Maple Avenue Evening High School - Progress Yearbook (Los Angeles, CA)

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What ls Progress? Taken from an article in the Thirty-third Year Book of the Inter- national Printing Pressmen, written by former President Woodrow Wilson. I am forced to be -a progressive, if for no other reason, because we have not kept up with our changes of conditions, either in the economic field or in the political field. We have not kept up as well as other na- tions have . All progress depends on how fast you are going and where you are going, and I fear there has been too much of this thing of knowing neither how fast we were going nor where we Were going. I have my private belief that we have been doing most of our progressiveness after the fashion of those things that in my boyhood days we called tread- mills ,-a treadmill being a moving platform with cleats on it, on which some poor devil of a mule was forced to walk forever without getting anywhere. Elephants and even other animals have been known to turn treadmills, making a good deal of noise and causing certain wheels to go round, and I dare say grinding out some sort of product for somebody, but without achieving much progress. Progress!. Did you ever reflect that that word is almost a new one? No word comes more often or more naturally to the lips of modern man, as if the thing it stands for were almost synonomous with life itself, and yet men through many thousand years never talked or thought of progress. They thought in the other direction. Their stories of heroisms and glory were tales of the past. The ancestors wore the heavier armor and carried the larger spear. There were giants in those days. Now all that has altered. We think of the future, not of the past, as the more glorious time in comparison with which the present is nothing. Progress, development-those are modern words. The modern idea is to leavethe past and press on to something new. Page Seventy -1

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not only neglected the education in a common language so essential in a democracy, but we have also permitted the immigrant to form his ideas of our national life by contact with its worst phases. Trickery, chicanery, poverty, dirt, vice, governmental inadequacy, industrial instability, treachery to our government--all these he finds expressed only too Well. So seldom does he meet the organized forces in society that are struggling to right these conditions that he often arrives at the conclusion that those activities do not exist. The only avenue by which they may travel to him and through which he may arrive at them is the language of the country. That he must learn. ' ' , This process by which adults acquire a second language is educa- tional. The nature ,of the process thus determines the social agency that must undertake the task. There is only one such agency in a democracy- the .public school. If it is now inadequate to the task, then it must be rendered adequate. ' And even the most casual observer of the signs of the times can perceive that the public school must be about that business quickly. ' f Sewing Class ' 4 Y ' Page Sixty-nine ,.1h.z:.r' '

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The Dramatic Department High Spots of the Past Year By THE CLASS CRITIC HE Dramatic Class in the Maple Avenue Evening, High School has come to be known far and wide as the Cellar Players . Oh! yes, gentle reader, there is a dramatic department in this school and it fits into the scheme of things most admirably for, besides furnishing an opportunity for the histrionically inclined to acquire train- ing in that subject, it provides an opportunity for valuable, first-hand practice for several of the other classes, such 'as the sheet metal, electrical, art and orchestra departments, in stage building, lighting, decorating and music. To this dramatic class young men and women come from various trades, callings and professions to receive training in correct pronunciation, enunciation, diction, voice and poise, to cultivate their memories and, per- haps most important of all, to acquire the art of correct public speaking - the art which, above all others, helps people to make a success in the world in both business and social activities. Here also they get a knowledge of stage effect, the art of make-up and of the staging and direction of plays and pantomimes which fits them to take part in entertainments and theatricals without embarassment. Working in conjunction with the sheet metal, electrical and art classes, a stage set is erected and fittingly decorated and the necessary footlights, telephones and other contrivances installed and occasionally a Cellar Players' night is announced, when, assisted by the orchestra class, a short entertainment is given to which the students of all the other departments are summoned. Always, following one of those Cellar Players' nights a most happy, satisfied throng may be seen wending its way up from the school quarters. L Page Seventy-one