Joliet Junior College - Shield Yearbook (Joliet, IL)

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HIGH SCH(K) Although the Junior College is a part of the high school to the casual observer, its work being conducted in the high school building, it has its own assembly, librarv and student regulations offering more privileges and greater freedom to the students than is possible in the high school. From an extended chemistry course, the college has grown to include courses of pre- commerce, literature and arts, insurance, pre- medical, pre-Iegal, household administration, teachers, industrial adminstration, chemistry and chemical engineeriing, electrical engineer- ing, railway electrical and railway mechani- cal engineering, railway civil engineering, municipal and sanitary engineering, and mech- anical engineering. Its enrollment, last year, showed an increase of approximately 25 per cent over that of the previous year, while an examination showed that about one-fifth of the enrolled Freshmen were non-resident, coming from high schools in Lockport, Plainfield, Manhattan, Morris, Providence, Pontiac and Wilmington, besides a number of students whose families have be- come residents of the city in order to take advantage of the unusual opportunities offered for securing a high school and Junior College education. Our night school is a miniature resident type of those glorified correspondence schools which guarantee to double your salary or pro- mote you from chief bottle-washer in the Snider ' s Catsup Works to the President of the New York Central in thirty days. Our school is much more modest in its claims, but it affords a chance for an extended meas- ure of specialization to the business worker or housewife. Most of the students enrolled have taken subjects relating directly to their work as a manner of improvement, and as a result the commercial course, mechanical drawing, and wireless telegraphy classes have usually been overcrowded, while all the classes in the do- mestic arts have been surprisingly well filled. For some time the State had felt the need to offer a part-time extension in various branches of the educational field to those of its children who were compelled to discon- tinue their education at an early age to go into the industrial world. It was seen that they would need not only academic work but vocational training as well, to better fit them- selves for their respective industrial pursuits and for their places in society. It was also found by experience that evening schools did not fully meet the need, for it was only the older and the most energetic and ambitious of the workers who would attend school after the day ' s work was finished. Thus, only a few were affected wher e the whole mass of the children from 14 to 18 years were expec- ted to benefit, and it was realized that if any- thing of any worth at all was to be accomplish- ed, attendance must be made compulsory and the time spent in school deducted from the time spent at work at the rate of eight hours per week and at a minimum of thirty-six weeks each year, between the hours of eight o ' clock in the forenoon and five o ' clock in the after- noon on all regular business days except Sat- urday afternoon. So, at the 1919 session of the Illinois Legis- lature, two laws were enacted that dealt with part-time or day continuation schools. In text these laws were elaborations of each other, but in substance they provided for the gradual inauguration of a system of compul- sory part-time schools until September 1921, but not to be outdone by six other cities in the state which had already established or were establishing such schools, the work was started in Joliet in September, 1920. From an enrollment of seventeen on the opening day, the continuation school has grown to include the part-time education of almost 600 students. Besides the academic subjects including reading, arithmetic, spell- ing, language, citizenship and geography of which all students are required to take four hours a week, the general commercial sub- jects including shorthand, bookkeeping, type- writing and rapid calculations are also offer- ed to both boys and girls. Specialization is offered to the boys in the industrial subjects; machine shop practice, auto-mechanics, car- pentry, and electrical work, while the girls are offered home economics, courses in sew-

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HIGH SCHOOL. 1882 size of the original liuiMiiit;. Even then, until the addition of 1921-2J somewhat reliev- ed the situation, the building was entirely in- adequate. Besides using three storage rooms, several wash rooms, the women ' s rest room and three rooms lighted by artificial light only, six outside buildings including churches, flat buildings and an ex-busincss l.ilock were also pressed into service. With the completion of tlie 1921-22 addition, many of the shops were moved into the new building, and a lunch room with a seating capacity of 800 and a supplementary lunch room for the teachers were incorporated on the fourth floor. In the very heart of the build- ing a new- gymnasium shines forth with a seating capacity of 2,000 and of 2,000 more by placing movable seats on the gymnasium floor and on the running track above, thus creating a convention hall rich in acoustic properties. Above the topmost seat of the permanent bleachers, is the indoor running track of fourteen laps to tlu ' mile, making it one of the largest of it ' kind in this section of the country. The erection of the last million and one- half dollar addition to our hiigh school has been the forward step to the realization of a dream of one great education system, directed by one group of executives and including a comliination of academic high school. Junior College, night school, continuation school, American.ization school, and vocational trade school. The academic high school has grown from a struggling, almost unknown institution to one of national reputation; from a school of- fering but one general course to a school ofifer- ing a dozen and several times that number of variations of the regular courses besides. Its English department has been built up to include in the majority of courses, three years of required English with electives of English or American Literature or Public Jspeaking in the senior year. More than five hundred students are taking advantage of the foreign language study which is directed by a corps of able instructors. The mathe- matics department ofi ers three and one-half years of w ' ork, including commercial arithme- tic, elementary and advanced algebra, plane and solid geometry and trigonometry. Its departments of Home Economics and Manual arts both ofTer excellent courses of the most practical value to students, while the com- mercial courses, established soon after the re- moval to the Jefifcrson Street building, are preparing scores of promising stenographers and book-keepers for the business world. All students are required to take Occupations and Civics, while the majority must take a year of world history and one-half year of Ameri- can history. Physical education is neglected for neither boys nor girls, both being pro- vided w ' ith a suitable gj-mnasium. The Science department offers several one and two semester chemistry courses, botany, zoology, and biology, geography, physio- graph} ' , and physics. As early as 1901, special advanced courses in some of these sciences, particularly in chemistry and advanced physics were estab- lished and went to form the nucleus of the whole Junior College movement. These courses were follow ' ed by others in higher mathematics, including geometry, college al- gebra and several additional chemistry cour- ses, literature and the modern languages. Within the next few j ' ears, the Universities and colleges throughout the North and Middle West were accepting students from the Jun- ior College. Its name was officially estab- lished six j ' ears ago, and in 1920 the work was reorganized on a more complete and sufficient basis. Since then its prestige has so increased that it has been recognized by the Central Association of Secondary Schools and Colleges as a successful enterprise. Page Te

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iii5| xg; rs- - HIGH SCHOUL, I ' Ji; the Board of whose educat in their oarh population ing. cooking, marketing , serving, or cleaning as tliey desire. At present three buildings near the High School, the May Apartments for commercial and academic work, the Elwood house for economics, and the Hacker building for the shop work have been utilized pending the erection of further additions to the main building either eveninir classes -.imihir in jiurposc to those of the day continuation school, yet broader in practice, are those conducted in the Americanization school, maintained by Education. Giving to those 11 was unfortunately neglected life and ti our foreign born ,ide range of courses including instruction not only in the elementary read- also in the fundamentals of local, state and national government, it has becoine an impor- tant factor in the educational system of the city. Owing to the wide range in the mental development, the previous education and the varying ages of the pupils, i t has been neces- sarj ' to divide them into groups beginning with the primary studies and ranging upward to liistory, geography and government. This, however, does not entirely solve the problem for the teacher, who must deal with scores of distinct personalities from perhaps five or six different countries. The greatest task is to offer besides an understanding of our lang- uage and customs, a welcome to their adopted land, America, and to stress the need of a proper respect due to that country from them. Attendance at this school and diligent ap- plication to the work brings the students a chance more quickly and easily to become real American citizens. Diplomas, issued to those who pass a satisfactory test in civics and English after their second papers have been applied for, will make it unnecessary to take an examination in Civics and E ' nglish in the Court House when the final papers are obtained. Through the first term of this school, the enrollment was increased from 170 to 325 and the attendance throughout was most excellent, considering that many of the men worked ni.ghts on alternate weeks and hence were ing and writing of the English language, but absent almost fifty per cent of the tiine. At the completion of the first year ' s work, nine- teen men were presented with Diplomas , while thirty-nine received Certificates of Ef- ficiency which may be applied in the same manner as Diplomas in securing naturali- zation papers, with the exception that they may be applied only in securing the second papers. For almosl fifl years, the jiublic schools in nearly all of the larger cities of the country have maintained regularly organized voca- tional training courses in connection with their ordinary academic courses, but although this has been found to provide very valuable and practical training in the manual or domes- tic arts, it has not been sufficient or extensive enough to allow any student following such a course to enter into any particular trade im- mediately upon graduation. It was felt that there was a greater need for a school offering purely vocational courses and afifording the student a practical prepar- ation in his chosen vocation. As a result such a school was established within our own great institution. Its students are as much a part of the high school as tliose taking the regular academic subjects with the exception that they are specializing in a certain chosen vocation and will spend an avera.ge of three hours a day upon it. Practically all of the following types of shop work are now oflfered: Machine shop, elec- trical shop, atito mechanics, pattern-making, cabinet making, house carpentry, plumbing, sheet metal work, printi ng, and mechanical and architectural drafting; and it is planned with tuture additio.ns to the present extensive Continued on Page 13