Spartanburg High School - Spartana Yearbook (Spartanburg, SC)

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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

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SPARTANBURG CITY SCHOOLS Seven

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Although it is not set down in our schedule, “Religion: 9-9:45,” it is our hope that our school shrill inspire subUme ideals and noble aspirations am! shall influence all the lives it touches and mold noble characters. And so the gleaming, golden thread of religion finds its way into our tapestry of education —not isolated in one bright spot, but splashed over the whole picture, making it a thing of beauty. Nicholas Murray liutler says. “Education is the adjustment of the individual to the spiritual possessions of the race. ' Books are simply the instruments in the formation of habit traits. Every activity the child takes part in, whether recitation or game, socializes him. In attempting to have the child march to the social order of the school, we trust that selfishness nil I grow less and human sympathy greater. The school is a great institution for the betterment of mankind. Thorndike says that the aim oj education is to make human beings better. Anil so lie sit in the quiet of our study and think of these great ideals of education and try to apply them as a yardstick to the aims oj our school. l)o they coincide? No doubt we, as teachers, have jallen short of this great purpose. But let us begin again with renewed courage and desire not only to teach the child to think correctly, but to act nobly. Calvin Coolidge says. I teacher leaves an imperishable mark upon the child, which it is not too much to say lasts through eternity.” The teachers are the workers standing behind the frame on which the tapestry is placed, and a great responsibility rests on them in helping the child weave these threads intellectual, physical, vocational, social, moral, and religious together so that his life will be well rounded and he will be prepared to perform successfully whatsoever he findeth to do. r Nine