North Shore Country Day School - Mirror Yearbook (Winnetka, IL)

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l iife i ' mimffS Jai FRUSTRATION I would not turn backward old Time in his flight To make me a child again, no, not for one night. But could I this moment my lost youth re-win With the new education I ' d gladly begin. There ' d be no petty crime to indulge in I ' d daren ' t Since every wrong urge is the fault of the parent. Nor should I now fear the results of confession Since none would dare to inculcate repression . When I failed in my studies there ' d be no to-do For what can one expect from a minus I. Q. ? And if I indulged in revolt and sedition Not a word would be said lest it cause ' ' inhibition . And although my young ego staid codes like a bomb wrecked I would not, at least, be inferiority complexed. But alas! child psychology was all of it wrong In that lamentable era to which I belong. And so I can only look on and admire While my pupils demonstrate my suppressed desire. THE FRENCH PROVINCE Where should one look to discover the secret of the French Province? Not indeed in any of our big cities which naturally keep pace with Paris, neither in the country proper which has its special aspect in the domain of peasant life; but it may be found in any little town of France of twenty to fifty thousand inhabitants with its old aristrocracy, its newly acquired society, its types, its activities and its life. Once we have sighted from our train such a little town well nestled on the slope of a hill with its towers and its steeples, its dividing silvery river, its thick forest in contrast with its red tile roofs — let us stop and visit it. Our first impression on entering the city will be one of quietness and isolation in a country which is neither too picturesque or too dull, too mountainous or too flat. As usual the town is divided in two parts — the vieille Vi lie with little streets of quaint old names, and the modern town towards the station with its cafes and its stores. Here and there stand a few old historical residences with their hand wrought portals surmounted with an ancient coat of arms. And in the very heart of the city, the cathe- dral, jewel of many of our provincial towns lends a certain grace and majestic grandeur to this silent corner of the Province. It is around this spot, along the old streets, in the shadow of old historical mansions and under the dusty plain trees that the life of the city follows its course — to be or not to be of La societe in one of these towns depends on a series of infinite details, while in its midst live certain types indis- able to its life: the grand bourgeois noveeau riche , the contemptuous families of the old race, the local banker, the university professor, the fashionable lady, the old faithful servant with a ribbonned bonnet going to the market carrying a basket on each arm, the people behind the curtains living inert and shut-off lives and so many other quaint and curious characters are found in a provincial citv. In the factory the work is done carefully day by day and in the family amid the narrowness of every day life you will recognize the seriousness of purpose. At the surface — simply city and tranquility, but with every hour flowing into each day, these towns represent a safe, deep, robust and vigorous life — La Province! It is France indeed, it is its very blood! 13

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THURSDAY EVENING Rin — tinnj — tin-tin! Rin — tinny — tin-tin-tin! Now all together on page 35! — And so do his sisters and his cousins and his aunts, His sisters and his cousins, Whom he reckons by the dozens, And his aunts. All right, basses, on page 36! — Boo — O — Oom — boom — O — boom — Boom — boom Boom! He polished up the handle of the big front door! Where are the tenors? All together now! — I thought so little they rewarded me, By making me a member of the Facultee . There! That ' s fine! We ' ll try some more next time. All of you bring your scores. No gentle reader, this is not the high school chorus rehearsing for the opera. It is merely the staid teachers of the North Shore Country Day School getting tuned up for their bi-weekly faculty meeting. All this preliminary discord of staccatto piano notes and quavering voices may develop into a production of Pinafore by the parents and teachers, far outshining their rendering of Trial by Jury last spring — but we doubt it! They now settle down to the business of the evening. Ladies and gentlemen, begins Mr. Smith, we have several announcements to make tonight but I can ' t make them now. Mr. Jones, the Committee on Programs for Faculty Meetings, is watching me, and his instructions are that we leave announcements until last, lest they crowd out the most im- portant part of our program. He has asked me to tell you something of my trip East where I visited several colleges that our students have attended, and they certainly are fine. All of the colleges say they want some more boys and girls like those. They wonder where we find them. Why, Miss Snod- grass, Dean of Admissions at Walters College, said it didn ' t matter if our girls flunked all their College Boards! If we said they were 0. K., they would take them in at once. But I ' ll tell you all about that later. Then we are to hear of the recent Progressively Educational Convention from Mrs. Childs, and about the Shady Name school from Miss Fargo, who visited there during their vacation. Before starting on these talks, however, there is one item on the program I forgot to mention at the beginning of the meeting but because of its importance we had better have it now. Mr. Jones is going to explain the new chart devised at the University of Chicago for recording and calculating the Para-Doxical Quotient for any pupil — Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones — I have passed around copies of this new sheet which we are finding most helpful in ascertaining the P. D. Q. of our pupils. You will notice it looks much like a stream-line graph. That red line down the middle is the Median or Mean Performance line. A check on the mean line indicates that the person is mean. A check on the left means that the person is meaner and a check to the right means that the person is meaner still — both inversely as the square of the distance. That is what makes it paradoxical, and is the secret of the effectiveness and usefulness of the Para-Doxical Quotient. This data is gotten by watching the pupil when he is asleep in morning exercise. We subtract the number of times he twitches his left ear from the number of times he twitches his right ear and divide by the product of his age in years by his height in centimeters. The result is his P. D. Q. Are there any questions? Mr. Taylor — I would like to ask if you have any records of Allen Ferry ' s P. D. Q. Mr. Jones, after putting on his glasses and consulting a card in the Sacred Box — We have three returns on Allen. One was .82, another was 1.68, and the last was .34. Mr. Taylor — Now I ask you! How can anyone with a P. D. Q. of only .34 be expected to tell the head of a logarithm from its tail? Mr. Anderson — It certainly shows up in his basketball too. Mr. Jones — That just goes to show the value of the convenience of the P. D. Q. chart. One difficulty we have experienced, however, is due to the lack of Lower School morning exercises. We can ' t expect to get valid results on the Upper School as long as we have so few Lower School programs in morning exercise. So for the sake of our records can ' t we have a better response from the Lower School ? This arouses a discussion about the need for quieter exercises, which is terminated by Mr. Smith with the announcement that it is almost nine o ' clock, with just time for some announcements before adjournment. He is sorry we didn ' t have time for other speakers and hopes we can hear them next time. Mr. Corkran announces that all articles for the new catalogue must be in by next Friday, as he plans to send the final copy to the press in about three weeks. Miss Ellison announces that all faculty members are required to dance on two feet at the coming Valentine Party, as the Physical Education Department refuses to take any responsibility in the matter. The meeting adjourns. 12

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i - i u aim nm a n n nn : 31 THE PARENTS THIS CHANGING WORLD In the ten years since the founding of the North Shore Country Day School the physical aspect has been constantly changing. By this is meant — not the Athletic Equipment only, nor the increasing physical prowess of our athletic teams (both girls and boys) — but the Buildings and Grounds where the work and play of the school take place. This development has followed a preconceived plan which was carefully thought out early in the history of the school. In 1919 a group of parents secured the services of Mr. Perry Dunlap Smith as Headmaster and leased the Girton School property from Mr. Cooke, the former Headmaster, for a period of five years with option to purchase the property during the term of the lease. The school buildings at that time consisted of Knollslea Hall, the Girls ' Gymnasium, Eliot Hall, West Hall, and Leicester Hall, which had been used as the dormitory for the boarding pupils at the Girton School. Knollslea Hall Gymnasium Eliot Hall We Hall The photograph herewith shows the buildings taken from the porch of Leicester Hall which was then used as the Teachers ' Dormitory. At that time Diller Street (which is the east entrance to the school grounds), extended through as a public highway from Center Street to Forrest Avenue. Leicester Hall then stood on the north side of Diller Street and the grounds back of Leicester were occupied by a thrifty peach orchard and grape vines. The open space west of Leicester was levelled for an additional play ground and the fruit trees and vines were removed. The Athletic Field for the upper school boys was located between Church Road and the Chicago Northwestern Railroad tracks; the girls and younger boys used the field in front of West and the Gymnasium. In those days Knollslea was the boys ' building and the lunch room. What is now the General Office was then the kitchen; the present offices of Mr. Smith and Mrs. Greeley and the present east kindergarten room were the lunch rooms. The sixth grade was in the second kindergarten room. The upper school boys were on the second floor in the two Art rooms. The girls ' gymnasium was then used by both girls and boys, after extensive alterations in the basement and provision for lockers and showers. Eliot Hall was the lower school building; West Hall was the Girls ' Building with two of the practice rooms as class rooms and the third small practice room as Mr. Smith ' s office. The Study Hall for the High School was in the present Music Studio on the second floor of West.