Windsor Locks High School - Herald Yearbook (Windsor Locks, CT)

Page 20 text:

18 THE HIGH SCHOOL HERALD GRADUATION EXERCISES. SALUTATORY AND ESSAY. Parents, Members of the Board of Educa¬ tion, Teachers, Schoolmates, and Friends, in behalf of the graduating class of nine¬ teen hundred and twenty-two, I extend to you a most sincere and cordial welcome. To you dear parents, we are deeply grate¬ ful for the sacrifices you have made that we might pursue our education. Without your love and labor, success would have been unattainable. Mr. Jackson, and Members of the Board of Education, we have profited by your in¬ valuable advice, and we appreciate your ef¬ forts to maintain the high standing of our Alma Mater. Beloved Teachers, we thank you for the knowledge you imparted to us and we shall always cherish your kind and patient en¬ deavors as inspirations to success. Dear Schoolmates, and Friends of the Community, it is a great pleasure to see you here this evening. Our close associa¬ tion with you in the past will always be cherished as one of the fondest memories of our days at Windsor Locks High School. Past, present, and future are three great divisions of time. We are well acquainted with the past, and the present is so near at hand we are unable to draw any accurate conclusions from it. But it is the future in which we are vitally interested and prepa¬ ration for it is one of our greatest aims. During the past few years the attention of the public has been directed in a greater degree than ever before towards the impor¬ tance of health education. To see their children go out into the world with pure minds and sound bodies should be the am¬ bition of all parents. This ambition might be realized if trivial disorders were recog¬ nized and corrected, both in the home and in the school, especially during early child¬ hood. The training and development of the body as well as the mind, is as old as history it¬ self. The Greek has always been known as “the mo t beautiful and most gifted of mankind.” Why? The Greeks realized the value and necessity of body training and carried on a systematic program of exercise and play. Following the example of the Greeks, the Romans insisted that the children of their country give especial care to bodily vigor and development. This development was emphasized through games and athletics. Are not our American children as worthy of healthy bodies and healthy minds as were the Greeks and the Romans? The results of the recent draft should convince every parent of the necessity for early treatment of remedial defects. Over twenty-five per cent of the men of the coun¬ try and fifty per cent of Connecticut’s own men were rejected simply because they had not received physical attention during child¬ hood. For this reason every person must necessarily conclude that public education involves a physical as well as a mental preparation for Life. Simply because the American nation is not at present involved in any war, is no justification for neglect in the care of the body, which is so useful in all pursuits in which man is engaged. We cannot restrict our education to the mind only, but we must educate the physical be¬ ing, for without physical development the mind cannot do its best work. At a recent teachers’ meeting in Hart¬ ford, Doctor Ireland in expressing his views on this subject said, “A hundred years ago, there was no need for a physical program of education, since the child was developed muscularly nine months of the year by hard work, about the farm. Now’adays with tre¬ mendous number of labor saving devices, elevators, automobiles, trolleys and other inventions, with the overcrowding of the urban districts and the exacting nature of modern industrial life, that has all been changed and physical activities have been reduced to a minimum.” Our legislature has passed a law provid¬ ing for instruction in Physical Education and Hygiene, in all Connecticut schools, thus ranking twenty-seventh among the states in this great national movement for better manhood and womanhood. This is of espe¬ cial interest to us, since these subjects are to be included in our school curriculum next year. The character of the instruction and direction of our children in their play and physical exercises today, will have much to do with their physical, mental and moral standards as citizens in the community to¬ morrow, and it behooves every community to do its utmost to select instructors who are in sympathy with these high standards.

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THE HIGH SCHOOL HERALD 17 THE GRADUATES. Dorothy Lucille Burby Mary Margaret Carroll Teresa Antonia Cerri Marion Elizabeth Eagan Joseph Frederick Hawley Grace Kilty Mary Agnes Kirk D. Raymond Leary Anna Barron Lyons Edward Joseph McCullough Eleanor Marian McLeod Juliet Morehouse Alice Madison Morse Cornelius V. O’Leary Doris Bower Parsons Dorothy Bower Parsons Emilio Olympia Ricci Eleanor Root Helen Elizabeth Sweeney Francis Edward Wallace

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THE HIGH SCHOOL HERALD 19 Give them a chance for innocent sport, Give them a chance for fun, Better a playground plot, than a court And a jail where the harm is done, Give them a chance, if you stunt them now, Some day you may have to pay, A larger bill for a greater ill, So give them a chance to play. Grace Kilty. -(o)- EDUCATION IN A VOCATIONAL COURSE. First let us consider what is education. Education aims at two things; to teach us how to make a living and to teach us how to live. It is a gain in control of any mental process whether it be the skillful manipulation of a typewriter or the mastery of ideals. It is not to be obtained only within the limits of the purely academic courses of study, untainted by any sugges¬ tion of the practical, unstained bv direct contact with the problems of daily living. The process of learning to skillfully manipulate the typewriter demands a higher degree of patience, perseverance and cour¬ age than is demanded by any of the aca¬ demic subjects. A good secretarial course trains the student to follow direction with¬ out deviation, to carry the task thru to the end without relaxation of care and atten¬ tion, to make repeated trials until a diffi¬ cult task is accomplished, to prevent waste, to be orderly and to look ahead. In no other course is the demand for ac¬ curacy so important. An error throws out the entire piece of work, so one simply must become 100% perfect. There is no getting by in the business world with 80% of ac¬ curacy and 20% of error. This habit of absolute accuracy is a habit of value be¬ cause the forming of it has brought forth persistent, honest effort. Even the science courses in college demand no such high standard of a passing mark as 90% which is required in many of the Business Col- eges and which should be made universal in all High Schools and Business Colleges in the United States. In the Gregg School in Chicago the passing mark is decidedly high. A student has to obtain an average of 95% before he is allowed to graduate. Shorthand may safely be termed a lan¬ guage study. It is estimated that the train¬ ing of the mental and physical powers of the student obtained in a two year short¬ hand course is quite equal to the training from a two year course in a language. The language study trains eye, ear and vocal cords to form new words for the expression of ideas thru a new medium. Shorthand study trains eye, ear and hand for a similar purpose. In both these cases there is a common element of changing language from one form to another. The process of learn¬ ing and applying rules of French grammar is almost identical with the process of learn¬ ing and applying the principles of shorthand theory. In both studies the student must acquire a whole field of memory facts and associations, phonetics, vocabulary, punctua¬ tion, and rules for grammatical construction. In shorthand all these.facts must be learned thoroughly to give the power of quick auto¬ matic response. The learning of the course taxes the student to a greater degree than the demands made in the early stages of learning a foreign la nguage. There is a definite standard to be accomplished in shorthand that is lacking in a language study. Moreover a two year course in shorthand is a great asset to the learner whereas a two year course in French is of little value unless the subject is pursued longer. Shorthand also has a wider range in es¬ tablishing more firmly principles in English, idioms in good usage, spelling, punctuation and precision in the use of words than French course has for the reason that the reading and writing exercises in a two year French course are confined to the simplest sort of contact with a limited vocabulary. In shorthand, once the theory is learned, the content of the reading and dictation matter has no limitations. A glance over the classics now published in shorthand will convince the most critical that there is a distinct educational value in the type of English selections used. Bookkeeping too has a great educational value. It stimulates penmanship and arouses many an indifferent student to a life of usefulness. It makes one more ac¬ curate, for in bookkeeping your work is all right or it is all wrong. There is no half way mark. Commercial courses have enriched both history and geography. The history of com¬ merce follows very closely,. the history of exploration and conquest. Commercial courses vitalize arithmetic. No one questions the value of commercial training for the young man or young woman who is to enter into commercial