London Normal School - Spectrum Yearbook (London, Ontario Canada)

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» EDITORIAL « Editorial Staff Consulting Editor - - - Dr. G. W. Hofferd Editor Jean Healy Associate Editor ... - Ruth Palmer Business Manager - - - - James Mitchell Assistant Business Manager - Leslie Fairbairn Student Advisor - - - Walter Harpur Consulting Art Editor - Miss Emery Art Editor Ronald Brand Literary Editor Hazel Gillott Assistants - Margaret Black, Esther Laidlaw Humour Editor ... - Marion Follick Assistants - - Margaret Black, Abigail Le = s Grace Turnbull, lean Dawson Photography - Howard Lossing IN our year at Normal, we have undergone a complete metamorphosis. Last September, fresh from Collegiate or other realms of experience, where the foundation of our education was laid, we arrived at Normal School, one hundred and sixty varieties of embryo, filled with a consuming desire to develop into school teachers. Gradually, we reached the larva stage. After we had taught our first lesson, how insignificant we felt! and how many times did we have the urge to crawl out into the garden and indulge in cabbage leaves! But we managed to suppress these emotional drives and by a continued recon- struction of past experiences, we attained the next stage, the pupa. (We might pun on that word but such form of wit is unbecoming!) They did give us pupils from the start! . . . Many of us were in a dormant state for a while during the year but . . . how rudely awakened we were by an avalanche of tests and assignments just before Easter! ! But these were purposely to try our wings; to see if we were sufficiently enough developed to be promoted to the adult stage whence we would step into one of the greatest professions of our society. As an entomologist would record such activi- ties of the Class Insecta, the Year Book Committee has tried to assemble a record of our Normal School activities. Each student has had his own responsibility toward it; the Literary and Photography Depart- ments would have been negative without the individual support of the students. The Year Book Committee is indeed grateful to the members of the Staff, who have acted as counsellors and critics so willingly; their broader knowledge was greatly appreciated. The Com- mittee worked with a minimum of friction and that is a desirable achievement. In presenting the 1940 SPECTRUM, our great- est hope is that it will be an aid in recalling the memories of the happy days, the friendships and fun we enjoyed together as students at the London Normal School. Work is the key to Success. May we never lose it! I JEAN HEALY, Editor. [5]

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London Normal School

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TRUTH TWO thousand years ago an armourer tempered his newly wrought Damascus blade by thrusting its white-hot steel through the thighs of a slave bound to the sacrificial altar. Doubtless the sentimentalists of the day clamoured against the procedure and bewailed its cruelty. Nevertheless, the art continued to be taught and practised until such time as the discovery of metallurgical truth brought about the substitution of sea water or other chemical solutions for the saline bath contained in the veins of the victims. Since the Normal School Year Book of 1939 was printed this country finds itself at war. No one — not even a Hitler — desires war. Its manglements and destructions excite universal horror. Nevertheless, the practice and perforce the teachings which underlie the practice persist. It is within the range of probability that the historian of the 30th century may place blame for the prolonged continuance of war not on munition-makers, not even on politicians, but on educationists because of their failure to inspire a search for truth — truth that shall make you free — those truths of human relationships which alone can liberate from the tyrannies of barbarism even as the truths of physical science have liberated from the thraldom of material forces. The New Course was designed primarily to emancipate the teacher. Increased freedom, however, implies increased responsibility. Slothful acgui- escence may easily fasten on the left ankle the chain which has been stricken from the right. Be vigilant! And above all things train your pupils to value and to search for truth. The Bolshevists teach beliefs; the Nazis, attitudes. Both blindfold their peoples from reality. Only a democracy thrives in and welcomes light. In these perilous times the very existence of democracy may depend upon your effort. H. G. Wells has said that civilization is a race between catastrophe and education. We, the teachers of an older generation at the finish of our relay in that race, hand on to you, the graduates of 1940, the torch we feel we have but poorly cherished. May it flare far and flame brightly in your hands. HARRY AMOSS, Director of Professional Training. [6]