Lyons Township High School - Tabulae Yearbook (La Grange, IL)

Page 17 text:

gfwfd-Ubilitswxv Learning should be the main purpose of any school. It is a state of constant growth and changeg it is the testing of ideas. Because learning is constant exploration and questioning, inert stability cannot be the goal of education. When move- ment stops and the institution refuses to budge, the school is in trouble. The school's structure must be flexible enough to allow teachers and students to explore new ways of learning. Students are expected to adapt themselves completely to a structure established years before they arrived and which will probably not change during their school years. So far, our schoolis structure has not been flexible enough to allow change that is long overdue. Student Council can do no more than recommend change to the administration. It can make no final decision. Because learning cannot occur within a vacuum, there must be constant communication among all students and teachers. Things such as open assemblies and student-run newspapers are necessary to keep the school from dying in silent apathy, to keep learning alive. The school is faced with countless regulations to enforce and policies to defend. The administration can become afraid of dissent if it thinks that students have little constructive criticism and only want to tear down the school brick by brick. Because there seems to be little faith in the students' real concern for the school, students are not allowed nearly enough of an opportunity to improve it. Because bureaucracy threatens to stifle learning, the school is now faced with a crisis: whether it will continue to keep the enormous machine running unchanged or come to terms with the growing stress in the school, having more faith in the students to act intelligently. - Phillip Bennett in the October 8 issue of The Gnu Review 13

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The routine of every day, the steps that you go through year after year, the place that fate has put you in, that you are powerless to control: these are the things that you Wish you could change, but you can't get started in saying what should replace them. Change is slow because it is so uncertain, but this year saw a student lounge, the end of the dress code, and other changes in the system that perplexes us - small changes, but they are something. 12 .1

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You become disgusted when things just don't go the way you want them to, and there's nothing you can do to change things except voice your opinion, whether that helps or not, at least it helps relieve you. Dissent is necessary to keep the leaders aware, to point out faults, and to suggest improvements. One voice out of a crowd is not enough to move the crowd, to change crowd feelings, but a united crowd brings necessary changes. 56 ' W if if Z 1