Latin School of Chicago - Sigillum Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

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SIGILLUM In closing, would an observation be in order? There are, no doubt, many weaknesses inherent in our present systems of edu- cation, and educators themselves are at great variance of opinion as to how best to correct the most glaring ones. Over one, however, there is almost perfect unanimity: namely, that the best educational results always come about from extended continuity of attendance at the same school for the longest possible period. Frequent school changes work injustices on teacher and pupil alike, and the reasons are all too obvious. If, therefore, this unanimity be founded on no more than common sense, how would you honestly answer the question, What has any other school to offer that you can't get at Chicago Latin? Reflections lln Education ADD1soN GARDNER Addison L. Gardner, Jr., '13, Harvard ,I7, former editor of Folio and Sigillum, outstanding member of his class, at present a member of a law firm. N invitation to contribute to 'cThe Sigilluml' on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Chicago Latin School amounts to a command and should be answered, as Mr. Justice Holmes remarked, 'con the wings of the wind. As I reminisce over the two very happy years that I spent at C. L. S. Qwith the IQI3 volume of The Sigillumn in my lap opened to the class prophecy prepared by Bob Walkerl, I am driven to two conclusions: First, that the faculty were much better than we deserved, and, second, that despite Bobls glowing picture of our several futures, we have turned out a pretty ordinary lot. Perhaps the very fact that the class of IQI3 has survived so many world calamities, is a sufficient tribute to the endurance, at least, with which we were endowed in our youth and through our secondary school training. In any event, in our defense sometime in the future, I trust the historian will point out that our generation, as the generation now beginning to take over responsibilities and power, is faced with social, political and economic problems and an evolution of legal concepts more far-reaching and more difficult than have had to be met by any other generation of Anglo-Saxon society since the rise of Cromwell.

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C. L. S. Born L. PARSONS WARREN L. Parsons Warren, '03, VVilliams ,O7, keenly interested in alumni activity of the school, engaged in the Insurance business. Fifty years ago, the Chicago Latin School-it had no such exalted name in those days-boasted, among its members, only a few choice souls whose parents envisioned, perhaps, the place it was to make for itself in the development of secondary-school training in this district. It was soon destined to occupy a prominent place in the then developing residence district of the North Side. There must have been a certain amount of prophetic vision in the decision of the founders. To their insistence that an obvious need be met in the best Way possible are all of us later products of the School indebted for the splendid organization Which, this year, under the able guidance of an able Headmaster, is celebrating fifty years of a very fruitful life in the community. In its first days, history records that it was really no more than a small group of boys, carefully selected, meeting in a private home, and presided over by that rare personality, Mabel Slade Vickery. Her effectual ministrations over the destinies of that first group who came to her soon created a demand for expansion in space and increase in teaching personnel, and resulted in the calling, from the East, of Mr. Robert Peck Bates. Under his collaboration with Miss Vickery the class soon shuffled off its physical restraints necessarily inherent in a ball-room Ca private one, at thatj, and blossoming forth as an independent organization. Shortly, this Chicago Latin School was born. In 1894, it found quarters on Division Street, in What had been a private home. Its location changed on three occasions during the period before the building at the alley east of State Street, was erected. There it pursued the even and successful tenor of its way, building intellect and character, but little disturbed by com- petition offered by the University School at Dearborn and Elm Streets, and the Cobb School, at Ritchie Court fthen called Placej and Goethe Street. In the nine years from 1894 to IQO3, the en- rollment increased from I2 to 275, its graduates had gone out to the colleges and universities, and everywhere the School name stood for the best in secondary education, along with those finer things, the intangibles Without which scholastic attainments by them-- selves stand for so very little. Proof in the form of names of eminent citizens could readily be adduced-but these are Words about an institution, and not its off-spring!

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SIGILLUM g But enough of these unpleasant subjects. I should be ungrate- ful and stupid indeed if I did not take this occasion to look back across the years and express again my gratitude and affection to the faculty of C. L. S., as it was composed in the years I attended there, of these facile princeps, of course, is R. P. Bates. No less than two distinguished Harvard deans have referred to him in my presence as easily the leading Latin master of his day in this country. VVith that judgment I, of course, have never had the slightest dis- pute, but it is not for that reason or that attainment that I hold him in such high respect. It is rather for the reason that as head- master of a boys' school he succeeded, I think, better than any other man I ever met in the field, in instilling in men at that early age the idea that there are certain fundamental standards which are more enduring than any changing concepts of a physical or political world, and all who had the great privilege of reading the classics under his searching and stimulating direction may not remember much today about the classics, but they will remember the attitude of mind with which that study was approached. Under his teaching there was an awareness of reality which every boy was made to feel and carry with him into the outside world. If an unpleasant job had to be done, it had to be done and that is all there was of it. It was not just to be done if we liked to do it or if it didn't rain or if it met with our convenience. To youths who must look forward to the shouldering of future responsibility, that kind of training I think is fundamental and absolutely essential. This preparation in the awareness of reality is, I think, of tre- mendous importance today, because from what I hear of the so- called mcdernistic system of education, many children and youths under that system are allowed- to educate themselves pretty much as they please, when they please and how they please, provided they never do anything which is disagreeable or distasteful to them. I cannot help but feel that this method is just a charming type of playing house -it is by no stretch of the wildest emotionalist's imagination, an education. It is the shocking truth that the super- intendent of a public school system not far from the Chicago Latin School, when rebuked for the increase of this modernistic tendency in his particular schools, and the lack of discipline and standards which prevail in them replied patronizingly, Oh, well, it is just a matter of time and Harvard will have to come down to our stand- ards . This is pure rubbish, of course. After all life is made up of a lot of disagreeable things and a lot of very agreeable ones, and it is the fundamental purpose of education to prepare the youth of the country to meet both. Ctherwise his subsequent jostlings are apt to be very unhappy, even to the point of tragedy. Among those associated with Mr. Bates on the faculty during my short acquaintance with the school were Mr. Bosworth, head of the English Department, not only a fine teacher but a scholar