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

Page 18 text:

J.G.GOODSELU Vice-Principal The founding of the Boston Latin School in 1635 was an event the importance of which we can not measure. Three hundred years of secondary school history in the United States parallels our national history very closely. Our na- tional growth has been the greatest in the world and the public schools have constantly kept pace with the advance. At various times public education has been threatened, but men with vision such as Horace Mann, Henry Barnard, John Dewey, and Charles William Eliot aroused public sen- timent and championed the cause of education for everyone. Evolution in the thinking of educators and the practice in secondary schools is very interesting to note. In the Bos- ton Latin School a rigid, purely academic curriculum was adhered to. The aims of education as stated for students in Phillips Academy at Andover, Massachusetts, were: ... first, the promotion of True Piety and Virtue; second, in- struction in the English, Latin, and Greek Languages, to- gether with Writing, Arithmetic, etc. The liberalization of curricula today is apparent to all, throughout the nation. The chief characteristics of twentieth century education are the application of the questioning spirit of scientific research, and the future activities appear to lie in the direc- tion of fitting the youth to social conditions, with emphasis on creating social betterment and greater adaptability. J. G. GooDSELL, Vice-Principal ADMINISTRATION 1935 1 4

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ADELE HUMPHREY, Vice-Principal We who are fortunate enough to be born and reared in the United States take for granted the privilege of free high school education. It is ours for the taking. But people in other countries are more impressed by it than we are. They regard it as something of a phenomenon. Several years ago the Assistant Minister of Education of Germany was studying our schools. Several of us asked him to tell us frankly what faults he found in our American education. Our surprise was great when he told us that he had no criticism — only admiration: that he considered the American free high school the greatest contribution to education for two centuries. A French army captain gazed enthralled one day, here at Polytechnic, at the boys and girls going from class to class without orderlies, monitors, or guards to send them where they belonged. They could stage a riot, he said, but they prefer to get an education. This impresses me more than anything I have seen in your great country. In Europe the New Education Fellowship is modern- izing age-old classroom methods with ideas from our country. Student participation in government is making headway and all Polyites know where that had its beginning. Adele Humphrey, Vice-Principal 1 3 ADMINISTRATION 1935

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E. B. COUCH, Resistrar The high schools of today are the product of trial and error for the past three hundred years. Free experimentation with survivals of the chosen practices, courses, and pro- cedures has given us the modern secondary school with its multiplicity of courses, its thousands of highly trained teachers, and millions of students. Today ' s tendencies are toward practical courses for economic ability and cultural background for added leisure. Both tendencies imply need for more efficient social-economic adjustments and for better social cooperation, for more knowledge and flexibility. If the high schools of today are to survive the critical attitude that now exists, it will be through the leadership of progressive thinkers who are the products of the high school. Conservative attitudes, inflexibility of courses, aca- demic despotism, and school teacherized procedures are bound to hinder the future devolpment of this great Ameri- can institution. If, in our high schools, we are to aid in the reduction of crime, the solution of economic problems, the raising of our social standards and the standards of living, it will be necessary to continue open experimentation in the light of the past; and forgetting the past as a hampering influence, move on to new and better procedures as rapidly as they prove to be real advances in educational results. E. B. Couch, Registrar 1 5 ADMINISTRATION 1935