University of Wisconsin Superior - Gitche Gumee Yearbook (Superior, WI)

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of woodwork, blacksniithing, and mechanical and architectural drawing. This work is still further amplified by our trades departments. Wc teach cabinet and carpenter work, shoe making, and printing. 'ITic periodicals which accompany this letter arc both printed at this school, and the work is done by the pupils. In the shoemaking department our boys learn all forms of shoe repairing and also how to make new shoes. In the cabinet department they arc taught to make various pieces of furniture, so that at the present time a large part of the furniture about the school has been made by our own boys. For the girls we have a complete domestic science course which includes sewing, including dress-making, and cooking. Some of our girls also become expert typesetters. Each girl takes a course in millinery. Of the nine girls who graduated last June, each one designed, cut, and made her own graduating gown and also her graduation hat. They were all entirely creditable, and 1 was a proud man as I took them to the gallery to be photographed. At the present time wc have in this school two young women and two boys who are both deaf and blind. All of them arc perfectly deaf. Some of them sec well enough to make their way around reasonably well, but not well enough to read; hence they must be taught by methods used for the blind. What these students can accomplish, although lacking in the two principal senses that convey impressions to the mind, is truly remarkable. In the way of better facilities for instruction and care for the deaf children, wc have just completed a large industrial building, well equipped for its purpose, and shall have completed and ready for occupancy next September a large building for our girls. This building includes commodious sleeping rooms, study rooms, play rooms, tub, shower, and pool baths, and a gymnasium 100 feet by 52 feet. I have often said and really believe that wc have here the two hundred happiest children in the state of Wisconsin. I thank you for the opportunity your invitation gives me to greet my former friends in the Superior Normal School, to all of whom, as well as to the many new members within the student body and faculty, I extend a hearty wish for the highest success and greatest happiness. May I close with a little sentiment which I penned as a Christmas greeting to the teachers and other employes here? It is one of the blessed provisions of God that joy and gladness and peace neither from ease nor station nor wealth arise. In all walks of life arc found the buoyant mind and the gladsome heart. They arc born of a conscience that says ever “I)o right. a heart that ever feels for others and a mind and a body that go to their work with that clastic energy that promises success in all undertakings. April 8. IQUQ. 13 f3 13 From Mr. G. L. Bowman To have a vocation that gives you a living because it is necessary to human interests, that gives you pleasure because you like to follow it, that gives you a stimulation to do it better from day to day because you can sec that you do it a little better than most people, is to have a permanent source of happiness and an GI TCI IE GUM EE PACE SEVENTEEN

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GITCHE GUMEE a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, and has had considerable experience in his profession. He taught for two years in the Eau Claire High School, then taught in the St. Paul Central High School, a very large institution of fifteen hundred students, and then occupied the chair of science in Carroll College, Waukesha, for five years. He has also done graduate work at the Wisconsin University. Mr. Ehlman has given us great pleasure by his playing of the violin. The selections which he gave in assembly one day, in lieu of a speech, were heartily enjoyed by all. Letters from Former Faculty Members From Mr. E. W. Walker Since leaving the Superior Normal School in the summer of 1902, I have been continuously in the superintendence of the Wisconsin School for the Deaf at Dclavan. This work has been one of the most fascinating I have ever undertaken. In no schools must the teaching be so sound as in schools for any kind 'of defectives. The normal minded child will learn in spite of the teacher. The child of defective mind forms wrong judgments about many of the commonplace things of life, and his teacher must correct all these mistaken judgments as well as give him his academic education. She is, therefore, more necessary to her pupils than is the teacher to the public school child. Then, too, if she follows a non-psychological course in her teaching she is very soon against a stone wall and is forced to anchor herself to fundamentals. Because of this there is a certain attractiveness in this line of work. I do not understand that you mean to give space to any extended article of mine, and. therefore, say as briefly as I may regarding my work that we have constantly in mind three great principles which we hope to see fulfilled in each of the children here. First, we aim to establish right habits and moral ideals. This we can do better than can the teacher in the public school, for the reason that we control the entire time of the student. Second, we aim to give each child an academic education that shall be fairly commensurate with what hearing children acquire in the public school. For this purpose we have an elementary course of ten years. 'Flu’s course includes all of the common school branches below the high school and includes in addition such subjects as civics, bookkeeping, botany, and physics. In addition to this we have just added two years’ additional high school work. This course is for entrance in college. Four of our last year's graduates arc now in attendance at Gallaudct College, Washington, I). C. This is the only college for the deaf in the world. In connection with this academic course our pupils learn speech and lip reading. Many of them become very expert and can carry on a conversation with a hearing person so readily as to render their defect unnoticcablc. 'I hird. we give greater prominence to industrial training than docs the public school to hearing children, for the reason that deaf men and women can not readily secure positions unless they have been taught some trade. We, therefore, have a very complete manual training equipment with which we give training in all forms PAGE SIXTEEN

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GITCHE GUMEE abiding cause of contentment. Work that gives pleasure is play, but play that is devoid of happiness is drudgery. Those who must seek happiness through the different forms of play so as to have peace and contentment, seldom find it. for true joy lies not in anti-socialistic conditions, and no play is for the amusement of the selfish individual. Seek happiness for yourself and she will flee from you, but seek it for another, and you get the most of it, because your heart is opened by a generous impulse to the reception of gratitude from the happy one. It is this reciprocal movement that increases the sum total of enjoyment; for action stimulates reaction, which in turn stirs your ability to serve another. The smile gets a return smile, and this impels you to give another; but you have passed on. and your second reaches another, who gives back to you. You live in a world of happiness, but the conditions arc of your own unconscious making. 'Phis alternating of agent and object of beneficial service, whether it be for the physical, the mental, the moral, or the spiritual, is the foundation of the truest type of joy that the world can know. The physician who does his work primarily for the love of it receives from his patient the gratitude that makes him the more efficient in his treatment of his next, and so on, with a never ending accumulation of happiness and an ever increasing ability to enjoy it. It is so with the clergyman, with the teacher, the author, the groceryman, the butcher and the baker. There is no service anywhere that ministers to human interests that is so low as to be incapable of giving joy to the one who loves to do it from the motive to help some one to move towards a better enjoyment of giving, that others may return the service. The street cleaner and the garbage collector may be included here with the same propriety as the trimmer of hats and the writer of poems. I love my work because it helps the human family to better things, and because I can do it, is the sole condition of being happy on earth. If you can say that, you are a happy person, no matter whether you are a scrubwoman or a drainman. If you cannot say that, you are not, even though you be prince or king, a minister of the church, or an editor of a great paper. Thus it is that happiness is inseparably combined with daily occupations. If you cannot find it here, it will be of no use to conduct an independent search for it divorced from service. Hut says some one, “I am compelled to earn a living.” To that one there seems no other way than to view labor as a curse and to accept it as a portion for sinful man. He hates his job and dislikes his employer. He connives to shorten the hours of labor and to give as little as possible from hour to hour. The man who hires him pays him in distrust and as little coin as possible. Neither gives joy to the other. Both go to bed at night weary and rise on the morn unrested, only to repeat the dismal failure. The worker goes to poverty and death, the other endows colleges, gives to charity to make amends for the mistakes in simply living. Both are wrong. If the work gives not life, it can at the best give but a poor living to him who employs, as well as to him who is employed. Here arc two gardeners, one who works because he gets life and love out of his work, the other because he gets enough to buy meat and clothing for his family. The first gets five dollars a day, while the other gets one; and the first is by far the cheapest to his employer. He by his work gets life and a living, but the dollar man gets nothing but his dollar. From the first the employer gets service that gives him life and comfort, but from the second nothing but the digging in the dirt. Both workmen quit at six o’clock, but from widely different motives—the one because joy in gardening ought to give % PAGE EIGHTEEN