Kirwin High School - Corsairs Log Yearbook (Galveston, TX)

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A xg :If le CHRISTIAN BROTHERS AMERICAN CENTENNIAL ai ff BOARD REV. IOHN I. RUDDY President of School Board St. Patrick's Church Latin 100 DIRECTORS M14 fm 045 wad 511062425 M-nr Q RIGHT REVEREND MSGR. RIGHT REVEREND MSGR. DANIEL P. O'CONNELL MARIUS S. CHATAIGNON St. Mary's Cathedral Sacred Heart Church iw

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To the Christian Brothers of Kirwin Boys High School, and their companions throughout the United States I am very happy that the publication of The Corsair's Log gives me the opportunity to congratulate the Institute Of The Brothers Of The Christian Schools on the completion of one hundred years of teach- ing in the United States of America. At the same time, I thank the Brothers who are now at 'Kirwin, and all who labored there, since their coming, for the notable work of education done: and, for making Kirwin what it is acknowledged to be, a first class high school for boys. That was a great day for education, two hundred and sixty-eight years ago, when Father Iohn Baptist de LaSalle, now Saint Iohn Baptist, saw the crying need of caring for a great mass of boys, poor boys, growing up in ignorance in France. The Protestant Reformation had been in existence nearly a century and a half: Calvin and others had carried its false teaching into France, where it was finding a field ready for the cockle it sowed. Many Synods of the Church, and some of its great Councils, particularly the Third Lat- eran and that of Trent had legislated for the education of the poor. St. Peter Fourier and - St. loseph Calasantius had done much in THE MOST REVEREND establishing schools where many boys re- CHRISTOPHER E, BYRNE, D,D, ceived gratuitous instniction. Founder of Kirwin Hiqh School It was the crying need for more such that engaged the sympathy of Father Iohn Bap- tist. He was anxious to provide an adecruate body of teachers trainedin fixed methods of teaching. He might be called the Father of Normal Schools. Christian Doctrine was to be the most important study, but it was not to be a memory lesson only. The teachers were to be vigilant and so guard the boys from oc- casions of sin. They were to give good example, and so place before the boys models to follow. And, then they were to instruct so that the boys should know what it was that their right and duty to know. Subjects were to be taught in the language of the Country where the school existed. St. Iohn was probably the first to introduce into primary and secondary schools the simultaneous method , namely, the intellectual development of a whole class of boys in the one lesson So devoted and well prepared were his teachers, that in spite of the opposition he met. his schools spread rapidly in France and far beyond, within twenty years, there were Christian Brothers' Schools in Rome. Of course, at the outbreak of the French Revolution the Brothers' schools, like every- thing else Catholic in France suffered. Their property was seized: some Brothers were im- prisoned: some transported: some put to death: and some died of neglect and starvation. The Brothers were never great writers of books, they were too busy teaching boys. But, they did write books for their school work, and, on a great variety of subjects. And, in French, German, Italian, Spanish, English, Flemish, and Turkish. They have given text- books on Christian Doctrine, reading, arithmetic, and geometry, history, geography, me- chanics, chemistry, zoology, botany, pedagogy, literature, philosophy, drawing, shorthand, and more. All of which shows the diversified talents of the Brothers. It was another great day, when in 1845, the Most Reverend Samuel Eggleston, Arch- bishop of Baltimore invited the Brothers to the States. Two years later they were in New York, and in St. Louis in 1849. Today, they are all over the Country, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf: and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, carrying on more than one hundred schools, in about fifty dioceses: their pupils are counted by the tens of thousands. Their graduates fill important places in political, professional, and business life: they are Christian gentlemen, as will be every boy of Kirwin if he remains true to the lessons of the Christian Brothers. April 22, 1948 Bishop of Galveston.

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C 'b CHRISTIAN BROTHERS AMERICAN CENTENNIAL I Riva 100 ou! , REV. BROTHER GABRIEL, F.S.C. REV. BROTHER STEPHEN. F.S.C Principal Mathematics-Seniors MIIMZLLHA full REV. BROTHER GEORGE, F.S.C. REVEREND GEORGE RHEIN Iunior A-Commercial Latin II