Gridley High School

“ Yet despite the absence of two young men who considered themselves of such great importance the Gridley High School appeared to go on about the same as ever.
It was the season of football, and nearly of the school's interest and enthusiasm seemed to spend itself in that direction. Coach Morton did all in his power to push the team on to perfection; the other teachers worked harder than ever to keep the interest of the students sufficiently on their studies. The girls, as well as the boys, suffered from the infection of the gridiron microbe. ”

“ Now, remember, boys—-though Dick doesn't need to have his backbone stiffened—-if you boys haven't pride enough in Gridley to carry you through anything, the Gridley High School girls are heart and soul in the game. If you lose the game to-morrow don't any of you ever show up again at a class dance! ”

“ Darry retorted. "The girls all belong to Gridley High School as much as we do, and they're just as big football boosters when it comes to that. They'll endure a little neglect when they know it's for the honor and glory of our school."
"Besides," suggested Dick, "they may be glad to put in a little time watching us train." ”

“ Abner Cantwell was still principal at Gridley High School, though that violent-tempered and unpopular pedagogue had been engaged, this year, only as "substitute" principal. There were rumors that Dr. Thornton, the former and much-loved principal, would soon be in sufficiently good health to return. So the Board of Education had left the way clear for dropping Mr. Cantwell at any moment that it might see fit.
Dick & Co. had gathered by themselves on this Tuesday, at recess. They did not discuss the football call, nor its reception by the "soreheads," for they had known what was coming. ”

“ The average young man at the High School is as eager as ever to uphold the town's and the school's honor and dignity on the football gridiron this year. Whether the so-called "soreheads" will reconsider their proposed course of action and throw themselves in with the common lot for the upholding of the Gridley name and the honor of the High School will have been determined within the next few days. ”

“ Our readers will recall how the Board of Education had some notion of prohibiting High School football, despite the fact that the Gridley H.S. eleven was one of the best in the United States. Readers will also recall the prank hatched by Dick & Co., by means of which the Board was quickly shown how unpopular such a move would be in the city. ”

“ Few if any cities in the United States possess a High School football team that can down the eleven from Gridley H.S. We are proud of our High School, and as proud of its reputation in athletics. We believe that Gridley prominence in athletics should be fostered in every way, and we know that real athletics cost money—-a lot of it! ”

“ If we can't go into what is really a gentleman's eleven under the High School colors, I propose that we organize an eleven of our own, and call ourselves simply the Gridley Football Club. We can bring out an eleven that would put things all over any school team that the muckers could organize without our help. ”

“ I shall do all I can to encourage schoolboy sports in Gridley. I've a notion, too, that there will be on hand Friday a goodly showing of High School athletes. The young men of the High School will naturally want to look over the contestants and see who is going to make good material for the High School teams. ”

“ Artful Dodger Winters still had the ball. Thompson, Edgeworth, Badger and Beck butted in solidly behind the lithe quarter-back. The rest of Gridley followed.
Cheek of cheek! The out-weighed High School boys were giving Cobber a dose of Cobber medicine. It was a mass-play—-a battering-ram assault.
And Gridley got it over! An inch past the line Winters tripped and went down, covering the ball.
Touchdown!
Five to five a tie score!
"Kick the goal!" came the hoarse appeal from the east side seats.
"Kick as you never kicked before!"
Gridley fans could fairly hear themselves shake now. ”

“ For the little rustic college rose to its one great occasion. Bold in their confidence in their dead colleague's fame, the college authorities sent out invitations to all the great ones of the country. Those to whom Gridley was no more than a name on volumes one never read came because the portrait was by Fallères, and those who had no interest in the world of art came to honor the moralist whose noble clear-thinking had simplified the intimate problems of modern life. ”

“ The purpose is to form a league and to arrange for games between the three Grammar Schools of Gridley. I will add that I am glad that so much interest in athletics is being displayed by our young men. To show my pleasure, I will add that if any of the young men in this school are so unfortunate as to incur checks this afternoon that would keep them in after school they may serve out the checks to-morrow instead. First class in geography! For the next twenty minutes the boys of this class are requested to remember that football is not geography! ”

“ Gilbert’s plan of making the high school, like the community, an aggregation of every sort of people, doing every sort of work.
Physical training in the high school has not yet come into its own, though it is on the road to recognition. All of the newer high schools have gymnasiums, but the children do not use them for more than thirty, forty, or fifty minutes a week. ”

“ PORTRAIT OF A PHILOSOPHER
I
The news of Professor Gridley's death filled Middletown College with consternation. Its one claim to distinction was gone, for in spite of the excessive quiet of his private life, he had always cast about the obscure little college the shimmering aura of greatness. There had been no fondness possible for the austere old thinker, but Middletown village, as well as the college, had been touched by his fidelity to the very moderate attractions of his birthplace. ”

“ The classes were being taught, and kept in right good order by women, who indeed almost monopolise teaching in this State, and they are in the proportion of more than ten to one. The fault of Girard College is that it is not wanted; the public school system which has grown up since its foundation being open to every one, and offering at least as good an education. ”

“ Though the junior high school has so great a popularity, its work is eclipsed by the still more revolutionary program of those educators who advocate the complete abolition of any line between the elementary and the high school, and the establishment of a public school of twelve school years. This plan, coupled with promotion by subjects rather than by grades, replaces the machine method of promotion and the gap between elementary and high schools by an easy, natural progression adaptable to the needs of any student, from the end of the kindergarten to the beginning of the university. ”

“ Don't you think so?"
"I do, indeed," agreed Miss Wilder warmly.
"Of course," went on Grace thoughtfully, "there is the possibility that some of these girls may fail in their entrance examinations. Undoubtedly they will have to take them, for no girl who applies for admission to Harlowe House will have come from a preparatory school. Naturally, they will all be high school graduates. Some of them will have scholarships and some will not. It is going to be more or less of a struggle for those who have none to earn their college fees—that is, if they haven't saved the money for them beforehand. ”

“ I fully believe that a high school should be to-day just what it was originally planned to be back there in the first half of the nineteenth century—a school higher than the elementary, controlled by the community, in co-operation with the educational leaders of the State, serving the needs of the community, fitting its boys and girls for service in the community and discriminating, if at all, in the favor of the group of boys and girls who are not going to college, since that group is much the larger. ”

“ At Girard College there are now constantly more than two thousand boys, who have a home and school advantages. There are certain grave dangers about institutional homes for children, in that there is a strong tendency to kill individuality. But certain it is that Girard College has ever labored, and in a great degree succeeded, in minimizing this tendency. It is the proud boast that any boy who is graduated at Girard is able to take care of himself—he can do things that the world wants done and is willing to pay for. ”

“ The conversation spread to a less technical discussion as the group was joined by the professor of rhetoric, an ambitious young man with an insatiable craving for sophistication, who felt himself for once entirely in his element in the crowd of celebrities. "It's incredibly good luck that our little two-for-a-cent college should have so fine a thing," he said knowingly. "I've been wondering how such an old skinflint as Gridley ever got the money loose to have his portrait done by—"
A laugh went around the group at the idea. ”

“ It's a privilege which I'm sure many educators must envy, teaching in Ridgeville, for our new school is a fine one, and our academic standards are high. On the other hand, the fathers of most of my students work for the Commission and a constant awareness of the Commission and its work pervades the town. It is an uneasy privilege then, at least sometimes, to teach my old-fashioned brand of science to these children of a new age.
"That's very nice," said Marjorie. "What does a junior achievement group do?" ”

“ These lived in one large dormitory, there being no campus houses for their accommodation.
Yardley had been at one time a select boarding school for girls. Later it had become a preparatory school to college, and had earned the reputation of being one of the best of its kind.
As the high school course which the Wayfarers had completed was not sufficiently advanced to carry them into college without additional preparation, they had, after much discussion, chosen to enter Yardley. A year of study there would fit [15] them for entrance into any college which they might select as their Alma Mater. ”

“ With that imaginary trait of greatness at the fore, the resounding Websterian age began.
When still a boy I left home and went to live in Griggsby. It was a better place to die in; but that does not matter, since, going to Griggsby to live, I succeeded. At school among my fellow-students was a boy I greatly envied. Bright and handsome, as a scholar he was at one end of the class, and I at the other; and that was about the way we stood in local prophecy. I wonder when people will learn that scholarship should not be the first, or even the second, aim of a schooling. ”

“ Byles Gridley, A. M., as he would have been styled by persons acquainted with scholarly dignities, was a bachelor, who had been a schoolmaster, a college tutor, and afterwards for many years professor,—a man of learning, of habits, of whims and crotchets, such as are hardly to be found, except in old, unmarried students,—the double flowers of college culture, their stamina all turned to petals, their stock in the life of the race all funded in the individual. ”

“ Out there it is seen to possess a much larger function—assisting the child—every child—to form its own acquaintance and to begin the planning of its future. In other words, the thought on the firing line is that the high school is an institution established by a community for community purposes—to take its young people—all of them—and guide them thru the difficult and transitional period [Pg 56] of adolescence, directing, inspiring, shaping, checking, developing for the largest manhood and womanhood possible and providing the community with efficient workmen in various lines. ”

“ Now if it is not possible to serve equally the needs of both groups, would it not be better to neglect the one tenth of the students, going on to college, even assuming they are the pick of the flock, which they are not always? They have four more years to correct their mistakes and round out their culture. If any one must be subordinated, it would be better to neglect them, and focus upon the needs of the nine out of ten, who go directly from the high school into life and have not another chance ”

“ Your schools stand high in comparison with any out our way; your shops carry first-class goods, your laws act without favoritism for anybody or class; and an air of happy-go-lucky conditions actually shouts at you, from all parts of town."
Now, as months slid past it got around to Night School graduation day; and as it was this institution's first, all Branton Hills was on hand, packing its big hall. ”

“ The principal held up her hand for silence and the groups of girls engaged in subdued conversation ceased talking and turned their attention toward her.
"You are all aware that each year the senior class gives a play, which they choose, manage and produce with no assistance save that given by Miss Tebbs," said the principal. "So far the three lower classes have never given a play. ”

“ The sooner the high school suits its work to the needs of fourteen and fifteen-year-old boys and girls, the sooner it will be filling its true place in the community.” Such opinions, voiced in this case by a man whose national reputation is founded on his splendid work as superintendent of the school system of Newton Mass., bespeak the attitude of the most progressive American high schools. ”

“ The majority of these pupils are lost from school—whatever the cause—before the completion of their courses; and, again, the majority of those who do graduate have on graduation ended their school days. Consequently, it becomes more and more evident how momentous is the influence of the public high school in conditioning the life activities and opportunities of our youthful citizens who have entered its doors. ”