Shawnigan Lake School - Yearbook (Shawnigan Lake, British Columbia Canada)

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judgment we would make. You may become somewhat frustrated by this imposition of ideas from above, but the fact is that we know what we are talking about most of the time, and when we do not, you usually don ' t notice it. As I have said, you can ' t go off into the wild blue yonder of your own opinions without information, and we usually have more of that commodity than you. You shouldn ' t be surprised to discover that we don ' t mean what we say when we ask you to think for your- self. As a matter of fact, the earliest expression of this idea: turning the student ' s eyes in the right direction, occurs in the writings of a true-blue, right-wing authoritarian who firmly believed that education should be brain-washing, and that most people are too stupid to be trusted to think for themselves. The point, which I hope you have seen coming for some time, is not that you cannot think for yourself, but that we really haven ' t the re- motest idea of how this thinking-for-yourself is taught. The upshot is that there will never be a course inThinking 92, because thinking cannot be taught, thinking can only be learned. The responsibility lies with you, and you must learn to think. Good luck. -A.GW. SCHOOL STAFF 1 ■. ' ' m S- - ' ■ iii iiiS 1 WBUkfi hPIBJb w %C mm Mm . mm 2 1 1 X 1 m, ' tl jpIb V7jjj »1 I V r JKyliJ 1 Jr %w 3 jfln y i 1 rr -4HI ■w jw Back Row (left to right): W. R Salmon, ]. S. Brierley, A. G. Widen. 1. A. Galliford, D. M. Ferguson, A. R Kshatriya, T. L. Brierlev, M. A, Niglitingale, R. B. Farrally. Middle Row: C. A. C. Porter, H. M Mcintosh, G. W. Oteman, J. Arthurs, A. C. M. Brown, ]. E. Dickens, ]. S. Grey. Sitting: M. A. Ellissen. H. S. C. Archbold, L. P Maclachlan. E. R larsen, Rev. E W. Scott. G. L. Anderson, P. H. ]osselvn

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AN EDITORIAL Whenever I hear that I am supposed to be teaching young people to think for themselves — which is often enough—, I give a guilty start and make a mental note to do something about it before lunchtime at the very latest. Then it slips my mind. But now that the deadline for this communication keeps giving me irritated looks, it seems that a little thought about thinking might be in order. My little thought is that teaching young people to think for themselves is just the sort of vacuous remark we make without giving it another thought. Not that we say it — or something like it — lightly, not that we don ' t mean to mean what we say, — and not that we don ' t relish the warm feeling of having said something profound and vaguely progressive, happy to have got it in before someone else did. Certainly in the pursuit of excellence, young people must be tague think for themselves. As a matter of fact, young man, you do a lot of thinking for yourself without any help from anybody. There is nothing you like better than getting into violent arguments — about the merits of rowing, for instance, as op- posed to cricket, or to anything else at all for that matter (which takes some real thought, believe me); about the convulsions of the Conservatives as opposed to the lisping of the Liberals; or about something really important like the school cooking. Argument involves opinions, and opinions often involve thinking for onself. You are bursting with your personal opinions, and you arrive at them by pretty much the same routes as your elders do. Possibly there is a little more private bias, unconscious prejudice, and face-saving involved but young people do think for themselves. Fortunately for us, most of what you think remains mercifully hidden within your own private circle. And in any case, we don ' t mean that kind of thinking. We don ' t mean the normal, run-of-the-mill, automatic kind of thought, abounding in cross-purposes, axe-grinding, and non sequiturs. We mean wise, well-informed, balanced thinking, and this is what we propose to teach you. We can ' t really help it if we put on that practiced, Dutch- uncle air, and if we accidentally say, Now when I was a boy . . ., or At my school ... And I suppose we shouldn ' t be surprised if that chasm already existing between us happens to rear its ugly head ( Isn ' t that a cliche, or a mixed metaphor, ... or something, sir? ) As I was saying, there is often a vast gulf between your interests and our interests, between what the curriculum wants you to do and what you want to do with the cur- riculum. It may be just asking too much for you to have any real thoughts about such things as the niceties of the modal verb, the beauty of the sinusoidal parallelopiped, the delicacy of the gold-foil eletcroscope, or the queer goings-on in Greek philosophy. And we on the other hand may not really appreciate your taste in sunhats; your misplaced affection for people like Ringo; your ye-ye and your nay, nay; your consuming interest in a subject not our own. When we propose to teach you anything, you must remember that we belong to a reactionary bunch concern- ed mainly with putting a brake upon what you like to think of as progress. After all, me and him was real good friends is, as you have said, perfectly understandable English. But you must also remember, unfortunate as it may be for your growing independence of spirit, that much of what you think is precisely what anybody would expect it to be: over-facile, over-hasty, or just plaint wet. Now, when we teach you things without thinking about them, as we so often do, we are teaching you what the educational authorities want you to be taught. When, as we sometimes do, we stray from this narrow path into the realms of independent thought, we are replacing what the educational authorities think by what we think. Notice that your thoughts have not yet come into the picture at all— and lucky for you, because we both know what and how you would think if left to your own devices. Well then, what are we after when we propose to teach you to think for yourself? That ' s a very good ques- tion. We teachers often forget that the only things that can be taught with any visible success are facts— or those judgments, conjectures, and generally accepted truths that we choose to call facts so that we don ' t have to worry about them. As soon as we say because, we have begun to interpret the facts, and interpretation involves all sorts of processes not contained in the text books. One can ' t interpret without a great deal of relevant information, and above all, without judgment. Some of us survive years of instruction without ever acquiring judgment. But, to return to your problem, you have to discover that while all because ' s are equal, some are more equal than others. As a result, when we present you with a set of facts to interpret— which is probably not often enough— and ask you to think for yourself, we are reall y expecting you to think the way we think, and to come up with the sort of

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HEADMASTER Edward R. Larsen, Dip.Phys.Ed., B.A. (Brit.Col.) , M.A.(Oxon.) ASSISTANT HEADMASTER L. P. MacLachlan, B. Arch. (Capetown), M.A.(Oxon.) REGISTRAR H. S. C. Archbold, B.Sc. (Toronto) , M.A.(Alberta) CHAPLAIN The Rev. E. W. Scott, ma. (Cantab.) HOUSEMASTERS G. L. Anderson, b.a. (Brit.Col.) Head of History Lake ' s J. S. Grey (Durham), Maths, and P.T „- Ripley ' s M. A. Nightingale, M.A.(Oxon.), History and English Grove ' s P. H. Josselyn, b.a. (Nottingham), Dip.Ed., Head of English Copeman ' s J. S. Brierley, b.a. (Victoria), Geography Junior House ASSISTANT MASTERS J.Arthurs, B.A.(Durham) Head of Modern Languages T. L. Brierley Industrial Arts A. C. M. Brown, b.a.Sc (Brit.Col.), Dip.Ed.(Oxon) Science and Maths. J. E. Dickens, B.Ed. (U.of victoria) English and History R. B. Farrally, Dip.Phys.Ed. (Denmark) P.T. I. A. Galliford, a.r.t.c. (Toronto), a.a.G.o. (New York) Music and Choir Master A. R. Kshatriya, B.Sc, m.Sc. (Bombay ) (Brit.Col.) Mathematics and Physics H. M. Mcintosh, Saskatchewan Teaching Certificate Maths. G. W. Oteman, B.A.(Nijmagen), Teaching Certificate (Music) MuSlC, Art, French C. A. C. Porter, B.Sc. (Wales) , Ph.D.(Bari), Dip.Ed. (Oxon.) . F.R.i.c. F.c.s., M.c.i.c. Head of Science W. R. Salmon, B.A.(Toronto) Latin and Maths. A. G. Wilden (Univ.of Victoria) Latin and French On one year ' s leave of absence: D. W. Hyde-Lay, P.T.L, E.T.C. (Switzerland) ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF M. A. Ellissen, m.c Bursar D. M. Ferguson Assistant Bursar Miss M. C. Clunas Accountant and Secretary to the Headmaster Mrs. E. Willing Secretary Mrs. B. Hilton Housekeeper MissC. A. Wilson, r.n Nurse Mrs. M. Dickens, Mrs. Hewitt, Mrs. Stuart Matrons in Main Building Mrs. F. Hard, Mrs. L. Rausch Matron ' s in Copeman ' s COMMANDING OFFICER, R.C.S.C.C. COUGAR Chief Petty Officer D. W. Barker, D.S.M., R.c.N.(Ret.) Indicates Old Boy of Shawniqan Lake School