Hudsonville High School - Pioneer Yearbook (Hudsonville, MI)

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First of all the school must keep alive or in some cases awaken the interests which are socially desirable. The person who has an interest in good literature will read good literature. The student interested in natural phenomena is willing to spend his leisure time in finding out more about nature’s ways. A person whose receiving lines are intact, who goes through the world with his eyes and ears open to nature, science and politics cannot help but get into the right relationship with society in general. Our education has concerned itself with ideals, purposes and standards. It is now up to us to make something of these ideals, we must decide to become factors in the world’s progress for the good of society. Our schools may be compared to a vast training camp, the training camp of the future. We must nurture our ideals of work, honor, duty, purity and ser- vice. Unless we do this we will but merely exist. In an ignorant state a man is content to know nothing, do nothing, have nothing and consequently be nothing. But, a man who has developed his mental capacities longs to know all things, is restless when idle, he longs to own something and longs to act well his part in all the affairs of society. It is to the result of such longings that we owe progress and prosperity. It is a significant fact that those who have solved the great problems in the scientific and social worlds have not been ignorant men and women, but persons whose minds were so disciplined by intellectual education as to pre- pare them for those tasks. The steam engine, the phonograph, the wire- less telegraph and radium could not have been possible without such minds as Stephenson, Edison, Marconi and Madame Curie. The world looks to men and women who have had a purpose in life and made it their aim to not merely exist but to amount to something. Frances Patmos. THE TRIANGLE OF PROGRESS Law, Education and Religion In the great universal scheme of human events, w hat part does progress play? Where should we, as individual men be, were it not for the law of progress? What constitutes progress? It is not a blind force which moves by leaps and bounds. It is not a spasmodic impulse without reason. It is the steady, gradual co-ordination of law, education and religion, felt and lived in the lives of individual men. Mark you, it is a great triangular affair—law, education and religion. The basic line of this triangle we would designate as law. Ever since civilization began men have found law' a necessity. We cannot live to oui- selves alone. Indeed, when two or three are gathered together, there organization and law, however crude, are at once imperative. Throughout history, organized society has found law one of the basic lules of conduct.

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SALUTATORY ORATION The class of 1921 extends to you a most cordial welcome. We have reached that goal towards which we have been striving for four long, yet seemingly short years. We must separate now and drift away each to his or her own field of individual activity. We must now enter upon the greater field of life which lies stretched out before us; we must cast away our high school privileges and pleasures, only to hold them with the firm grasp of memories. We will always cherish and hold dear the associations of our school life. Our experiences will be one of the infallible scources of pleasant recollections; they will add to our lives a great measure of things without which our life would indeed seem “an empty dream.” What greater treasure could we have than those memories? The time is at hand when it is necessary for us as a class to part and leave the threshold of the school so dear to us. Our equipment is good, our armor strong, so let us meet our worldly battles face to face, remembering that a nation looks to her schools for men of brains. Each of us must be- gin to carry out his or her own “scheme of things.” So let it be our aim to start forth in the true spirit of commencement to do our best in the respective field of life which lies before us. We have chosen as our motto, “Not merely to exist but to amount to something is life.” Let us consider in what ways the education we have acquired can help us to attain the end for which we are striving. Our school work is worth just the difference it makes in our activities. The question is not how many books we were compelled to read or how much we know of arithmetic, geometry, history and literature, but rather what use are we going to make of this knowledge? how are we different from the person who does not possess this information? and still more important are these differences in our activities desirable from the point of view of the group in which w7e live? In the popular mind education aims only at giving the individual the ability to earn a good living. But, that is not all. We define the purpose of education in terms of the development of the abilities of the person, of growth, of culture or of morality. Our aim is in the terms of social effici- ency which will include both the welfare of the individual and the good of society. In our democratic country where education is free to all, it is no more than right that society demand that this education be used to develop men and women for the common good. We want individuals who will re- spond to the needs of the group, who are in sympathy with social problems and who will contribute towards the social welfare. Not only must he pos- sess interest and sympathy but added to it must be knowledge. It is for this mental development that our educational institutions have been estab- lished. Then the question arises how can we through education produce an individual who because of social sympathy, knowledge and activity, can advance the welfai’e of all?

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Nations, as well as individuals, must regard it as a basis for action. Notice, if you will, the nations which have been doomed by reigns of despotism, by the tyranny of the few dominating the rights of the many. Monarchies have lost their beneficence by displays of tyranny and their corresponding outbreaks of anarchy—while today, as a crowning achievement of govern- ment and law, stands the Constitution of our own United States—the basic law of our land, fostering democracy for all—equal rights and privileges. Ihis Constitution has kept pace with the demands of progress ever since John Hancock and his worthy colleagues inscribed the principles of its first provisions. It has stood the test of years—of dark days of chaos and unrest, and now its supremacy is long since assured. We have only to visit the ports of our country and view that great army of earnest, liberty-seek- ing- men and women clamoring for our shores, to realize that here is a nation with democratic law offering protection to its citizens, holding aloft a beacon light of hope to depressed and downtrodden humanity. With the world war behind us, today finds us confronted with new problems, and we ask—are we true to that fundamental basis of progress—law? In the period which follows, we must bend our efforts to maintain law and order. When men rise up in violence and defy the laws of state and nation, shall we sit back and call it progress? From many quarters we hear those who would l ead crime in legal codes raise the cry, “No government, no law.” We hear of men reaching out for equality of possessions, regardless of achievements, and on the other hand we hear demands that capital be guarded as a public trust and that every form of industry be regulated by the state. The anarchist would plunge humanity into strife and convulsion—the socialist would mould man for that complicated system destined to be shattered by the friction of its parts or crushed by the burden of its mechanism. Both these extremes are advocated for the sake of progress, but they fail because they do not observe that obedience to law is a primary necessity for righteous progress. Picture, if you will, the chaos that would result if our prisons were sud- denly unlocked, our ports left unguarded, and every constitutional restraint withdrawn. Indeed, there is no freedom without law. It is law that has made us a political unit, endowed our schools and universities, established our system of public charities. It is law that has checked the encroach- ments of capital, given increasing justice to labor, stayed the hand of mur- der, established the home and secured its sanctity. It is obedience to that law which the individual citizen owes as a support to the law, if he would take his place in the universal progress. Today citizens must not only obey the law but they must help to make the law. In the evolution of constantly changing conditions, new cir- cumstances require new laws. Thus, we come to our second constituent of progress, namely, education. It is education which fits men for a keener discernment of the problem at hand. It is a thorough study of the past