Wapakoneta High School - Retrospect Yearbook (Wapakoneta, OH)

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Che Retrospect To the Students and Friends OF BLUME HIGH SCHOOL GREETINGS: I wish to thank the Staff for this opportunity to address a word of greeting to you. First, I want to congratulate the Staff and the Senior Class upon the successful completion of another year book. It means weeks of real labor, but all that is forgotten when the splendid volume comes off the press. The year just closed has been an unusually successful one in every one of the many phases of school activity. The high spot of the year, perhaps, is the successful participation in the first Scholarship Contest held in Ohio. Again, our school has had its most successful year in the Commercial Contest in Lima. Blume High took third place among seventeen schools contesting. We have added tennis to the list of extra curricular activities, and have enjoyed a successful year in dramatics and the established sports. I am much concerned in making each student feel the responsibility resting upon them of benefitting to the greatest possible extent from the free education which this community provides. The expense is large, but the people are willing to make this sacrifice for the sake of building up a better city, state and nation. If you are really appreciative of this opportunity to secure an education at public expense, you must see to it that all the work of the school, both within and without the curriculum, makes its greatest possible contribution to your individual and personal development. You must therefore engage whole heartedly in as many phases of activity as possible. Do not look upon education as a mere fact gathering process. A good encyclopedia will furnish that. An education consists more largely of correct attitudes, habits and skills. You cannot acquire these except by participation in school activities. You cannot buy them as you do a set of books. These are the true purposes of a school: 1. To teach you correct habits of health and physical exercise. 2. To give you command of the “tools,” reading, writing, arithmetic. Unless you have a genuine command of these, the world will not think that you have much of an education. 3. To lay the foundation for a vocation. Schools cannot make you experts in a trade, but must give you a knowledge of good English, ordinary arithmetic, elements of science, and an understanding of our social background. 4. To make you a worthy member of a family, not entirely by teaching you future duties, but also by showing you the right attitude toward your present family circle. 5. To teach you to carry on fittingly your duties as a member of a city, state, and nation. This is the greatest reason for maintaining schools at public expense. A true citizen respects the rights of others and takes an active interest in community welfare. 6. To teach you proper use of leisure time by helping you to discover avocations that you can carry along with you. 7. To help you develop sound character to help you make right thinking, right living men and women of yourselves, by giving you responsibilities, opportunities for assuming initiative, acquainting you with the ideals of the great men and women of history, and lastly through activity upon the playground and athletic field, where sportsmanship rules, and where trickery and cowardice are soon found out. If school helps you to achieve these aims, then your education is genuine, and not a mere veneer, and it is worth to the community all it costs.