Loretto Academy - Laurel Yearbook (Kansas City, MO)

Page 31 text:

Does the school or the schedule or the atmosphere help create new patterns? 1 don’t think school is going to begin it. Children have creativity or they have confidence or they have fear or whatever they’re going to have when they’re very small and school can only bring out the creativity or soften the fear but I don’t think it creates the pattern. It’s the teachers who help shape the pattern because they are different... they really want to learn too. 1 think this is the attitude that the teachers try to impress on you: they are interested in learning from you and they want you to learn from them. That’s the whole thing ... like in Grade School the teachers conditioned you to do this and to do that and. all your life you’ve been conditioned. In this school the teacher still conditions you but you are conditioned to think about the fact that you’ve been conditioned before so that you’ll start being an individual.

Page 33 text:

Yes. because now you realize that you’ve been MADE to do everything before and here they want you to do what YOU think YOU should do or feel. Like last year I went to a struc- tured school and this year is so differ- ent because here I can go and study what I want, where 1 want, anytime I want. 9 In class I learn what I want as an indi- vidual. and it lets me evolve to be my- self. Yes. you can schedule your own time; it makes you. I also went to a structured school and it just seems so different because they told you what k THEY wanted you to know and it was kind of like forced feeding. Now it seems that there’s more freedom to go J on your own and learn it. q Yes. YOU’LL do that, but you know a lot of kids ... -True, but a school should get you interested in your education and then k you should be allowed to learn it the way you want. —I can agree with that but I think it’s being too optimistic about the whole thing. You know you can’t say that a lot of the kids in this school would do that; you know they wouldn’t. This education is all right for the kids who would naturally be interested in educating themselves anyway but what about those who aren’t? 4 To me, it looks like this type of education is trying to stimulate us to get us going. It is probably better for the kids now who are so bored with school that just knowing there is this kind of education around is good for them. This way at least they don’t see it as a big pain. It would be ideal if everyone were motivated ...