San Antonio Academy - Blue Bonnet Yearbook (San Antonio, TX)

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'ik ik YZ? il? ii? ik' ik 63? The President of the Academy R X V T EX! Major W. T. Bondurant, Jr. ff-YA K- KS

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iifikfifkwik ikiifvfkilr Message from the Chairman Of the Board This past year has seen many changes in the basic life of the San Antonio Academy that only time will be able to interpret for all of us. For many years the Academy has endeavored to produce and has produced outstanding young men that have not faltered in this trust. It has been done in the educational field with a group of men who have demanded and received a standard of excellence above the average. Often the ingenuity and the desire of both teacher and student have been the only real tools of this achievement. However the field of general education has been expanded to include at the elementary school level courses of a depth never dreamed of in elementary education fifty years ago. New methods of visual education and audio-education have created needs for equipment and special classrooms for studies in science, geography, history, literature, foreign language, etc. . . , that were not initially planned as a part of the physical properties and plant at the Academy. A lessening of the family participation in outdoor activities and an ever increasing interest in the medium of television by the younger generation has made it imperative that the school take a more integral part in the physical development of the boy. Where one coach was often all a school of the general type of the Academy needed, it now becomes most necessary to have a staff of them and a well developed changing program. A gymnasium was not thought of as being essential when the Academy was young because there were few sports that called for indoor participation. Now there are few schools that either do not have a gymnasium or at least the partial use of such a facility. In changing our status to non-profit and our name to the San Antonio Academy of Texas, we hope that a pattern has been set for the attainment of greater goals than have ever before been realized. Our name and status may be changed but rest assured that we face the new era with a greater strength of conviction in the strong principles of the past than ever before but with an equally strong conviction that though ideals should not change, ideas should and the Academy must set the pace. PAGE

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vfrvilriiriir iirilrsfrvir The President's Message I believe it to be most essential that I share with those of you who take the time to read this particular page of the annual a small portion of the conflict within my mind and heart at the time I found myself elected your school's President. By some standards, I should have been immediately overcome by the joy of at last reaching a goal that I had hoped for and dreamed about since I put on an Academy uniform as a second grader. Admit- tedly there were times when I thought in arithmetic class, algebra class, or Prof. Roeis history class that I had probably better make up my mind to become more skilled and less educated. But though other professions came in view and other goals seemed to be more lucrative I'm afraid I never lost the real one - President of the Academy. I must honestly say however that I didnlt look for it quite so soon. I had felt that one day I would be tired of teaching or at least tired of the classroom and of more service out of the classroom than in and at this time, it would perhaps be the Board's wish that I quit dealing the students misery both physically and mentally and become an ad- ministrator. QIn a lot of private schools it has long been the custom to make the poorest teachers into the best administrators, so I can assume that I have at last been found out.j In view of these admissions, I feel quite certain that you can interpret that I intend to continue to participate in some measure in the teaching activities of the school until I have to stop. In my own mind I am convinced that there is no substitute for the personal class- room contact with the student. Few judgments can be made with equity and fairness without a close observation and this can only come from personal contact. I cannot nor will I be a president in an 'civory tower. I may not always be available to my patrons and parents but I will be to my cadets. In the immediate future, there are to be many changes of a physical and curriculum nature that come to the school. Some are to mean the expansion of campus and buildings as well as the addition of new courses. Other changes will include activity clubs for debating, dra- matics, choral, etc. But may I say in closing that these are things that I have purposely said will be added. They will never take the place of or precedence over the elements of strong scholarship and character that are the very reasons for the Academy's continued existence. PAGE 9