Making a High School a Center of Social Life

Abstract

The boys and girls who come to high school are just about the age when they begin to realize that there is such a thing as a social world and that there is a place in it for them. I liold it to be within the field of school work to help them find that place and to fill it to the best of their ability. Association with peoile is counted as one of the most valuable gains in any educational world; in college, I think we shall all agree that the people we met, the different types of minds and characters we were thrown with, the men and women with whom we came in contact, sometimes forcibly, and not always enjoyably, gave us a broader and more valuable education than that we gained from books. In the same way, although in a less degree, is this true of highschool life, and the student should have the opportunity of meeting socially those whom he sees every day in his classrooms. The boy or girl who simply comes to school and studies, and goes home, misses much that he or she needs. Another reason for emphasizing the social side of school life is the happiness it brings, and it surely is within our mission as teachers to do all in our power to make our boys and girls happy. Thrre is nothing which brings more joy if you love the children, as 1 believe every real teacher must, than to see a group of schoolboys and schoolgirls having a genuinely good time. They ought to be happy and have all the good times it is within our power to give them. Give them some good times right in the place where they work, and the memory of the pleasures will put a certain glamor over the prosiest of school-rooms. The only room in my own high school that I remember loving was the twelfth grade, for it was not until the fourth year, as we met to prepare for graduation, that our class came together in any social way. 634