Oakwood School - Quercus Yearbook (Poughkeepsie, NY)

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1932 -- DRUS -1 1932 Y S

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Eehitaiinn gil some future year we will pause and think back across the times to an individual who has meant to us all that Oakwood represents, Sincerity, Friendship, Reverence. We will think of his personal concern and love for us, of the sacrifices he made for us, and with what discern- ing, sympathetic, insight he guided us toward the highest goals. There is no expressing fully all that Willikzm Reagan means to us, but it is with unbounded appreciation that we dedicate to him this volume of DRUS.

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1932 l DRUS -1932 The Zliarultg History - Latin - English - Math! Certainly a dispiriting group of abstractions from real life! This attitude has gripped all of us at various stages of our school career. Yet is it not strange that we no longer hold that infantile viewpoint? We recognize the value of these abstractions and appreciate their utility. How or by whom has this transformation been wrought? The answer lies in our faculty. It is they who have made real, living interests out of dead, petrified subjects. Not only by their sympathetic interpretation of these interests but by practical application in their own lives of the lessons taught in the classroom, the teachers here at Oakwood have helped us into a more appreciative conception of the courses in the school curriculum. However, courses are only a fraction of school life: one of the largest fractions, but not the whole. Many lessons are taught in Oak- wood that have never been satisfactorily formulated in words. It is these lessons that we are more likely to remember: they are tied up too closely with our emotions to allow us to forget them. What are they? They are courage, faith in human nature, humility, sportsman- ship, kindliness and similar virtues. These indelible impressions of the right mode of living have not been made by words, but by example. Lessons taught in words are, as is well known, much less effective than those taught in action. Each significant event of our school life at Oakwood has taught its lesson and the most Valuable of these are to be learned from the conduct of various members of the teaching staff in that situation. We could never fully depict all the good that our faculty has done us. Again, actions are more important than words. If we live up to the best that these friends have shown us, forgetting their occasional failures, we will have indeed shown that we have done the assignment. Svrwz