Major Edwards High School - Mesa Yearbook (West Boylston, MA)

Page 16 text:

C?eafi (2ta55 During the four critical years that we have lived, worked, and played together, we have learned much from each other. All my fesA messages have been written since Pearl Harbor, and now I must send you, too, out into uncertainty, turmoil, danger, because youth must go forward. My college president once wrote, Let the old, living oh a deficit of energy, despair if they must; youth with its sur- plus believes in the impossible, rallies around the ideal, and cries: ' It shall be done ' . Although you are in no way responsible for the mess the world is in, you are the ones who must do aom ling about it. As I see you go, I realize you have much that is essential. Despite your appearance, talk, and carefree attitude toward life, you have no end of charm and versatility. You have a tremendous range of knowledge. You know ten thousand things which your father and grandfather at your age had never heard of. After four years with you I know, however, that there are area in which we, your parents and teachers, have failed you. You have not yet achieved the ability to get along with your teachers and fellow-students. Remember some of those class meet- ings? It is not strange that this should be so, for most of our troubles are caused by the fact that adults have not learned to get along with each other. You want people to like you? You want to be successful in school or in your work? Statistics have shown that about twice as many workers are discharged because of social misunderstanding as for lack of skill and technical knowledge. Social misunderstanding means nothing more nor less than lack of ability to get along with people. The fundamental lesson to learn is a very simple one — think of the other fellow Instead of always of yourself, and make a determined effort to help those around you. The effectiveness of your personality will depend on how well you learn that lesson, I think that the second way in which we have failed you is that we have not taught you to bring your mind to a focus, to think hard and close. More school failures are due to lack of concentra- tion than to lack of ability. Keep your eye on the ball has be- come a watchword in our sports-conscious world. You know how the baseball pitcher concentrates his whole personality on the batter facing him; how the batter must concentrate on the ball if he wants to connect with it. Thousands of eyes watch, too, awaiting in- tently the result of a single pitch. Mow suppose it is not a baseball you are following, but a chemical reaction, a line in a poem, a trial balance in Bookkeeping, or the Ideals of the Atlantic Charter. You can experience the same t lll from chasing laws in science or meanings in history as from any game ever played. The requisite for success is the same— can you concentrate? Is your mind blurred and confused? Is it, as we say of a camera, out of focus? Blurred visions of half-truths are at the root of most of the problems of the world. They caused the tragic disillusions which followed the first World Wa?; brought about the catastrophe in which we are now engulfed, Ifeie most valuable asset you can develop is a mind which can see things straight and clear.

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NELLIE S. NUTTING Bates College B. A. Yale University Graduate School Education Oxford University England Summer Courses DORIS H. PARKER B • S • E • Lowell State Teachers ' College Member of Whist- ler Guild of Art- ists Worcester Museum Claeses LOUIS J. PELTIER ( Superintendent ) Clark University 1912 A. B, Teachers College Columbia Univer- sity 1922 A. M. MUDE M. SEVERENCE Mlddlebury College A. B. A. M. Dept . of Education Puerto Rico Spanish Language and Literature Mlddlebury-Graduate study in Education and Comparative Fic- tion WINSLOW FLETCHER Fitchburg State Teachers College B. S. Ed. HELEN PAUL Fitchburg State Teachers ' College B. S. Ed. — 3 -

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We have not taught you to stick to- the job when the going gets tough. You gave up when the task proved difficult, you quit a course because it was hard; you found too many excuses for not doing your work. Some of you couldn’t take it when you weren’t winning. Although high school has not given you experience vital enough to develop stick-to-it-iveness” in you, I know that when the chips are really down you’ll have v;hat it takes, VJe said the same things about your brothers and sisters, who have proved themselves all over the world and have shown incalculable stamina and heroism. We said it about Russia. Remember when people were betting that Russia would be conquered within three months? We said it about our own country, en President Roosevelt asked for 100,000 planes a year people laughed and said it couldn’t be done, but we produced 125,000 planes and more. What we have done for war we shall do for peace. ”The difficult takes time, the impossible a little longer.” And so, despite what we have failed to do for you, I send you forth with optimism and hope. We have been living and fighting to preserve democracy, and democracy is something that a nation must always be doing. The very turmoil of the age in which we live creates for us unprecedented opportunity. There is much work to do in our schools, to make them more effective in- struments for educating each child according to his abilities. There is work to do in our communities adequate housing, rec- reation facilities, better race relationships. The churches are crying for leaders of vision and power. Industry needs manage- ment which is imbued with the spirit of cooperation rather than of competition, G-overnment Is looking for stalesmen who can trans- late into practical experience the realization that the welfare of each citizen is the responsibility of all citizens. Science — technology — the possibilities are limitless. We can build a brave new world only by starting right here at home and building brave new people. Though the dangers are real, youth accepts the chal- lenge to get on with the work. Russel Davenport in My, Country . has said it thus: ”And still, hovrever far her sons may go, To venture or to die beyond her sight,,,.. ....That ' all the peoples of the earth may know The embattled destination of the free — Not peace, not rest, not pleasure — but to dare To face the axiom of democracy: Freedom is not to limit, but to share; And freedom here is freedom everywhere.” - 15 -