Looking from the Outside In: Preparation for Democratic Citizenship in a 1925 Michigan High-School Yearbook

Abstract

Historical artifacts, such as high-school yearbooks, are often windows that offer glimpses into other times and places. One such artifact is the second volume of Zeeland High School’s (ZHS) yearbook Stepping Stone, published by the ZHS senior class of 1925. Rather than focusing on students’ educational attainment or social mobility as the U.S. public-education system most often does now,1 an examination of this yearbook reveals that like other high schools at the time this rural West Michigan school trained its students to become democratic citizens. According to Amy Gutmann, democratic education is what enables a democratic society to ensure its political and civil freedoms as well as its own strength and survival because “democracy depends on democratic education for its full moral strength.”2 An examination of this yearbook reveals that in addition to academic studies, pupils enrolled in Zeeland High School during the 1924-1925 school year further developed their training in democratic citizenship by working individually as well as with others to accomplish a greater good. By definition, a high-school yearbook is “a book published yearly [and] a publication of the graduating class of a school or college, with pictures and reports of the school year.”3 Prior to the 1950s, yearbooks served as “memory books, history books and school records books.” Before the first official printing of a high-school yearbook (New York, 1845), yearbooks were not printed books. Instead, they were blankpage scrapbooks in which high-school students pasted various memorabilia from their school years, capturing whatever they desired and identified as important. However, with the availability of the letterpress process and halftone printing in the 1880s, mass production of school yearbooks became feasible. By the turn of the twentieth century,