Sharon High School - Mirror Yearbook (Sharon, PA)

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 FACULTY

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ADMINISTRATION April 16, 1937. I lie task wlucli the public has given to the present (lav high school, while nowhere definite, is a staggering burden. I have lived to sec it grow from the school for a selective few who were generally ctilturallv and educationally minded, to the school of the whole populace; from the school where the obligation was largely to teach subject matter, to a school that is at once expected to be a school, a home, and a reformatory. The growth of the secondary school population in the United States has been as phenomenal as the variety of its problems. In our own city the student body has grown from 350 in 1914 to 1565 in 1936. In that early day a half dozen telephone calls made a busy day. Now a hundred calls cause no comment and are an indication of the increase of the schools contact with the public. A football team cost a hundred dollars or less for maintenance, now our team costs $1500 or more for equipment alone. The High School publication, the Mirror, of 1914 cost about $300.00 a year, now our Mirror, Mirrorcttc and Annual cost more than $3000.00. The office equipment was a desk and an old cupboard. The modern school has a safe almost as large as the old office, complete filing equipment, an up-to-date bookkeeping system, a visible student record file, and many gadgets and accessories necessary for meeting modern demands. Among these is a public address system which gives the school not only a contact with the office hut with the radio and phonographic programmes of the world. Sharon has not fully met the educational challenge of the new era. Our students do not have the home-making and manual arts courses in keeping with the demands of an industrial center such as Sharon. This is, I believe, one of our immediate and pressing problems and one which our people will support when shown its necessity. These things represent the material and simpler side of our school. The great problem is one of citizenship. Here lies the phase of our work which measures our usefulness to society. How arc we preparing boys and girls to solve the problems of the social order? How thoroughly and how clearly do we equip them to promote the general welfare, to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. Here is where we most greatly fail. Here lies the challenge to schools, and colleges, and teachers, and our public. Here is where we must center our efforts if we are to rise above the ordinary and if the democratic philosophy of the founders of our government is to survive. [HI P. A. JONF.S.