Sinking Spring High School - Imago Yearbook (Sinking Spring, PA)

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the primary authoritative institution and the most interesting. In a large measure it was independent of all other institutions. The school when it came. a supplementary institution created by the home for the performance of certain functions which it chose to delegate but for which the home still recognized its responsibility. As our social and industrial organization grew more complex, the former activities of the home have been delegated one after another to othei agencies, and the responsibilities which the home once bore have been placed upon the shoulders of th school, church, and factory. The result has been a gradual transition and transformation of the school from a place of mere training in essentials of academic learning for the children of such parents as were rich enough to dispense with their labor, to great service stations, tax-supported and buttressed by child labor and compulsory attendance laws, dedicated to the service of all the children of all the people. The subjects and courses taught in our schools are not mere frills but the result of public demand. We mus remember, however, that our school system has also achieved an efficiency unparalled by any other nation, for which we should Justly be proud. Prussia has fewer than nine percent of those of secondary schor 1 age in these schools; England less than fourteen percent; while the United States has fifty-two percent of her youth of high school age in secondary schools. When once Europe reduces her standing armies, she, too. can offer greater privileges of education. But this efficiency requires a vast expenditure. I have not as yet stressed this point. I shall attempt to give account of such record at this time. The cout of maintaining schools cannot be a static one. Our population Is rapidly increasing and the demand for an expanding program commensurate with an expanding civilization is discounting to those looking for a reduction in school costs. Can the probable costs or Increase be borne? How are we spending our annual ninety billion dollars income? Like a dinner, a school program costs in propartion to its service. In a city where the costs of th? school were under scrutiny by the Tax Dodger’s League, the sum of $175,000 was voted for a snake hous? without arousing protest. We complain about the cost of athletics in the schools and at the same time maintain municipal golf courses, tennis courts, and swimming pools. Each state is under constitutional mandate to maintain a system of free public schools but there is no constitutional requirement for a system of pleasure roads, state fairs, fish hatcherits or pleasure parks and camping sites for sportsmen, tourists, and gentlemen of leisure. These activities do help people live larger and better lives, the objectives of existence, and are good, but why should there be a curtailment of education, the most important undertaking of the community, state, and nation while there are sufficient funds, if properly expended, in the waste of any community to give everyone educational opportunities. Let us create a picture which will compare ou expenditures in different fields of activities. Cost of living—24 per cent of national Income Operation of government — 6 per cent; Waste—14 per cent; Crime—11 per cent; Education—2 per cent; Religion — 1 per cent. We are going to take for granted that certain of these figures and statistics are uncontrollable and unalterable, such as the cost of living, government operation, etc. In reading the facts notice carefully that the two most important institutions, the church and school, receive but a meagre portion of the income. Two outstanding items call our attention which can be attributed to the lack of training and education, namely crime and waste. You will note that crime costs about six times as much as education. If w? were to reduce the cost of crime, it certainly cannot be done by spending more money on police and enforcement. It must be done through correct guidance in citizenship which is required in our public schools and the ethical training in our churches and Sunday Schools. The Federal government appropriates hundreds of millions of dollars for the enforcement of prohibition. The beneficial results forthcoming have been insignificant. Why not spend that money on the schools where our youth can be guided and taught the enormity of Vhe problem and the evils resultant. The other item, waste, costs almost ten times as much as education. A well trained, educated person has learned to master waste. The elimination of waste becomes one of his objectives of good administration. Who is it now. after the evidence presented, can still cry that we are spending too much money on education?

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 What Price, Education?” President Hoover in one of his campaign addresses said. “The progress of the race is upon the marching feet of healthy instructed children.’ and that “if we were to supress our educational system for one generation, the equipment would decay, the most of our people would die of starvation, and intellectually and spiritually we would slip back four thousand years in human progress.” About a year ago. Roger Babson credited the American Public School system with the following results: “During the past twenty years, the public schools have practically eliminated illiteracy and materially raised the general level of Intelligence. They have supervised the health and safety of the nation's children to a much greater extent than ever before and to their great good. They have absorbed the great flood of immigration which inundates the country and kept it American. Through courses in vocational education they have prepared young people for specific trades and have increased the earning power of those educated. Our great advance in material prosperity can be ascribed in part to the higher educational levels and thinking to which the work of the public schools has raised the masses. Such quotations could be multiplied indefinitely, but the important thing is not that the service of the school is valuable, but how valuable is it. What measures of value can be applied to an institution that has practically banished illiteracy, looked after the physical well-being of 28,000.000 children; raised the level of living and thinking; increased the earning power of the worker, thereby creating and building up a home market which consumes ninety percent of the products of the farm and factory; and despite the flood of immigration kept the nation American? He is a brave man. or a fool, who ventures to place a monetary value upon such service. The question is not: Shall we have public education at public expense? That is a settled fact. Our legislative acts, our Constitution provides for that. The questions rather are: How much education and What kind shall we have and how much shall we pay for it? Are we trying to buy too mucn and too many kinds for too many people, and are we paying too much for what we are getting? These are the questions the critics of the school are asking, for it has become the fashion for certain speakers and writers on taxation and public expenditures to point an admonishing finger at the steadily increasing cost of public education, questioning the value of much that has gone to enrich the curriculum, and leading the taxpayer to regard himself as the victim of ruthless exploitation at the hands of the professional educator. But who is it bewails the high cost of education, declaring that we are trying to teach too many people too many things? So often we hear the illogical and irrational statement that the time is at hand when all want to be educated and there is no one left to work. Whose heart is it that yearns with sympathy for the overburdened taxpayer and sees in the reduction oi schools costs the easiest way to his relief? Is it the working man in his small rented home striving to support a large family on a small income and struggling against the approaching day when his older children must give up school and Join the ranks of the wage earners? It is the less numerous middle class worker, owning his modest home, whose children can look forward with a fair degree of assurance to attending the high school for a season? No. not these. They know that in education lies the hope of realizing for their children what circumstances had denied them; that the American public school runs the stralghtesl road to success and a more equal distribution of the world's wealth. Who is it then, that wishes to curtail the school budget and reduce the opportunities accordingly? It is that small but powerful and active class that believe apparently, that education above the line of literacy. is the exclusive right of a few select souls and who claim it for their own by a sort of divine right bestowed upon heredity and wealth, forgetting that they themselves and their prestige are the product of that democracy which they now desire to strangle. It is also the gold-greedy go-getters who have always been willing to rob childhood of its birthright and coin it Into coupons, in order that, with unconscious Irony, they may build monuments to themselves upon the college campuses. These are our “conscientious” objectors to the school budget. But these enemies of universal education were met in the fight for free elementary schools and again for free secondary schools and state universities and were defeated. Once more they are riding to a fall. The American public school is not something fixed, static, unchanging; it is a growth reflecting the prosperity, the changing social, domestic, and economic arrangements of life. More accurately than any other institution it mirrors the national Ideals and aspirations. The traveler in Europe on entering a town sees first of all a great cathedral; in America he secs the schoolhouse. It gathers into Itself an ever larger share of the life of our youth. Now it is reaching out for the adult through the night school, Americanization school, and extension school, offering him a share of Its wealth. When the Constitution was adopted, the average length of school attendance was sixty days; in 1920 it was 120 days, the highest length of school life for a whole population ever attained by any nation. In 1778 the elementary curriculum consisted of the three R’s with the Bible and with spelling added. Fifty years later grammar, geography, and bookkeeping had been added. Another twenty years added history and the use of object lessons. By 1928, one hundred and fifty years after the beginning, the curriculum included not five but twenty-three subjects. When the public school idea was first thought out, the home was

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Class History of Class ’32 As time rolls on its ceaseless course, new seasons come and go. A year is soon completed and finally an epoch reached. Today, you are closing one of the greatest periods of life, that of graduation. With this event before me. my mind revolves, and I am suddenly confronted with your class on the threshold of your high school career. You were like the spring of the year, young, vivacious, and full of energy. There were 2r class members who entered on September 4th, 1928. One of the new members who joined you at the beginning of your freshman year was LeRoy Degler. and with him was accompanied Miss Helen Dise who also played an important part in your Freshman year. Your first great achievement after completing your registration was to make friends with your sister class, the Juniors. You would have been overtaken by tear, ignorance, and discouragement, which so often beset the path of Freshmen, had it not been for this new founded friendship. Although you make friends with your cousins and sisters, yet they were ready to initiate you. When you came to school they were standing with their broad paddles. At this time there were savage tribes who were blocking your path. These fierce people were known as the Sophomores, a group to be feared and avoided by Freshmen. For the purpose of your own safety and protection, the Juniors helped you to organize your class with the following officers: Chester Bright. President; Samuel Hetrick. Vice-President; Miriam Schrack. Secretary. After the organization of your class came the big event which was your doggie-roast along the Cacoos-ing stream. The upper classmen were at hand to annoy you. You were scared by the wind noises you heard, although you pretended to be brave. The best part of the evening was spent by canoeing and playing games. The Sophomore tribe became less daring, the faculty gave you their seal of approva and you were beginning to secure a permanent place within the walls of the Sinking Spring High School. See how the Spirit of your Freshman season is interpereted in dance. After a happy vacation fifteen of your class cam? back to school. You had grown from the seed planted in the spring to flowering plants of summer. Whil? you were not weighted down with the fruits of knowledge. you were beginning to blossom. Your greatest glory consisted in occupying the strongholds of last year's Sophomores It was noted that you were mentally alert, physically strong, but morally weak. You were officiated with ‘'Sophomore-itis,” which could be cured only by torturing the Freshmen. Your mental growth was developing rapidly, you even started up in the poultry business which consisted of chancing off white ducks and turkeys in order to raise a fund for your class with which to go to Washington. It so happened that Donald Ganser. a Junior, received the turkey. After having the turkey run around in the coal bin. it was no longer white, but black as the coal itself. In athletics you were outstanding, your basketball team was one of the strongest in school. All too soon you reached your vacation season which was characterized by song and dance. The seeds of knowledge which were sown in your Frechman year and blossomed while you were Sopho-mores, were beginning to ripen into fruit in your Junior year. You were beginning to reap the rewards of your first efforts. When you came back you felt quite lost not having our Principal. Mr. Weidman; our English teacher. Mrs. Snyder: and Mr. Gates, our Science teacher, who were with us so long and whom you always liked. In these persons instead came Mr. Sowers. Miss Snyder, and Mr. Merkel who have filled their positions satisfactorily. Many things were calling your attention at the beginning of this year. First, there was your class organization which was so Important at this rlpenea stage of your growth. You elected the following offi- cers: President. Eugene Weidman; Secretary. Miriam Schrack. Baseball and basketball games were developing you physically as well as bringing honor to your class and school. Near the end of your Junior year. Mr. Merkel planned a trip to the St. Lawrence Dairy. You all went by machine and among the machines was an Amos and Andy Ford in which was Chester Bright. Charles Ruth, and “Christy” Harnish. although they planned to go to the dairy, they never reached it with the whole group because they were either too late or too early. As the year drew to a close you decided to put out a year book. With the aid of the teachers you accomplished this aim. Full grown Seniors, nine in number returned last September. Eugene Weidman as President with an efficient group of officers assumed their new duties enthusiastically which has resulted In one of the bes: organized classes in the history of your school. Your Senior year has been spent largely in gathering fruits that were ripened and storing them away for the future. The annual Senior play has absorbed most of your time outside of the class room. On this momentous occasion. Hollywood would have been proud to have claimed the dramatic talent so well displayed. The last few days here have been quite busy in making your final plans to enter another cycle of seasons when the great clock of the Universe shall chime the hour for your departure. Dorothy W. Cassel. 8SSSBS88S88S8S8 Visual Education Recent experiments and tests hove proven that knowledge acquired through the eye has longer retention than that which may be acquired any other way. The motion and still pictures are the agencies whereby these channels of learning may be brought into 'he school. Through the lunds acquired from school activities a Victor Motion Projector has been purchased on in stallment rates. During the year 15 reels of motion pictures were used in class work. Last year a Spencer Delineascope was purchased through these same funds. The science department has used this projector quite frefuently throughout the year. Promotions The end of the school year is always bound to record a list of failures. Much though we would like to reduce the percentage of failures to zero it is impossible to attain such a standard. There are always a number of children who are either physically or mentally handicapped who cannot hope to advance regularly, and to advance them would be unfair and a hardship upon both pupil and teacher. There is another group of failures who fail by virtue of the fact that they refuse to apply themselves. This group makes teaching disheartening. Of the 28 failures this year 13 of them can be classified in this group. Following is a table showing the percentage of promotion: Grade Enrollment Promoted Percent Grade I. 42 40 96 Grade II 32 32 100 Grade III. 29 27 93 Grade IV 36 33 92 Gradve V. 35 33 94 Grade VI. 30 27 90 Grade VII. 26 19 73 Grade VIII. 26 20 77 Grade IX 24 23 96 Grade X. 16 15 94 Grade XI. 9 9 100 Grade XII. 9 9 100 ■ — . 314 287 91