Hobart Senior High School - Memories Yearbook (Hobart, IN)

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THE IDEAL AND THE GOAL. By John Merritte Driver. Written expressly for “Aurora.” HEN William Allen White, to the New York editor’s “What’s the matter with Kansas?” replied: “Kansas raises too much hell and too few cattle,” the Nation roared with laughter, esteeming it a fine bit of Americanesque humor. So to the question “What’s the matter with the American Pub- lic School I” the answer is: It’s educating too much cityward, society- ward, professionward, and too little farmward, artisanward, business- ward, creating too many consumers and too few producers, too many “ladies” and “gentlemen” and too few mothers of civilization and fathers of kingdoms and empires, too many who “toil not, neither do they spin” and too few who sow and reap and gather into barns, too many male and female parasites and too few who daily add, heroically and with infinite toil and sacrifice, to the sum total of the World’s virtue and wealth and wisdom and well-being and happiness. Our increasing weakness as a Nation is: Passion for prodigality and repugnance to productive labor, loafing instead of laboring, making believe instead of actually being all we profess to be and achieving more and more. Too often do we say to the boy: “Study hard, for, however poor, you may become President of the United States,” and too rarely, if ever: “Study hard, learn a trade, cultivate industry, practice rigid economy of both time and money, glory in hard work, for thus you will always be able to maintain your self-respect, render valiant service as a patriotic citizen, and make an honest living, and — ‘an honest man’s the noblest work of God.’ ” We’ve been too intent upon making lawyers and doctors and pro- moters and too little intent upon making farmers and ditchdiggers and hodcarriers and mechanics and foresters and civil and electrical engi- neers and railroad builders and captains of industry. We’ve been more eager to send the High School graduate, regardless of his ability, aptitudes and natural inclinations, to college and univer- sity than we have been to send him to the farm and bench and forge, the industrial beehive, train of cars or fleet of ships, mill or mine or mart of trade; hence the enquiry: “Are all educated men, especially college men, failures at the practical affairs of life?” We have been more eager to fit the High School graduate for college and an easy orna- 15

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SALUTATORY. RIENDS: We welcome you to our commencement. This occasion is the happiest of our high school career and we hope it will contribute to your pleasure. Still, with all the joy there is a touch of sadness. To-night ends our journey as schoolmates. We must now learn the lessons of life for which our school studies have been a preparation. Chief among the many things we have learned in these twelve years is the thought embodied in our motto: “No Victory Without Effort.” Throughout all life, from the lowest to the highest, we have endless examples of the struggle and the triumph. There is a constant impulse that contends with particular opposing forces. Yet the problem has to be solved differently in each separate instance. Among the lower forms of life the struggle is ultimately a tragedy, but to human beings endowed with acute mental faculties the triumph is glorious. Therefore, to us the motto bears a golden mes- sage: “No Victory Without Effort.” Human advancement in art and science is a concrete example of this principle in all life. Through years of intelligent, painstaking effort, Alexis Carrel has discovered how to make life happier by mak- ing it healthier. Colonel Goethals, the hero of the Panama Canal romance, has accomplished a world-famous undertaking. Luther Bur- bank has applied his time and talents to the discovery and adaptation of the useful and the beautiful in nature. The ocean telegraph is the victorious effort of another educated man. Think of all the wonders of this twentieth century! Not one would have been accomplished without persistent work. The man who be- lieves a thing can be done will not spare effort. He is the most terrific force among living things. He may be turned aside for a moment only — he will return to the task with a strength stronger than any trial ahead. His ideals become ideas, and not fancies, and from his dreams he builds a reality. You see what our motto means to us! Through persistent effort the artist, the scientist, and the engineer, have enriched our minds, promoted our healths, and supplied our material needs. Fell disease has been eradicated, continents have been brought together and moun- tains removed. Yet our victory is largely measured by our effort. There are small victories as well as great. Let us not despise the work at hand because our chosen task is out of reach ; and as a reward for our consistent, con- tinued efforts, may a great victory he ours — to behold a vision splendid and to hear a voice beatific! 14 RUTH S. THOMPSON.

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A T mental profession than to fit him to earn the bread of sweet life by the sweat of honest toil. Whenever a school creates or intensifies a dislike for manual, me- chanical, industrial, commercial, or agricultural labor it becomes a public menace. I’ve seen somewhat of the pomp and glory of the world; seen every crowned head in Europe, visited every country, city and capitol, had audience with the king of Italy and two popes of Rome, been enter- tained in the palaces of the nobility, among them Prince Paoli Ruspoli, hereditary lord mayor of Rome and richest subject of the Italian crown, as a guest tasted the sweets of plutocratic wealth, am myself not wholly unknown in the world of public speech and the Republic of Letters, and I deliberately declare I would rather my only child, a lad of eight sum- mers, would become a farmer, mechanic, merchant, manufacturer, or railroad builder, especially farmer, than to become an ambassador, sec- retary of state, or president. The High School course of to-day is more extensive and intensive than were the courses of Harvard and the University of Virginia in the days of Washington, Jefferson, the Adamses, and Alexander Ham- ilton— as late as Wendell Phillips, Emerson, Holmes, Bryant, Lowell and Longfellow. The world has had three distinct educational epochs: 1. When education was regarded as being fit only for menials. The man of honor and renown was an achiever, not a scholar, a doer not a thinker; anybody could become a scholar, but only a hero, a god, could strike down tyrants, sack cities, conquer countries, build empires, rule the world. Many of the apotheosized heroes in the World’s pantheon were unable to read or write — they had slaves or cheap sec- retaries read and write for them. 2. When, conditions reversed, learning became the fad of royalty, nobility, plutocracy — the cycle of university-founding by crowned heads and governments. The democracy was doomed to ignorance, and royalty, nobility and plutocracy seized the spoils of learning and litera- ture. Then, and then only, the school curriculum was made classical and artistic, ornamental, artificial, to suit the taste of royalty, nobility and plutocracy, and qualify them, not to become producers, makers of honest livings, but to embroider their idleness with elegance, to adorn the salon, shine in the ballroom and at the daily fete, or dazzle on a throne. 3. The present, marked by a widespread dissatisfaction with both the High School and the College curricula. The root of the matter is: Washington and the New England pilgrims and puritans with their Anglomania, and the Jeffersons and Madisons and Monroes with their Francomania, secured the adoption here of the Old World dilletante, leisure class, ornamental school curriculum which, in our non-leisure class, non-dilletante, non-ornamental, gnarl-fisted, horny-handed, work- 16