Lawrence High School - Lawrencian Yearbook (Falmouth, MA)

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8 The Lawrencian many. He gave the results of this tour in his Seventh Annual Report to the Board of Education in 1844. At the sudden death of John Quincy Adams, in 1848. Mann re- signed his secretaryship to repre- sent Massachusetts in Congress. On September 5, 1852. Horace Mann was chosen president of the newly founded Antioch College at Yellow Springs, Ohio. At Antioch he had an opportunity to demon- strate in practical application many of the educational ideas which he had advocated in Massachusetts. Antioch was the first non-sectarian and co-educational college of im- portance in the country and it pioneered in the field of teacher- training. Horace Mann died from over-work and strain on August 2, 1859, at Antioch. For so many years Horace Mann had lived up to the ideal which he expressed in his own words, thus: “I beseech you to treasure up in your hearts these my parting words: be afraid to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” We shall attempt to tell you, to- night, of the influence of Horace Mann on modern education. Be- cause he desired to see every boy and girl awakened to the respon- sibility and worth of himself, Mann devoted his life to an ever-import- ant cause — free public education for America’s youth. Carolyn Underwood Turner HONOR ESSAY MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE One of the things that troubled Horace Mann was the way in which mathematics was taught. He couldn’t see any reason for teaching ad- vanced algebra and calculus to stu- dents who couldn’t even do the simpler mathematics necessary to carry on a business. In those days “the exact science” was taught with no connection between its various branches and with no stress on how to solve everyday problems. Today in every branch of mathematics there is a stress on how each relates to the other. Let us take, for ex- ample, plane geometry. In plane geometry we have algebra, arith- metic, and geometric proofs. When we have mastered the problems in our text book, we turn to practical problems that any one of us might have to solve. Thus in trigonometry we study not only the relation of sides and the functions of angles of triangles but also the rudiments of surveying, the methods of find- ing one’s position at sea, and the way to locate true north astronom- ically. The improvements Horace Mann argued for, nearly 100 years ago, are still being realized today. Last fall Mr. Ballard and Mr. Marshall put in a new course, Comprehen- sive Mathematics. This course, under the instruction of Mr. Ballard, strives to connect the various phases of mathematics that the student has studied since entering school. It splices arithmetic, plane geometry, solid geometry, algebra, trigonometry, and physics into one line of thought with one objective: to solve practical mathematical problems. During this past school year, since the forming of our Com- prehensive Mathematics Course, two books have been published which might be used in courses identical to ours. Ours is, to our knowledge, the first of its kind in the country. This is, I think, a glowing tribute to the progressiveness of the faculty of Lawrence High School.