Pomfret School - Griffin Yearbook (Pomfret, CT)

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groupsl onto a straight tour course plan, Or, those not interested in large activities that are used as half courses have a true half course thrusted upon them. This creates a personal antagonism towards the field, that will kill, rather than foster sin- cere interest. l-lalf courses should never become schedule fillers. lf Pomfret's function as an institution is to prepare students tor the time when they will follow up and polish their inter- ests, at college, it follows that Pomtret should initiate such interests as it is able. The potential tor stimulation at this edu- cational stage is tremendous at Pomtret. Perhaps the toughest curricular problem is the one of maintaining interests in re- quired courses. Sincere experiments have been made in courses such as History, Eng- lish, Sacred Studies and Algebra to expand the study plan into daily human experi- ence. This is a significant and encouraging move from just classroom principles to the realm of principles and practice. Another answer to this problem seems to lie in individual projects. The Biology course and history projects have led the way in encouraging students to seek in- formation themselves, to employ basic re- search techniques. ln many cases these in- dividual projects have led to the richest educational experiences. -Rodman Davis and Gilbert Chapman -..... I t

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POMFRET'S CURRICULUM Pomfret's attempt at college-type elec- tives in its curriculum has jelled into what we now call half courses. The upper forms feel some freedom of choice in their full courses, but most non-required classes re- main creditless, meeting only once a week. journalism, radio, social psychology, navigation, mechanical drawing and many others are unable to stay on the curricu- lum as half courses for more than a year. lt is feared that these only interested- admitted type courses will not grab a foot- hold and thus they fade in and out as the tide. Yet they have the potentiality of val- id permanence in the schedule. Often they have, as in carpentry, an accepted course, plans to shape students' interest into a project useful to the whole school community. Our major subjects supply all that a good preparatory school can, and then some. Our class discussions compare very favor- ably with other schools. Yet a certain type of schedule exists at Pomfret. lt is formed by tacking extra- curricular activities lparticularly singing l 8

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GOVERNMENT Student government presents a difficult problem at Pomfret, just as it would at any boarding school. The crux of the problem is, simply, how much power does the coun- cil actually have? Presumably, the facts that the Council is made up both of stu- dents and faculty, and that the constitu- tion grants them widely defined powers, would indicate that the Council operates on a broad plane of activity. Actually, this is not the case. The Council operates al- most entirely in the sphere of community living and leaves the other functions of the institution to the headmaster and the faculty. Within the sphere that it has defined for itself, the Council has done an excel- lent job. Often discussions have been long and pointless, and sometimes acrimonious. This is, of course, the heart of the demo- cratic process, its strength as well as its weakness. Perhaps Council members at times were a little slow to grasp their responsibility to their electorates. They were occasion- ally content to refrain from informing the people who elected them what they were RECORDS COMMITTEE Left to Right- Harris, Adams I, jackson W. --l . .W . Left 20 ACTIONS COMMITTEE to Right-Robinson, Mr, Swinnerton, Pomeroy doing. This arose primarily from a miscon- ception about the social importance of be- ing a Council member, but happily, boys are learning to conquer this problem. Law enforcement was the principal headache that the Council considered. The old problem--who is responsible for whom -was met by continuing the Records Com- mittee arrangement. The Council also added a committee to take action on var- ious offenses, and on the record. The ac- cumulating of these records is a problem which was untouched during the year. The SPIFF people noted that in the sixth form, the sixteen dormitory assistants received three dormitory marks the whole year, while nineteen non-dorm assistant sixth formers got l45 dormitory marks. This situation meant simply that the records set-up was not as valuable in practice as it appeared to be in theory. The problem of law enforcement remained unsolved. Still, in dealing with many other proi- ects, from sun-bathing to a constitutional amendment changing election procedure, the Council acted as a valuable clearing house. The everyday problems of living at Pomfret were successfully governed. -N. Polsby