Woodbury High School - Warrior Yearbook (Woodbury, CT)

Page 12 text:

 TO THE CLASS OF 1957: This may be a strange valediction but we are living in strange times. All species, including our ancestors, have struggled for security since the dawn of time and we are as uncertain as ever that we have it. We forget that security never was and never can be guaranteed to a free people. No great set of Laws promises it. The Bill of Rights does not guarantee it. You are only sure of the opportunity of fighting for it. We are now trying for material security backed by military might. We have the military might which causes our enemies to be careful but it wins us few friends. We are fighting the Russians, but we have encountered Chinese in Korea and Arabs in the Middle East. How can Russians get Chinamen to fight for them when Communism is as foreign to Chinese culture as anything can be? How can the Mohammedans, who are more intense in their religious observance than the people of any of the great faiths, expect to survive after the Communists get what they are after? The real “secret” weapon which the Russians have is ideas. Truth, to them, is only what they want to convince other people to be the truth. The Ten Commandments, for them, come from the Kremlin and are changed at will to fit the people, the place, and the time. Knowing that emotion is far more powerful as a motive for action than reason, they play upon emotion. Over half the human race has a skin some shade other than white. The present cold war is a struggle for the minds of these people. In the minds of these people such concepts as Christianity and Democracy must prove more appealing than their opposites or lose out. “Nature abhors a vacuum,” I learned in high school science, and it is equally true in the realm of ideas. If you do not give your children some faith to which they can anchor, if you save money on the cost of public education by removing the tools they need to think with, you will create a vacuum and some group with a more fixed purpose will find a fertile field for their propaganda. Do not depend on the military might of the United States or any other nation. In the minds of men everywhere, we have to meet'with faith, as well as logic, the ideas that would destroy us.

Page 11 text:

Sufc Uttte«tcte«tt '4' ‘TTCe aaye -ySrtv Si i m- m § T.WiS As a former teacher I cannot resist the temptation to give the Class of 1957 one last assignment. This assignment is one of self evaluation, not of your academic progress, important as that may be, but of your progress in becoming a mature person. 1 would like you to answer the following questions honestly and without assistance. Do you have the ability to understand others and to see things from their point of view? Do you recognize and accept your own strengths and limitations? Are you able to select worthwhile long-term goals which are consistent with your achievements, interests and abilities? Are you able to sacrifice personal desire for the good of others? Are you flexible enough to adjust to different situations? Are you able to meet unexpected upsets and disappointments without running from them and without changing your regular lines of interest and activity? Finally are you able to form and defend opinions based on reasoning and still retain the ability to accept compromises which do not violate fundamental convictions? ff you can answer all of the questions in the affirmative, you can go to the head of the class, and 1 will congratulate you on your educational development. I hope that you realize that a good education does not end with completion of high school.

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? c u C t MISS CHARLOTTE ISHAM Supervisor of Instruction MR. JOHN D. COOMBS Mathematics MR. CRAIG MATHESON English MR. KENNETH ARMINIO French, Latin MR. HERBERT MASON Biology, Chemistry MR. HERBERT GRANDAHL Mathematics, Physics