South High School - Tiger Yearbook (Minneapolis, MN)

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JOSEPH JORGENS

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Where There Is No Vision the People Perish The pavilion at Lake Harriet with its beautiful commanding view nearly marks the spot where, in 1836, stood a small log cabin-the first school house in what is now Minneapolis. The historian of the time tells us there was no Floor but the bare ground, stumps of trees were the chairs. The first school in territorial Minnesota, not connected with missions, was on the site of the First Presbyterian Church in St. Paul-a little log hovel, covered with bark and chinked with mud, previously used as a black- smith shop. It had but one room about ten by twelve feet. The seats were planks chucked in the cracks of the log walls, the teacher's desk was a rickety cross-legged table, the ornamental curiosity of the room, a hen's nest in the corner. My own First recollection of a village school is that of a room filled with sixty pupils. A big stove on one side of the room toasted and roasted those who were near itg the pupils on the farther side shivered with cold. The room during the arithmetic recitation was so full of chalk dust that one could almost cut the atmosphere. The ventilation of the room was supposedly carried on through little openings, the size of mouse holes, bored in the mop boards. The teacher was a man who threatened to break every bone in the body with an old hickory stick if the culprit did not behave, and on one or two occasions he nearly carried out his threat. As one views these pictures, and then thinks of improved school methods and of our magnificent buildings with modern technical equipments, labora- tories, libraries, and capacious assembly halls, accommodating thousands at a time, one is filled with amazement at the progress made even in the span of a life. The grandfather rode in a creaking cart drawn by a team of oxen, his grandson rides in a high power motor car, he even essays the wings of the wind-the aeroplane. In our fathers' time the three R's were suffi- cient: today, a preparation for all the needs in a highly complex life is para- mount and necessary. So, along with the molding of the spirit and the fash- ioning of the physical well-being, we are striving to fit the youth to his vocation, to his trade, and to his profession. We are even encroaching on the traditional rights and precincts of the University and the College by appro- priating the work of the first two years. I wish I could vision for you the still greater strides that are to be made in our state and in our nation. As to our local community, I have been dream- ing for the past ten years of a great high school for South to be built on the banks of the Mississippi, facing not only the wide expanse of the river but surrounded by the charming natural parks of the city, with a big, big bowl hollowed out of the bank-a stadium that is right, where fifty thousand people could enjoy the great outdoors, the classic theatre, the Greek games-better still, the American games, the boat races, the tremendous chorus, the opera, 5