Polytechnic High School - Polytechnic Student Yearbook (Los Angeles, CA)

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for Nature 's companionship. Even the book worm will carry his book to the shade beneath a tree, or to the beach, in order to get a fuller realization of its charm. The most neglectful of students will wax enthusiastic over a lesson teeming with the spirit of the Nature lover. This attitude can be observed any day in our classrooms and among our friends. Is it not appropriate, then, that we should bring into our school life a phase of our being which our education can only strengthen? ......,.. As each school year draws to a close, we turn back to survey our accom- plishments. The question uppermost in our minds is, What has made this year different from its predecessors and successors? ,This year, in answer to that question, we turn to a new idea which has grown up in our midst-an idea promising to influence greatly the rest of our school history. We refer to the proposed plan for making Polytechnic an institute where six years' special training will supplant the customary four- year courses. Our school will become more strictly polytechnic by the gradual elimination of general college preparatory courses, and the gradual extension and elaboration of courses in applied arts, sciences, engineering in all its branches, commercial pursuits, architecture, and domestic economics. Emphasis will be placed upon tl1e practical value of the work rather than upon the college credits involved. Thus the new plan will be a boon to those students whose busin.ess career must start in their youth, and who, though not able to go to college, ,can afford the time for two years' extra training. If this plan is adopted in the near future, it will not only mean much to Polytechnic, but, even more important, it will shape tl1e careers of many young people of college age. Any plan which makes possible greater education, increased usefulness, and therefore increasd happiness for the men and women of tomorrow is surely more than worth while. Throughout the school year, one of the most salient features of the school magazine has been its art work. Our young artists have shown sympathy, well balanced between student interests and the larger ideals of art, coupled with marked ability. Whatever ,have been the subjects treated, the work has appealed to a large class of readers, and that is surely the test of its merit. VVe have all enjoyed this feature of our book, and we here acknowledge our gratitude to the art advisor and her willing assistants for their large share in our success. .1.?t.. Only too often we are inclined to consider our home life a thing apart from our school interests, but with the larger outlook fostered by education, we come to regard our school system as the result of co-operation between the home and the school. All the citizens of Los Angeles, indeed, have been most earnest in their support of all educational projects, and to them is due a large share of the prominence we have attained. But our parents have also helped us in a more personal way, to their encouragement and sympathy We owe our ability to make the most of the opportunities which our Alma Mater oiers us. l18l

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EDITORIAL -unu- In devoting many of these pages to Nature, we have had in mind not only the forces and creatures of air, earth, and water, but also the relation between them and man. We wish that these pages may express a strong devotion to the primitive, a sense of infinite sympathy with all the world, an understanding which our school life has fostered. Whether our education be that of the text book and schoolhouse or that of the river and field, we break the barriers which convention too often places between us, and become simply brothers when Nature's call has sounded. Then it is that primitive instincts break their bonds and cry in answer. The tenement-bred child is thrilled at the sight of the ocean at moonrise, or hushed by the grandeur of vast reaches of uninhabited desert. their charm being just as potent for him as for those reared under their influence. But what is the reason for this unfailing bond of sympathy between us? VVhy does a subtle understanding exist between the dweller on the heights and the dweller in the shadows, between the sailor of seas and the tiller of land, between the arctic explorer and the gentle lady gardener? Why? In very truth, we are all of one great family, Mother Nature's. Old as the hills the idea may be. but it still rings true, we are one and all a. vital, living part of Nature herself. Startling indeed is such an idea to him who has heretofore considered Nature-lovers high-brow. Accusing indeed must be such a reali- zation to the school master who has sternly repressed every indication of spring fever in his charges. Yet this is no new fact, nor do we attempt to present it as such. From time innnemorial, men have conquered the elements, studied them, immortalized them in literature, not with the curiosity inspired by an utterly foreign object, but with the understanding with which one contem- plates in a fellow-being the same traits which make up one's own personality. Only by realizing this relationship can we understand the instincts and im- pulses which make the whole world kin. Fundamental and all-inclusive as this truth is, there is yet a lnore obvious motive for our making this a Nature annual, a realization that Nature, even in its narrowest sense, plays an important, not.-to-be-overlooked part in our every- day lives. That very spring fever which often makes school almost un- bearable to those afflicted is a most natural outcome of our most natural desire to become a part of the World of growing things at our doors. From early in grammar school until late in our college life, our compositions reveal perfectly how great is the influence of the out-of-doors. Such subjects as Fishing as a Pastiinef' The Pleasures of lee-skatin g. and A Day in the Fields, receive a far heartier response from young writers than does any other class of sub- jects. Our reading, our pastimes, our daily programs refiect the same desire l17l

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Strange to the world, he wore ll lHlSllflll The fields his study, nature was his book. l look, Bloomfield