Wyandotte High School - Quiverian Yearbook (Kansas City, KS)

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-- ., ...Q From our cherished memories and our roseate dreams, we have built a new Wyandotte. From the high towers of the new home will blaze the spirit and glory of Wyandotte. the past and with the opportunity of the present we have every reason to look forward to the future with entire confidence. The new home we are building for Wyaiidcmtte is planned with all the foregoing definitely in mind. It is planned in accordance with every good and fine tradition of three centuries of the American high school. It is being planned with a view to fifty years of use. It is planned at a time when no man can tell what the demands on the educational program of our country will be. More important, however, than anything else, our new home is being planned for the accommodation of a great institution that has no par' ticular reference to, or connection with, material equipf ment. What a tragedy it would be if we had only the great building and so many children to fill it, when we moved in the fall of 1936. No, when we go back home we shall move into the new building with the greatness of the past and the opportunities of the present. If that be true, the future will take care of itself. Should the enrollment continue to increase we have planned for hundreds more. Should invention and discovery in the field of science continue, we hope to keep pace with every advancement and we are building With every improvement and every developf ment we must adapt our new school to the new sit' uation if we are to be true to the highest ideals of American education. for that. 4 Our glimpse into the future can be well expressed in the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes-- Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy lowfvaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! Cl man 06 His wotd HERE is a wellfknown man walking the streets of the Greater Kansas City who has not had a haircut and shave in ten years. Practically everyone has seen this man at sometime or another. The one thing that has made him very noticeable is his stream- ing red hair and bushy crimson beard. Children gaze in bewilderment at him, thinking he must be Santa Claus with his whiskers dyed red. Older persons mere- ly stare at him and laugh to themselves. His real name is Kirby McGrill, and he knows ev- eryone from the mayor to the garbage man. And they in turn know him. Many stories are circulated as to the real reason that Kirby has not visited a barber shop in the last decade. The most authentic of these is the Ti.. 9 UIVERIAN

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Til Q Lael ' fwqtess. Education changes as does the world. Notice the difference in the Boston Latin School of 1635, right, and'in Wyandotte's dream, shown on the next page. HE American High School looks back upon a glorf ious past. Up from the humble origin in the Bos' ton Latin School with its extremely limited curriculum, this remarkable educational institution has responded to the demands of nearly ten generations of American youth. The story is extremely fascinating, beginning with a course of study that contained only a few of the more classical elements and displayed a strong tendency toward the religious as expressed in training for service to church and state. This institution has gone through curriculum changes to an extent almost unbelievable. Cofeducation was first attempted in the American High School. The battle to make legal the support of sec' ondary education through public taxation was fought out in the famous Kalamazoo case. The academy movement was a response to a more liberalizing tendency partly in the field of the cultural subjects. Then came the in' troduction of all manner of vocational courses and the great socializing and democratizing of the school. Society began to make different demands and the American High School responded valiantly. Beginning as a school for the select few, enrollments have continued so rapidly that well over half the young people of high school age are now in the American High School, and the number accommodated at present is ten times that of thirty years ago. And what are we to say of Wyandotte in this his' tory of the American High School? What place has it taken in the great movement of secondary education? Certainly in this last thirty years we have every reason to feel proud of the history of our own school. The population of our city has not changed greatly in that period, but the enrollment in the high school has inf creased enormously. The first graduating class on record numbered 11 persons. The class of 1934 num' bered 522. During this time the whole complexion of the high school curriculum has changed, and we have been busy introducing courses in the vocations, the 19344935 fx , 2 X-arrJv449:-vc g. ffefcfiefz weflemeqet home arts, commerce, and the fine arts, and at the same time carrying on those recognized as finest in the traditional classics. Surely, we at Wyandotte can look back on a glorious past filled with the finest of educaf tional tradition. But what can we say of the present, with our build' ing destroyed by fire, and the school organized and maintained in a variety of different places? It may be entirely justifiable to suppose that the present is not fav' orable to continued growth. However, I cannot recogf nize in the present anything but opportunity. The very fact that we are building a new structure to properly house the Wyandotte high school of the future com pels us to ask certain searching questions regarding the education of the present day. Where we seemed sa certain that every young person would be taught a direct vocation, we now find that the vocations of the future are very much in a state of confusion, We scarcely know how to advise and plan for an education of this sort. We are then beginning to wonder if cerf tain general ideals may not be of greatest value after all. The friendships acquired at school, the cultivation of a kindly disposition, and a courteous attitude toward our fellow men receive much attention in the school of today. We emphasize also the reliability and dependaf bility of scholarship, which we now frankly claim is worth cultivating for itself alone. We are learning in our school the value of unity and the great satisfaction that comes to us from learning how to do things to' gether. We think it our duty to maintain and preserve the ideals of our school and our country, and we recognize a deep seated obligation to pass on such ideals to later generations. In a measure, the present for Wy' andotte is a time for waiting, but distinctly so in the sense of gathering strength for an even greater effort. Consequently we maintain that the present is literally filled with opportunity. It follows very properly that on the foundation of 3

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one a local newspaper printed a few years ago. His wife left him some twenty years ago, running away with a barber. He decided never to honor a barber shop until his wife returned, From his looks one would say that he is a man of his word. Kirby can tell some tall stories. He has told people that if some one would finance his expenses he would swim the English channel. There is no doubt but that he has a great amount of strength. He has carried heavy loads for many miles in endurance tests. It is said that he has a penchant for racing with street cars and that he comes out the winner. Desp.te the face that he wears an old baseball suit :pid thc points of his shoes stick out at forty degree angles, he is not as poverty stricken as some people might think. For he has a fairly large farm in the southern part of Missouri. The answer to his racing street ears instead of iliving on the farm is that he prefers the hurry and crowds of the city to the quiet rural life. Kirby has had a fine education. It is said that he has informed groups of curious people that he has at- tended two years of college. He uses good English and has a nice low voice which is pleasant to hear. From a quick glance, one suspects that if he would shave his flaming red whiskers and trim his abundant thatch of hair 'hewould make a fine looking man, v --Naomi Bernard, '3o. 714 took my troubles to a neighbor and he Cieofzge Omas said that setting it by the window where the cold wind blew in would stiffen the oil in the works and stop it. That cleared up that CZLLSZS 'LG DO you consider a clock in your room a help or a disadvantage? Personally I do not know which it is. Four years ago, when I started to high school and had to get up early, I bought a small clock. It was not a very large clock, but when it came to making noise, it would toll out like Big Ben. When I first purchased the clock I was rather proud of it. I bought it in the month of july and from the day of purchase it keep very good time until about a week after school began. Then it started to vary. First it would run fast, and I would work diligently with a pin trying to push back the little lever that regulated the tmepicce, to slow it down. Very likely the next day it would be running about twenty minutes slow and the operation had to be repeated. After a week of this I had it where it would run fairly accurately. This put me in the best of spirits for I felt as though I had really accomplished somethingg however, it soon ceased to run at all. I would bring it downstairs where it was warmer to work on it and in about a half an hour it would start running again. I would take it to my room, which is inclined to be rather cool, and set it on the window sill where I could see it in the morning. In about an hour it would stop. Now this seemed very mysterious to me. If it would run when down stairs, why wouldn't it run when upstairs? I asked everyone at home and they seemed as mystified as I. I then 19344935 mystery, and I realized that learning to handle a clock and make it keep good time was an arteespecially trying to keep this one running accurately. I had developed the habit, when my clock was setting near my bed, of shutting off the alarm vthile only half awake, and then falling asleep again. This almost caused me to be late for school several times and I would step into my first hour about the tfme the bell rang. Soon I had a brilliant idea how to awaken myself fully. I would place the clock on the other side of the room and by the time I reached it I should be fully awakened. The next morning my plan proved to be a failure. W'hen the clock started its dreaded noise, I awoke. At first I put my head under the cover but the noise still persisted. After glaring at it for several minutes I arose from my bed and started across the room. I was thinking what a big noise that little clock was making, and had completely forgotten the obstacles in my way, when I hit the footstool, fell, and knocked over the lamp. There I lay, sprawled out over the floor, en' twined in the fallen lamp and turned over footstool while the clock sat ringing lustily. I untangled my- self, made my way over to it, and slammed off the alarm which resounded with a little, yet defiant, ting You can see my position on the subject. If you had been troubled and bothered as much as I by a little old clock I believe you would feel much the same as I. Lately I have been thinking ft over and summing up its good and bad qualities. They just about balance as far as I am concerned, and I will have to wait to see if my clock goes on another rampage before long or continues to peacefully tick away the minutes before I can definitely make up my mind about clocks. 5