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Dear Parent and Citizen...

L AST year your editorial took the
form of an appeal to parents to
carry out to the utmost their obliga
tions to the school as parents and
citizens. This year your editors address
themselves to you, students — you who
really, as your Principal has reminded
you more than once, “make the school”. Upon you, primarily, depends that
elusive but all-important element, the “tone” of your school. It is in your
power to make this a good, or an indifferent, or a bad High School.
Have you ever stopped to consider what part you, as an individual,
are playing in helping to make your school what it is?
One receives the impression only too often that many students do not
fully appreciate the privilege of a High School education. Certainly to-day,
it is the rule rather than the exception to go on to High School, and the
procedure is taken for granted. But remember that if you had been born
about thirty or forty years earlier, the chances of your being at High
School at all would have been very much slimmer. In harder times it was
only the lucky minority who were granted this privilege. Yet you know as
well as we do, however much you may think at times that you “hate school”,
how much harder it would be to get anywhere in life without a secondary
education. Nowadays some educationalists are aiming at a free secondary
education for all. without even the Scholarship barrier. Obviously, then,
a High School education is regarded nowadays as a most important and
even essential thing. From being a privilege of the few it has become almost
a right for all
But this does not mean that it ceases to carry with it certain
obligations.
In many cases parents still must, make financial sacrifices to keep you
at High School. In all cases it means several more years before you will
be helping with your own earning power to lighten the burden on the parental
shoulders. Never forget that you can best repay this chance your parents
have given you by making the utmost of your time spent at High School.
Again, you have an obligation to the community as a High School
student. In the days when those who went on even to Junior were the
select minority. High School students were supposed to be “a cut above”
the rest. They were to be the future leaders in the community, so this was
expected of them. Now that many more go on to secondary studies, it
should simply mean that more and more of you, the rising generation, should
be “a cut above the rest”—hence, a higher general level of learning and
culture in the community.
How can you best fulfil these obligations? Simply by being always
fully aware of the privilege of your position. The rest should follow’
naturally: zeal and conscientiousness in your studies, attentiveness in class,
respect for and co-operation with your teachers; interest in the extra
curricular activities of your school, especially those which help you to raise
your own level of culture: full co-operation in inter-school and inter-house
sporting activities; pride in your appearance and behaviour out of school, etc.
The anti-social activities of a section of modern youth have been much
publicised of late. It’s up to you, students, to convince your elders of what
they would like to believe: that this undesirable publicity is earned mainly
by those less fortunate ones who have not been granted the privilege of a
High School education.
Over to you ....
EDITORS.