Pickering College - Voyageur Yearbook (Newmarket, Ontario Canada)

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The Voyageur Education, the War and After An address delivered by Joseph McCulley, MA., Headmaster, Pickering College, Newmarket, Ontario, To the Rotary Clubs of Toronto and Montreal. HE PROCESS of constant change which is the most characteristic feature of all life has been tremendously accelerated by the fact of two wars in one generation. It can be assumed that the post-war world will be different than the one we have known. Before discussing the place of edu- cation in the post-War period it is important to understand something of the changes we may expect. No man is wise enough to forecast the exact nature of those changes. No one is intelligent enough to provide the blue-prints of 'fthe new order . But in the recorded words of leaders of the United Nations,-President Roosevelt, Henry Wallace, Sumner Welles, Wendell Wilkie, in the United States, Churchill and the Archbishop of Canterbury, in England-we can see some indication of the general nature of those changes. These leaders are looking ahead fearlessly to the future, we, too, can take some thought to-day for our post-war problems--no apology is necessary. Clearly to see our aims is not a diversion, but a source of strength, the better we all see what we are fighting for, the better we shall fight. A World of Change Change is uncomfortable. There is a rooted aversion in most of us to any alteration in our accustomed ways of life. We must, however, recognize that we are living in one of the great periods in human history, when change, which is the normal expression of life, becomes more rapid-when all our umoresw, customs and conventions become subject to profound modifi- cation. We must rid ourselves of any notion that we can put the clock back. When the bugles blew in August, 1914, they marked the end of: our old world of easy optimism, our old world of privilege for some and mass misery for others, our old world of expanding frontiers, our old world of imperialist and nationalist rivalries. We were not conscious of it at the time, but two wars and the long armistice have made the fact increasingly evident. Uur War A irns If any of us were asked what we are fighting for, we might answer in one word, MDemocracy7'. 1 am afraid, however, that we really mean our own old way of life, which we-the more or less privileged of our society- have found comfortable and pleasant, in other words, Lathe status quow. This is not good enough. A new democracy must come to birth out of the fires of the present struggle. There must be a re-interpretation of the doctrine of liberty,-not only in political, but also in economic terms. In our countries, political demo- 14

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The Voyageur When a visitor comes to the school and sees how a student, when meeting a master, gives or receives a knowing smile, as if the two had a common secret, it is a demonstration of the Pickering atmosphere, when, on coming into the headmaster's living room, he sees a group of boys eating toast while amiably quarreling over the negro-problem, the war, or the last ball-game, he is witnessing another aspect of our school life. Everyone who spends any length of time with us is exposed to the ideals that make life worth living. He learns to be aware of the problems of our world and society, and knows that something has to be done about them. Sooner or later he hears or reads the words of Owen Seaman: Wfo teach that he who saves himself is lost, To bear in silence though our hearts may bleed, To spend ourselves, and never count the cost, For other's greater needf' Ideas such as expressed in this poem are rooted deeply in the minds of most of us, and long after trivial details of our life at Pickering will be forgotten, our deeds will be born out of these ideas. We will go on remembering the happy days we have spent togther. We will envy our younger brothers and friends who will still enjoy the sheltered life in a community where money, race, colour, religion, or nationality are not the criterion of a manis value. Pickering will live in our hearts and will remain the same as we left it. When we will come back, occasionally, to visit our friends, it will be a little different. Some changes will have become necessary, for Hthe only perman- ence is change , and we want Pickering to be permanent--permanent in representing values that cannot be altered and that are eternal. As we are leaving the school this year, one sentence comes to our minds. lt is the quotation used on the programme of our Athletic Dinner:- wfhe kingdom shall be where two or three of you shall meet in love, and in wonder at the loveliness of life and in good cheer and in remem- brancef' STAFF NOTES . . . HE VOYAGEUR would like to welcome here the new members of our Staff and thank them for their contribution to our community. Mr. lVlosey, in charge of Senior English and Latin, Mr. Dobson, whose responsibility was the Commercial Course, lVIr. Bunt, who took over the Science Depart- ment, and Mr. Beal, who worked with Grades IX and X and the Business Forms,-all adapted themselves to the idiosyncracies of our strange com- munity and really became part of the place. '35 W 9? 9? 9+ -K' Elsewhere we mention the Staff Members of the Preparatory Department, but here we would like to offer special congratulations to lVlr. Hagan and Mr. Scott and a warm welcome to their brides of this June. 13

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The Voyageur cracy has been more or less achieved but we are far from achieving an economic democracy. Post-War government must eliminate economic chaos and misery. There was an old doctrine,-that government is best which governs least. It is surely evident that, in our modern, complex, highly interdependent world, such a doctrine is no longer valid. ln varying ways, Nazism, Fascism, Com- munism, the 6'New Dealw, the Marsh Report and the Beveridge Report are all manifestations of the fact that in a modern community the welfare of each is the responsibility of all. We cannot tolerate any recurrence of de- pression conditions when 400,000 young Canadians went begging for work and when one-third of the population of the United States was living below a minimum subsistence level. Furthermore, organization to eliminate economic chaos must be more than national in its scope. It has become fashionable in some quarters to be cynical about the League of Nations, but it was not an idle dream, it was an expression of man's deep yearning for a better world. Surely we have learned that no nation can any longer consider itself isolated, independent, self-sufficient, sovereign and responsible only to itself. Surely we know now that no nation or race can be considered inferior because of the colour of its people or the stage of its cultural development. The only possibility of human progress depends on a universal recognition of the fact that men everywhere must co-operate or die. ln our Western democracies we had developed a ugimmei' theory of democracy with all the emphasis on rights and privileges and few on duties and responsibilities. There must be a recognition by all men of their com- mon obligation to each other and, therefore, to the community. This truth was long ago expressed by a great teacher,-aHe that would save his life shall lose itg he that will lose his life, the same shall find it.', Or as H. C. Wells has said, 4'There is no peace-no security--no righteous leadership or kingship unless men lose themselves in something greater than themselvesf' Our leaders say that changes of this nature mean a revolution in our way of life, it is only if our anew order , when it is formed, is based upon such principles of Christian democracy that the present struggle can be justified. Implications for Education Changes of such a nature must affect our attitude to education. Our schools have two main tasks. The first is to transmit to each successive new generation the acquired cultural heritage of the race or of the com- munity in which the individual lives. The second is to enable the individual, not merely to adjust to his society, but to analyze, to crticize and to improve it-to help direct the course of its changing development. Any educational process that thinks only in terms of the past-its glories and its traditions- is, at any time, inadequate, but never more so than at the present time. An educational programme fo-r to-day and to-morrow must be bold, visionary and courageous. The post-war period must see a great new forward step in the onward march of man, otherwise it will be 1919-39 all over again, 15