Tantasqua Regional High School - Tantasquan Yearbook (Sturbridge, MA)

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incipals ee ae TR oe SO Mr. Edward Bzdula Assistant Pr Mr. Garfield Norton

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Principal’s Message Young men and young women who are completing their high school education this year are facing more pressures than previous graduates. Conflicting values or courses of action are urged on you constantly by friends, parents, and other adults. In addition you are constantly exposed through the mass media to differing and in many cases more extreme views than those presented to the graduates of a few years ago. You must be able to weigh these different presenta- tions and to establish a clear cut set of values by which you can live. The despair of many today in this different society is caused not by ‘‘wrong”’ values but rather by a lack of a set of guiding values. In an at- tempt to be independent, young people have ques- tioned many of the ‘“‘old’’ values, found them want- ing and so discarded them without even establishing new ones. It is ironic in our society that as we leave the absolutist doctrines of the past, we establish new ones that are just as firm and that polarize our so- ciety as much. As you establish your set of values by which to live, | would suggest that if you throw out some of the ‘‘old’’ values, you do so because they themselves do not have value and not because some adults, who espoused them, did not live up to them. As different and painful as it will be to many of you, you must strive to set up a workable value system for yourself and strive for an ability to see things in their proper perspective, or the pressures that you may feel today will only become more intensified in the future. You have the ability to see many of the mis- takes of your predecessors. Take advantage of this and by your actions make this a better world because you have been in it. Mr. John Canavan, Principal

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Thoreau may have given us a creed for guidance: “If a man does not keep pace with his com- panion, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer; let him step to the music he hears’’. It is the purpose of the Guidance Department to help the student ‘‘step to the music he hears’’, to establish his own goals and to achieve self actualization. Mr. Francis Bansfield, Department Head Mrs. Louise Willett, Secretary Counselling Mr. James Herrion Mrs. Donna McArdle, Mr. Charles Russell 21