Maur Hill High School - Maurite Yearbook (Atchison, KS)

Page 11 text:

It is the part of the wise man to know how to distinguish. To see, beneath the surfaces of things, the invisible skein that knits together all he may survey, to see life and see it whole, this also is a power only wise men hold. To help impart such wisdom is education's business. In modern education this age-old con- cept has been largely discarded in favor of a more myopic view that seldom sends the searcher to the core of things, but rather takes delightin the counterfeit hues of shadows that dazzle because seen out of focus. Facts and figures supersede values. Quality yields to quantity, and elective sub- jects supplant solids. Worse, little positive effort is offered to knit together the ac- cumulated mass of details. Thus is de- ranged the hierarchy of permanent values. This is a far cry from educators1 tra- ditional purpose, which the Maur Hill faculty still strives to foster. Here, no field of learning is scorned. All branches of knowledge are scanned in relation to their respective importance and focused in the light of their eternal worth. Amassing data becomes subordinate to learning how to think. This, then, is the role of our edu- cation, to impart that wisdom by which man will distinguish good from evil, the true from the false, beauty from ugliness, the substance from the shadow. 7

Page 10 text:

 y tchnin id tra tion RT. REV. CUTHBERT McDONALD, O. S. B. President of Maur Hill School

Page 12 text:

DL WUWan To educate the whole man is a three- fold function; physical, intellectual, spir- itual. To slight one of these aspects is to produce a misfit; to combine the three in their proper harmony is to give a rounded education and produce a personality that is whole. The pages that follow are an attempt to portray how this age-old formula of the Benedictine educators was translated into practice at Maur Hill in 1950-51. Those who shared the experience, whether as teaching or taught, would be the last to claim that they had drained this cup of triple wholeness. But that most have drunk deeply of it, there can be no dis- pute. The pity is that schooling is not a mill. There are no automatic cranks and levers 8 in the machinery of education that will pro- duce uniform speciments of democracy. There is only opportunity. To use or abuse it, that is the glory or the shame of the creature that can boast a free will and in- tellect. Finally, the vision of things to come must surpass past experience. Perhaps the curse of our times is a soft medioc rity, the result of cynicism. This scourge only men of clear vision and confident hope can surmount. An appreciation of our parents' sacri- fices, respect for authority and discipline, knowing that success is not measured by money, love of God, neighbor and country, all these are part of our Maur Hill her- itage. May we be ever loyal to it.