Manchester High School - Somanhis Yearbook (Manchester, CT)

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SOMANHIS EVENTS 15 make it impossible for you to carry out scientific experiments yourself, you can intelligently follow the researches of others. You may not be able to become a great author, but you can enjoy and comprehend good literature. Perhaps things which to a high school student seem merely “high-brow stuff” will con- tain new significance after four years of college training. To meet with true success in life it is essential that you should seek for the strength and development of your mind, character, moral being, and physica welfare. In the first case—the mental-—you may gain, if you will, ability to comprehend profound themes, growth of independent, analytical thought, and above all the broadening of your views. Perhaps all your life you have been of one religious denomination and have agreed with one political party, you may even be inclined to scorn all others. But if your best friend has utterly different views and can defend them, your intolerance and prejudices may be destroyed. This is surely an upward step of greatest importance. Also, if you hear all sides of a question freely discussed, you are more likely to escape radical theories and fadisms. The development of your character may be beneficially influenced by the professors. Some men consider the acquaintance of such professors the most valuable thing a college offers. You will also be trained to discipline your own will, for—despite the comparative freedom of the life—you cannot always do just what you want to. Morally, college is sometimes considered dangerous. Yet the average morality of the American college is fully as high as, if not higher than that of many social and business circles. Rowdyism is going out of fashion. Men of the last generation say that there is less gambling and hard drinking in colleges nowadays—and doubtless the latter evil will be eliminated altogether in the near future. Physical welfare is cared for by college athletics and the resultant training, by gymnastics and, in some men’s colleges, by military training. The pale, emaciated book-worm is no longer the prevalent type of American college graduate. “This is all very well,” you say, “but I want to settle on my future career and get started.” But if you get the “vision of a life work instead of a job”; if you have obtained a clear understanding of the values of things, a correct estimation of your own powers, and a good foundation for whatever you may later undertake; if your ambitions and enthusiasms have been directed—will you not make a wiser choice, and isn’t such a choice worth the work and the delay? One might as well ask, “Is happiness worth struggling for?” The desire among college students to serve the world is noticeable. And it is no wonder that higher education encourages that ambition. Among other things, it offers one, courses which are the necessary preliminaries for public activities—that is, public activities benefical to our country. There is an in- creasing need for this among women who will soon take an important part in politics, for they must not meet their new responsibilities unintelligently, and, through ignorance, misuse them. And so we see that college can give us discipline, inspiration, help in many branches of development, healthful good times and preparation for a life of usefulness. But all these things depend on one great “If —If you'll do your

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1 SOMA SEES: GEVOE NLS THE VALUE OF A COLLEGE EDUCATION HAT will the members of the graduating class do next year? It is an ail- absorbing question which we must consider seriously, and which to- night seems unusually important. Perhaps some of us are not considering going to college; perhaps some are fully determined to go; perhaps some are wavering. At all events, it may be helpful in reaching a decision to know what are the real, undeniable values of a college education, To begin with, a college education is a sound business investment. We have been accustomed to think of scholars as dreamers—vague and unbusiness- like. But there is a practical value in “book learning” too. No matter what business you eventually take up, a knowledge of foreign languages will be very useful, and an acquaintance with literature and history ‘the best mirrors of humanity” will help you in dealing with the world. Perhaps a more tangible consideration is that of the mental discipline gained in college. The habit of sustained labor, the development of thought power, the ability to suc- cessfully grapple with new problems, are all invaluable attributes in business. There is an increasing demand for intelligent, well-educated men and women in special branches and in big business enterprises. It often happens that the companionship of worth-while people strengthens our sense of honor; certainly college training fosters the habit of promptness—and both these qualities are business assets. Often, too, we make firm friends who not only give us pleas- ure, but are willing to “lend a hand” to us in all emergencies. For a shrewd young American there is no better bargain than college. He may obtain returns infinitely greater than the price paid and his earning capacity is vastly increased hy a higher education. Moreover, educated men and women rise with astonish- ing rapidity to prominent positions, ultimately much higher than those who have been learning their trades while their comrades were in college. In the rise to power nowadays we frequently encounter well educated men and women, and unless we possess the weapons of which they are masters, we are apt to feel pretty helpless, and to be thrown out of the competition. But there are better, deeper reasons for going to college than those which appeal to our practical instincts. When Aristotle was asked in what way the educated differ from the uneducated he answered, “As the living differ from the dead.” Does any human want to be mentally dead? To be thus robs you of an infinite amount of pleasure. Perhaps today you can amuse yourself with “movies” and parties, but in old age, hard times, or illness will not your un- trained, inactive mind be more of a burden than an aid to you in solving your problems? Must the price of eggs, Jim’s new job, and Mrs, Jones’s spring hat be your only topics of conversation, your only food for thought? If you have other friends, whom you met in college, cultured people, with whom you feel at ease, because of the knowledge and savoir faire gained in college, you wil) have other interests: your life cannot be one monotonous round. College education will give you more than pleasure; it will help you to find a very real happiness. The environment, the experience, the studies, should all help you to perceive what the truly vital things of life are and to discard false valuations. You will get better ideas on many subjects and, very often, higher ideals. Then, too, you will understand things. Even if circumstances

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16 SOMANHIS, EVENTS part. For a person with only frivolous interests, for a man or woman with no ambition and not even average ability, for a determinedly vicious character, col- lege, in all probability, can do nothing. For a college is neither a “winter resort, an insane asylum, nor a reformatory.” But to others the opportunity to grasp these benefits is open. A student at Oberlin college once asked the president if there was any way in which he might shorten his course. The president answered, “Certainly. It depends on what you want to make of yourself. When God wants to make a mighty tree, he takes many years, but he only takes a few months to produce a squash.” Now we Seniors have been working for some time in the South Manchester High School, and members of the other classes have still more work before them. Graduation must not mean the end. We owe it to our school and to those who have helped us through to avoid the short cut, to make Somebodies instead of Nobodies of ourselves—indeed, to “Carry On.” — Margaret I. Cheney, ’19. = KX KX WAR-MODIFIED EDUCATION HE war, in addition to shortening by a century the progressive path to J clearer and sounder educational thinking, has shown us our unprepared- ness in health and literacy. Such conditions can only be remedied through our school system. In the same schools that from 1898 proclaimed the panygerics of Kultur, true ideas of democracy are to be taught. Many dangers beset our educators, for there is a tendency to become t oo liberal and radical. Columbia’s radical plan to use psychological tests for entrance is an absurd application of a good idea. From Yale’s announcement that Latin would no longer be required for entrance, we easily construe our colleges’ new motto, “Drop everything that’s hard. In the residuum of War-Modified subjects Latin will remain because Eng- lish, which is destined to become a universal language is actually 60-70% Latin. Experiments in the commercial and domestic science courses in the Dorchester Massachusetts High School, where Latin was introduced to help students acquire a thorough mastery of English vocabulary, have proved very successful. In glancing down the page of any science book, we see that nearly all scientific words are of classical derivation. Unless we wish to become bar- baric, we cannot afford to lose Greek, the key to all literatures, and to English especially. Macauley, the great master of the English language, owed his suc- cess to Greek. Finally let us remember, ‘The question is not what we will do with Latin and Greek, but what Latin and Greek will do with us.” A dangerous tendency today is the madness to federalize education. The Smith Bill designed to encourage education is a thoroughly Prussian bili. Fringed and ornamental talk, hair-raising stories of illiteracy in Tuscaloone, Ala., the beautiful but grammarless shop girl cannot make it other than simon- pure educational autocracy. God forbid its adoption which would bring to an end our progress, political career and shatter our future prospects. James L. Burke, ’19.