Pickering College - Voyageur Yearbook (Newmarket, Ontario Canada)

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The Voyageur subordination of the individual. In our new order every individual must have dignity and importance in his own right. Professor George S. Counts of Columbia University has defined democracy as HA sentiment with respect to the moral quality of man and an aspiration towards a society in which that sentiment may find complete fulfilmentn. To create that society is our privilege-it is our task,-the objective of our struggle, our effort and our sacrifice. The period in which we are living is undoubtedly one of 'the great periods of change in human history. What we do now, not only may but will affect the pattern of life for millions of people yet unborn. Our task, therefore, at this moment, -is a three-fold one. If we are 'to survive at all the war must be won. To accomplish even this task will take all that we have of fortitude and courage. At the same time we must preserve all those values that make civilized living worthwhile, and we must determine a peace of such a character that the transmission of those values will be guaranteed to posterity. It is an obligation on all of us. to utilize our every effort that these three results can be achieved. Anything less than that is a denial of the finest traditions of our nation and our race and equally certainly it is a betrayal of the future. In recent months there has been much talk of Hprioritiesw in business and industry. I do not believe that we can achieve these three-fold objec- tives unless we can concern ourselves here and now with human priorities. Tanks, battleships and aeroplanes do not alone win wars. Modern war requires men, not only of hrawn but of brain. Similarly to win the peace and to achieve uour brave new world will require men better, stronger and of finer calibre both mentally and physically than any previous generation. We have seen our young people unwanted, untrained, under-nourished, growing cynical and disillusioned, doubtful of their place in the world and in society. Today we are depending on them, and the shape of things to come will depend upon them even more. We are, however, I am afraid, still unconscious of the importance of our human resources. The figures on rejections for military service have drawn our attention to the fact that we are not an A1 nation physically. It is a sad commentary that over 4092 of our young men are rejected for military service on purely physical grounds. It is too bad that it takes a war to make us conscious of such defects. Bad as this is, I am more concerned with the moral and spiritual de- terioration that is evident since the outbreak of the war. Reports from England indicate a large increase in juvenile delinquency. The Big Brother Movement in New York City has already reported a sharp rise. In our own city of Toronto the juvenile court reports an increase of 1L71QQi, in juvenile delinquency in 1941 over 1940, and the Big Brother Movement has reported that 512, of all cases coming to their attention are affected in some way by the warj In a Toronto suburban area there was recently reported a sharp struggie over the school budget. I do not know the rights or wrongs of that par- ticular conflict but it has been drawn to public attention at the recent an- nual meeting of the I.O.D.E. that Canadian education is suffering from de- creased financial support, from curricula speed-up schedules and lower standards of teaching. In the Toronto Star, Dr. Goldring, superintendent 27

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The Voyageur Human Priorities An address delivered by Joseph Mcflulley, MA., Headmaster, Pickering College, Newmarket, Ontario. at the Annual Convention of the Associated High School Boards of the Province of Ontario, May 7, 1942. , T IS Nor WITHOUT sIcN1F1cANcE that the British Government, in the spring of 1940, announced that it would double the grants made to the Arts by the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust and the Pilgrim Trust. ln com- menting on this action, a Canadian editor recently wrote as follows: Gilt is common in war time to ignore the value revealed by art as something not then to be considered, but rather to be put aside until peace returns, for other more immediate and obvious values. Granted we are fighting' for our lives, yet is it not true that we are fighting for our souls? ls it not publicly announced by our leaders that we are at war, not alone to avoid murder at the hands of misled barbarians, but also that we may maintain our own ways freely. Surely it is worth while to use this freedom we still possess so that those fighting physically for our free mode of living may find, upon their return, no deterioration of the home for which they have sacrificed so much, but improvementf, This editorial comment on the action of the British Government stresses the fact that the war is more than a war for physical survival. At the annual meeting of the American Headmasters, Association this year, one of the speakers expressed a similar thought in this way,-uthere is no use fighting through and winning, then to find we have nothing left to savef, Do we really know what we are fighting for? 'CTO maintain our own ways freelyv? Yes, indeed. uFor democracyw? Yes, also indeed. But if democracy merely means our old way of life which we, the more or less privileged of our society, have found comfortable and pleasant, it is not enough. Our objective must be better than that. Our enemies have sensed that there must be some objective for the war which Hitler has described as Ma new order . He captured the minds of millions of German youth with his slogan. We, too, must visualize a new order better than we have ever had. It is only necessary to recall the plight, not of thousands, but of hun- dreds of thousands of young people in Canada during the decade 1929-39. lt is only necessary to remind you that the first grant by the Federal Gov- ernment under th-e Dominion-Provincial Youth Training Programme was for the expenditure of one million dollars to rehabilitate and train some 400,000 unemployed rural and urban young people. fThis seems a paltry sum when compared with our present expendituresj lt is only necessary to recall that in the United States, potentially one of the richest nations on earth, that approximately one-third of the people were living on an income under a minimum subsistence level. Our new order must certainly be better than this. But it must be a better new order than Hitleris. We cannot accept a society in which the basic principle is the diefication of the state and the ' 26

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The Voyageur of schools for Toronto, is quoted as follows: HWe have now lost about 140 men teachers of 900 on our staff by enlistment, and it is soon coming to the point where further enlistment may injure the school system. It has already reached the point where it is almost impossible to obtain teach- er replacement in certain subject areas, particularly mathematical, scien- tific and technical branches. If this process continues the time is not far distant when we may not be able to provide a continuing supply of ade- quately trained young people for industry or for those branches of the ser- vice such as the Air Force in which a fairly advanced educational status .is absolutely necessaryf, - This is not imagination. England already recognizes this danger. R. A. Butler, president of the Board of Education, is quoted in the London Times as saying: uthe teaching profession has contributed to the forces as much of its share as can safely be permitted. No further inroads are con- templated at present. V These facts all point in one direction. One of the most important but most neglected matters at the present time is the adequate use and conser- vation of our human resources, not only for the immediate present but for the better tomorrow. Effective training and education of today's youth is more important than ever before. All expenditures to this end constitute no more than an insurance premium that all we are spending to win the war, will not, in the long run, be lost. In our organization of man power we must not neglect the reserve of man power still available in our schools. It is unfortunate that our Fed- eral Government is so hesitant to touch the subject of ueducationv. We all recognize that there are constitutional limitations but surely in a time of such emergency as the present, ways and means should be found to de- velop a great national revival among our youth in which all agencies would unite, federal, provincial and municipal governments, schools-public and private, all the voluntary welfare organizations and agencies, service clubs, the churches, the Y.lVl.C.A.,s, the Boy Scouts--in other words, all those who believe in youth. Such a national youth revival would capitalize on the enthusiasm and idealism of youth. lt would provide an outlet for youthful energy in terms of immediately useful services. lt would help to give faith in Canada and Canada's future and to train young people to serve Canada, the Empire and humanity both for today and for the fairer tomorrow. Such a task is too big for the schools alone. To be successful it must be national in scope and broadly conceived to capture the imagination of our whole people. In the meantime, however, there are some matters to which members of high school boards and teachers can give their attention. The Department of Education is planning to introduce a number of so-called defence courses which will be correlated with other branches of the curriculum. For older students these courses are at the present time a necessary step. They will help to provide older boys and girls with some feeling of participation in the total community effort. We must, however, be certain that in provid- ing specialized training for immediate needs, that the basic content of good education is not lost. 28