Spartanburg High School - Spartana Yearbook (Spartanburg, SC)

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SPARTANBURG CITY SCHOOLS Seven

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This is Dr. Frank Evans, Superintendent of the Spartanburg City Schools, at the microphone. I have been asked to tell you briefly of the growth of the city school system under my administration. Thirty-seven rears ago Spartanburg had only one public school building (for white students) and nine teachers ten including the Superintendent, who had to teach in those days. There were only eight grades. There was one first grade teacher and one for the second grade. A ninth grade was added the first year of my superintendence. The High School, known as the Converse Street School, was built in 1897. There were four rooms at first. A tenth grade was added and then an eleventh. West End School was built in 1902; South side School in 1907: Oakland School in 1912: Fremont in 1915; the present High School building, probably the largest building of its kind in the State, was erected in 1921; and the Fine Street School was completed in 1929. Today there are fifty-fire teachers, not including the Oakland School; twenty-five at Fremont; nineteen at Fine Street School; twenty at Southsidc School; and twelve at West End. This makes a total of one hundred and fifty-one ichite teachers in the Spartanburg City Schools. We have two Supervisors for the grammar grades, two Music Supervisors, two Drawing Supervisors, an Attendance Officer, and two school nurses. Frincipal, in the High School; nineteen teachers at Spartanburg was first in the State to adopt a domestic science course; first to employ a medical inspector; first to adopt compulsory attendance; and first to employ a Supervisor of Music in its public schools. Our standard of scholarship has been steadily raised. Hoys and girls graduating from our schools with good averages are able to enter A grade colleges of this country, and many have-uon honors at college. The fine spirit of loyalty and of earnestness shown by most of the children in our schoolsr is a matter of great joy and pride. We feel that no finer boys and girls are to be found anywhere. Six

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Ladies and gentlemen of the. Radio Audience: As Principal oj this school, I have been asked to answer the question, ''What are. the Ideals of Our School ?,T The knowledge oj the facts that books contain is not the chief aim of this institution. Fes. let us have intellectual development, but along with it loyalty; honesty; faithfulness; co-operation among pupils, teachers, and parents; love of school; happiness in work; and reliability. We might say in a word that our purpose is education. What a sonorous word! Yet how little it means unless translated into terms of life, and then how much! Volumes have been written to explain it. We might liken education to a great tapestry into which are woven the threads of the intellectual. physical, vocational, social, moral, and religious. Each thread is important, and not until it is inextricably woven together is the beautiful picture made. Suppose we begin weaving with the royal purple of the intellectual, for in spile of the frills and fads, intellectual training must remain the. dominant part of the work. We may start with history or literature. Very soon the silver thread of moral conduct appears, illustrated by the lives of the great in our history, or by the beautiful thoughts and ideals of our poets. Our school has physical training and gymnastics. Do we give these simply for the training of the body? Oh, no! .Start if you wish with the crimson thread oj the physical. .Soon we begin to see great moral lessons learned honesty, fairplay, reliability. We hear some one saying “A sound mind in a sound body ‘ and realize that they have introduced the intellectual again. In the give-and-take of athletics the great principles oj social relations are learned. And so, in our sports alone, we find woven together the jour threads physical, moral, intellectual, and social. We attempt here to prepare the individual along industrial and vocational tines, and so we put manual training, cooking, sewing, and type-writing into our school. Hut even if we should wish to train simply vocationally, there is no way we can inoculate the patient with the serum oj vocational training and not have mixed in all the germs of the moral, social, and intellectual that must necessarily creep into the great hypodermic. “Education Eight