Newton South High School - Regulus Yearbook (Newton, MA)

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One of the curious things about my own education is that I did all the reading that has had any meaning for me, often I had finished the formal part of it during the long nights at sea while I was in the navy or, having closed the last book of my formal education, in the few years that I spent wandering about in jobs that allowed me to see some of the realities that my formal education denied ever existed. Those were the years when I read The Education of Henry Adams, The Brothers Karanzazov, Plato, Shakespeare, Dickens. I have almost stopped wondering why I used to let myself off by blaming the prevailing methods of teaching and learning. But I am not sure that this is the first. More likely I was simply not prepared emotionally or intellectually to read books that are concerned with the philosophical issues that have concerned man since he has been man. Hamlet was to me a murder story, nothing more and nothing less, and my instructors did nothing to change my notion. The other night I noticed that my young daughter, grade seven or eight, was reading The Old Man and The Sea. I tried gently to ease it out of her hand and put in its place The Wind in The Willows. But she clung to her assignment. I am sure that years from now when another teacher suggests that she read The Old Man and The Sea, she will respond, Oh, I read that years ago. So it goes. It's almost February and, for me, time to revive my imagina- tion and restore my spirit with a trip to Pooh Corner. When the ice breaks in March, perhaps there may even be time for a game of Poohsticks. ' OPHAIR CARAS 5 y fn' BOYS' PHYSICAL EDUCATION DEPARTMENT-Mr. Poskitt, Mr. Bechtold, Mr. Winkler. GIRLS' PHYSICAL EDUCATION DEPARTMENT-Miss Strojny, Miss Gil- more, Miss Hersey. l physical education HEALTH DEPARTMENT-Mrs. Winnard, Mrs. Green. Not Present: Mrs. Nee. 'Vis ai .

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C575 Y , , W M '- E ' GUIDANCE DEPARTMENT-Mrs. Kelley, Mr. Larnpert, Mrs. Sarkisian, Dr. Addis, Department Headg Mr. Sanborn, Mrs. Evans, Mrs. Patron. Tile . . . Smooth, shiny tile Vinyl floor tile I see a waxer with a long yellow cord I hear a waxer . . . hummmmmm os If you go to see a housemaster, you can walk on a rug! Venetian blinds Horizontal lines Tab-arm chairs for Math Tab-arm chairs for History, for English and for French In the library I can sit at a table in a chair! In the art room I can spin the chair! In a faculty sitting room they have plush-plastic chairs with metal arms and legs. Venetian blinds Horizontal lines Tables, chairs, floors, stairs Why is everything so smooth? The easier to clean. Ceilings, lights, fluorescent tubes Riliilllgliife DEPARTMENT-Miss Roman, Department Head: Mr. Allcva I long for a single bulb! ' Such blandness! Such enervating air! What is honored in a country will be cultivated there. QPLATOQ SAMUEL M. BUSSELE 25

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l l W INDUSTRIAL ARTS DEPARTMENT-Mr. Knapman, Mr. Lambert, Mr. Manghue. Like, I assume, most human beings, I enjoy escaping. In the matter of reading, though the flight is not necessarily away from an intolerable vision of life so much as toward another kind of vision of it that allows me to return quite squarely to where I started. Yes, reading-and certainly for that matter the entire art spectrum-is therapy: I engage in fantasy, but I awake endowed with the conviction that my journey in reality is not replaced but made more tolerable. And the particular ways words accomplish this circle are by forcing me willfully first to master a refractory medium, to learn and use its rules, next to see this rational system of language exploited to construct a conscious dream, and finally to feel the illusion of having, in effect, cheated the ubiquitous and unwieldy medium of its having truly managed me. There is obvious satisfaction 'to be realized in learning lan- guage well, in using it through articulate speech and persuasive writing, and, I think, for our purposes here to confront and see I the scheme of say, complex fiction. What I see beyond, how- ever, is that in the writer's manipulation of an existing, systema- tic medium he renders the inert, physical mass so familiar to us and makes a dream, a divine-like activity which represents l something greater than the visible us: the postulated noble l or perverse. And here enters the workable illusion, not the solitary dreaming of night or the alienating and dangerous fantasies of the psychotic or the addict but a community dream made external and therefore tangible by its appearance in a pub- licly recognizable form. We can escape then, but the gesture via art must he two- sided, for as we dream so must we wake. And while my daily l ethical systems may not he threatened or altered hy the conscious dream of reading I feel that I have perceived in a renewable and , sharable form a safe vehicle for re-entry from those things in me I dare not speak. y W. H. O,DONNELL 1 AUDIO-VISUAL DEPA RTMENT-Mrs. Burrowes DRIVER EDUCATION-Mr. Brouillette. l