay the foundations of knowledge which we are working to com- plete? We are all the benefici- aries of other men's work, and that constitutes our deepest re- sponsibility to make such use of it that other men may be the beneficiaries of our work. It is an endless chain of recipro- cal benefit. Of course, Mr. Searle has made remarkable use of the un- usual opportunity that was of- fered him here. He has trans- lated with whole-hearted and in- telligent zeal the Ford Idea of preparing young men to take the best advantage of their opportu- nities. If anyone doubts that IS a Ford Idea, .let him only try to find it somewhere else—he will discover that nowhere on earth does it exist in connec- tion with an industry, as it does here. But the point about Mr. Searle is that HE WAS PRE- PARED to take advantage of his opportunity when it came. I don't suppose it ever dawned on him in his early years of work that he would be doing what he is doing now. But he went on learning and working, working and learning,--PREPARING HIMSELF BY EVERYTHING HE DID--so that when he turned the corner of his life that led him into the am- bushed hour where this opportu- nity waited for him, he did not need to run away, he was pre- pared to tackle it. In himself your Principal is an object les- son of what he is teaching here --PREPARATION. I don't suppose many of ua really understand what a great school this Henry Ford Trade School is. We are too close to it. I have often said to audi- ences elsewhere that if this school stood apart, in another city, where it could be seen by itself—not as we see it, over- shadowed by this great industry --it would stand out as one of the most remarkable educational demonstrations in the world. That is what famous educators have frequently said. But per- haps it is too much to expect that the students here should always see it in that light. I tell college graduating classes that their college or university doesn't care a nickel what they think of their school on Ccm- mencement Day—the faculty will stand b y what the graduates think of the school 25 years after graduation. And when you see gray-haired grads flock back to the campus year after year, you know what that means. It is the same with your school. A year or so ago I attended a dinner given by hundreds of old graduates of your school, and I know what they felt,—I know what they said as to what the school had meant to their ca- reers—and the school you have today Is a better one than they had. Perhaps we can read your future verdict in your tribute to Mr. Searle today. I don't know who to con- gratulate most--you or him. You have done honor to yourselves in honoring him. FCA Met in Lansing; O'Rear, Treasurer Emmette O'Rear, senior, was elected treasurer of the Future Craftsman o f America at the state meeting in East Lansing, Saturday, September 25. Twelve boys and advisor from Henry Ford Trade School chapter attended. An invitation was extended to FCA to hold their second na- tional convention in Detroit in conjunction with the 1938 De- troit and Michigan Exposition it J anuary. Contests in technical effi- ciency would be conducted it which national delegates froc high school chapters would com- pete for the benefit of exposi- tion patrons.