Highland High School - Shield Yearbook (Highland, IN)

Page 8 text:

CHECK MATE! A Bicentennial chessboard displays the efforts of a student’s chess match. TEN HUT! Standing at attention before going on field to present the colors is captain of the color- guard. junior Mike Griffin. What is progress? In the past 200 years this country has made a tremen¬ dous amount of progress. Or have we? More than 200 years ago, in June 1775. the Redcoats were planning to take the area of the Charlestown Peninsula and Bunker Hill, around the Boston area. The minutemen found out about the British plan and took control of the area before the Redocats got there. When the Redcoats arrived there was a fierce battle. The British won. but it marked the first real battle that the colonists fought. The war that gave our country our independence had begun. Now. 200 years later, on the same sight that the historic battle was held on. there is another type of war. This Is a war of whites against blacks, also known as busing. A few years before the Battle of Bunker Hill, In Boston Harbor, forty to fifty colonists, protesting the English tax on tea. dressed as Indians, dumped the contents of 340 chests of tea into the water. They were determined not to pay the tax on tea. Today there are still protests against foreign countries, but this time the country is Russia and the protest is against the U.S. selling grain to the Russians. Dock workers refused to load grain on the ships because they were afraid that if the grain was sold to Russia, the price of grain products In the U.S. would go up a tremendous amount. While Spanish colonists were exploring new territory, the Army of the Potomac was exploring the possibilities of a new territory of medicine, innoculation for the small pox. The disease which was wiping out many soldiers as well as civilians had become uncontrollable. Doctors discovered a way to prevent people from getting the disease, by innoculating people who didn’t have the disease with the germs from people who did have the disease. Finally the army decided it was too risky of a try and the soldiers were forbidden to be innoculated. Today doctors battle a different type of disease. Cancer. The work is enough to scare anyone, just as the word smallpox did 200 years ago. Women’s lib Is not a thing that started recently. Women were fighting for their rights more than 200 years ago. Abigail Adams wrote to ther husband John, who was serving in the Continental Congress, ‘l long to hear that you have declared an independency, — and by the way, in the new Code of Laws ... we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice .. ” Progress. Have we really achieved it in the past 200 years? What is the price of progress? Is it progress to achieve faster and better forms of transportation if our planet becomes so polluted that we can’t live in it? Is it wise for us to prolong the length of life if the world becomes so over¬ crowded that we will have “standing room only’’? Is all of this really progress? Think of what the past 200 years have brought us. What will be next 200 years be like? Will the year 2176 have as much progress as we’ve made since 1776, or will we go back to the days of sticks and stones as weapons? The next 200 years will tell!

Page 10 text:

6 Student Life 3:00! For some students this signals the end of a dragging day at school but for most this isn’t the end but the beginning of an evening. After school hours are filled with club meetings, athletic practices, plus play and musical rehearsals. But that ' s still not the end as the students head for the game. After the hard fought victory or the agonizing defeat students congregate at the ever popular place Burger King to chow down. Some unfinished floats may have to be put together for an all too soon Homecoming. A dance is always popular for it is another get-together place for students. Monday morning comes much too early for sleepy-eyed students as they wander into classes while the teacher reminds them of unfinished homework assignments. These outside activities are the “other part” of a student’s life. Graduation is the end for 527 seniors as their high school days become memories . . . to Celebrate!