Seattle University - Aegis Yearbook (Seattle, WA)

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THE ECHO their Saturday Evening Posts on Thursday, yet they had invented gunpowder and were wont to enjoy the Fourth of July with sundry and numerous explosions of fireworks and skyrockets and Roman candles, even as the boy next door. We can picture a scene here: Time—three thousand years before Christ; Characters—one sagely wise, slant-eyed professor. a score or more of urchins, scholarly-bent, and an Irish, pardon. Chinese policeman. Place—a street in Kain-Tuck with a sign “School: Go Slow. It is three minutes after nine. Some freckled face Chinese lad has hidden the bell. “May the soul of his great-uncle and his grandfather and his great-grandfather and his great-great-grandfather wither forever under the curse of Sol-Us the Sun-God. Finally to the infinite displeasure of the great majority the summoner is found and class is begun. Now on to the first recitation in history. Professor Ping-Pong: Now will the honorable Cupe-Id, son of the great and joyous counsellor to His Majesty the King’s secretary, and son also of the Lady Pink-Te, whose beauty is forever and ever a thing of wonder to those who believe in the wonderful God of Comeliness, humble himself to give to the appreciative world, which is so happily and aptly blessed by his presence upon its ever-changing and vari-colored surface, an historical outline of the reign of Do-Re (may his memory forever be blessed and may light jewels reflect brilliantly from his brow) and the occurrences thereof? At this stage just as little Cupe-Id was about to relieve from his memory the life of the above-said Do-Re the policeman enters and waxes eloquent, and hidden smiles seem ready to burst to the surface of stolid Oriental countenances. After two hours during which the Chinese police department has run down and also run up the family tree of every pupil present, it proceeds to insinuate that trees which were right on the street leading to school and which had been the preceding evening loaded down with apples were considerably lightened during the morning, and would someone confess himself or herself miscreant? None would. Classes resumed, only to hear the five o’clock whistle. 23

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THE ECHO A Dissertation on Schools SCHOOLS, ah, schools! What a part they have played in the education of the world! Understand me in the beginning that by schools I mean that instrument of learning or torture (as the case may be) that has occupied so important a place and played so great a part in the gradual change from Adam’s Ale to Volstead's Moonshine. Schools are not a modern institution and cannot be destroyed by fire or prayer, as an eight-year-old boy might think, but will rather require the determined, organized and simultaneous efforts of all the minds of every one who has passed from babyhood to manhood under the roof of the said institution. Whether school is beneficial or harmful we cannot say, but we must give it credit for having gained reputation and favor, especially from fond parents of small boys. Making a historical review of schools we find no trace in the earliest days of the traditional schoolroom with its benches and giggling, untaught occupants, even after the Garden of Eden had become a memory. All snapshots that we have with us today of life in that period give no hint of small girls playing hopscotch in school yards, nor of small boys learning future history by means of the birch-rod. From the time of Cain and Abel until the flood, history lapses into obscurity and we are afraid that the little ones had their education somewhat neglected. Still there can hardly be a doubt that the children of the age of the flood felt quite a relief when the heavy rains necessitated a dismissal of what little school they may have had. There is no record of their subsequent feelings. From the Ark reposing on top of Mt. Ararat, we make our way across the Red Sea into Asia, and through Asia we proceed into China—into the Oriental temples of learning. Two thousand years before Christ, history tells us, science and the fine arts in China were far in advance of the rest of the world. Though we cannot truthfully say that the Chinese were as far advanced as the modern Americans, who receive 22

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THE ECHO Thus another day is gone, and perhaps we can in this way see and understand how slow the Chinese were: and how they needed a few thousand years’ start in the race for modernity. From China we make our way to Northern Africa, where on the banks of the picturesque Nile, the Pharaohs and their subjects are experimenting with the infant institution of education. The next step in schools leads us to the ancient empires of Rome and Greece—about the time of Our Lord—where young men following the philosophy of Aristotle, Plato, Socrates and the rest, walked in the groves in small groups, discussed and argued their teachers’ doctrine—thereby setting the foundations of our modern schools. From the viewpoint of a twentieth century schoolboy, this open air school where students walked about and were not confined to rooms is ideal. We have visions in our mind of Charlemagne. St. Louis and other heroes of past times receiving their education: visions and no more. Today we have schools for every boy and every girl, starting with the kindergarten, where children learn enough to be able, when they come home, to cut cute patterns in mamma’s best linen curtains or artistically paint grotesque and fanciful figures in red. green or white paint on dad’s’’ best Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. And then there are the higher institutions such as colleges and universities, where the ambitious (?) go for one of three reasons: because it is an ideal matrimonial agency: because the rest do it. or because it is easier than working. Beside the above-mentioned institution, this modern nation is burdened with almost innumerable retailers of knowledge. correspondence schools, hairdressing schools, schools of etiquette, and every other kind imaginable, all competing for the patronage of those desiring to be educated. So you see all over the world ever since its beginning the human mind has sought truth and knowledge, even though it has discovered but a part of each. 24