USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Reading > Town of Reading Massachusetts annual report 1956 > Part 11
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During the past year the following items of major importance have been completed:
Senior High School. Locker room benches built and installed in boys' locker room. Gym equipment, including bars, rings, scoreboard, etc., mounted and installed in new high school gymnasium. Black- boards and bulletin boards installed in various classrooms. Traverse rods and curtains installed in 18 classrooms.
Junior High School. New floors laid in metal shop and mechanical drawing room. Gymnasium, office and 7 classrooms repainted. Drain- age was provided for football field and lower playground, within limits of the $4,500.00 appropriation for this purpose.
Joshua Eaton School. All outside doors and locks repaired. Re- placed roof flashing over proscenium arch of auditorium to stop leaks. Pointed up stone retaining wall at rear of playground area. Remounted
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compressor and partially repaired and serviced all Minneapolis-Hunne- well heating controls. Waterproofed area around tower to stop leaks. Hot-topped limited area of playground. Painted outside trim of build- ing, rear wall of auditorium, and 3 classrooms.
Highland School. New fire escape door, and steps replaced for one exit from fire escape tower. New copper flashing on one tower and valley. Incinerator installed in old coal bin. Wall and fire door pro- vided for safety in boiler room. Hottop for playground within limits of budget. Painted two classrooms and ceiling of cafeteria.
Pearl Street School. New audio-visual blinds for windows of aud- itorium. New asphalt tile floors for two classrooms. Cafeteria enlarged and new storage room built. 14 formica top cafeteria tables purchased and installed. All gymnasium windows provided with iron grilles.
Prospect Street School. Half of roof reshingled. Cellar entrance roof and door repaired. Hottop for the grounds within limits of budget. Fire escape scraped and repainted.
Lowell Street School. Additional fences and gate installed for play- ground. One-half of roof shingled.
All curtains in the auditorium of all schools were flameproofed to meet safety regulations, and new tools and special equipment for main- tenance work have been provided for the custodians of the various schools within the limits of our maintenance budget.
Our school grounds and buildings are used extensively to service the activities of an increasingly large number of groups which sponsor programs of a social, recreational or educational nature. This is as it should be. It means that the citizens of the Town are getting a larger return on their investment in their school plant. However, the use of our school grounds and buildings for purposes other than those re- quired by the schools adds considerably to the cost and work of those who labor to keep all of our school facilities clean, in good repair, and with a minimum amount of depreciation.
Our school playgrounds have deteriorated considerably over a period of years for several reasons. The School Department has at- tempted to take care of all school grounds and playfields using the help of the custodians of the various schools to mow the grass, trim the shrubs and maintain the various areas on a limited amount of money. At present we simply do not have sufficient help, funds, or knowledge to do the job. Furthermore, since the school playgrounds are in constant use throughout the year by schools, Little League teams, recreational groups, and others, it is not possible to set up any program to recondition those playgrounds such as the one at the Joshua Eaton School which now needs extensive repairs. This whole problem of the care and maintenance of our school playgrounds and playfields needs careful study. To properly provide for the enlarged program of sports and outdoor recreational activities of the Town, many playfields and all our facilities are necessary. This has become an extensive and expensive operation.
During the past year the contract for rough grading of the Birch Meadow area and the finished grading of the football field was com-
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pleted. The football field area and track facilities are ready to be used this spring but the field will not be used for football practice purposes in the fall, nor can it be used for games until some provision is made to fence in the field and provide stands for seating purposes. Our home football games will continue to be played at the Junior High School field and until an additional area at Birch Meadow is graded, loamed and seeded to provide for practice fields for our football team, it will be necessary to transport the boys of the football squad to the Joshua Eaton School for their daily practice periods. Eventually it will be necessary to repair and re-condition this field at considerable expense.
The playfield at the Junior High School has improved considerably since the drainage system was installed this summer. It will continue to serve the pupils of the Junior High School and as a field to play the home football games scheduled for our freshman, junior varsity and varsity teams until facilities are available at the Senior High School. This field needs a certain amount of grading, loaming and re-seeding to bring it to a point where it can be properly maintained.
The playground at the Highland School has deteriorated over a period of years due to wear and erosion caused by wind and rain. It has been recommended that the entire area be hottopped as the most satisfactory and economical method of maintaining this play area. The playground areas at the Pearl Street School also need considerable repair, fertilizing and care.
To summarize the work of the schools during the past year, I refer you to the reports submitted by the Principals, the Director of Guid- ance, the Director of Music, and the Director of Health.
The schools of Reading continue to receive the generous and loyal support of the parents and citizens of the community. There is active and wide participation in all the various Parent-Teacher Associations. For those of us who work in the School Department, this help, interest and cooperation is deeply appreciated. The efficient operation of any institution depends upon the intelligent efforts and devoted service of people who are happy in their work. Therefore, whatever success the School Department has achieved during the past year is due to the hard work of those who teach, assisted by principals, directors, super- visors, secretaries, custodians and matrons, and cafeteria employees. This total effort and teamwork is sincerely appreciated.
No one is in a better position than I to evaluate the service of the six people who cooperate and work so effectively together in behalf of the interests of our children in the schools. I refer, of course, to the members of the School Committee. To them I gratefully express my sincere appreciation for their help, support and intelligent advice in the important enterprise of giving direction to the education of more than three thousand Reading children.
Respectfully submitted,
ROBERT F. PERRY,
Superintendent of Schools
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REPORT OF THE HEADMASTER OF THE SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL
The past three years have been eventful ones in the educational history of our town. It is abundantly clear that Reading has in many practical ways expressed its interest in the higher educational desires of her children. The new High School alone is evidence of this, and the further evidence is shown by the fact that the townspeople are willing to keep salaries for teachers on a reasonably decent level and are looking for ways and means to raise this level so that good teachers may be retained and vacancies in the teaching staff filled with good teachers.
In its broadest sense, education for the children and adults is of the highest importance in a democracy. A people in a democracy who are not trained to think for themselves and by themselves are headed for trouble. Nothing is more important than to develop the body, intellect, and soul of our children. We have a fine modern building, much modern apparatus for teaching, excellent texts, and excellent teachers. But only when the community, school, and home climate are conducive to study, hard study on the part of the pupils, will the Town reap the full benefits of their investment.
Our pupils are subjected to many pressures outside of school. Social, economic, athletic, out-of-school activities, take up much of the waking hours of the modern school pupil. Unless the community as a whole, much as the isolated community of a fine private school, sets the pattern for scholastic accomplishment first and other worth-while activ- ities second, the school is almost helpless to give the community the end results demanded with relation to the maximum learning a pupil could receive. Only through struggle, perseverance, self-denial, and at times sacrifice, can anything worth while and enduring to the individual be accomplished.
I submit that the chief job of the teachers is to teach, and the chief job of the pupil is to learn during his entire life but more especially during his formative years. Man survives in this modern world only as he grasps and can communicate to others the heritage of the past in its various forms of language, mathematics, science and history. Just as the grade schools are committed to teaching the fundamentals in these subjects, so the secondary school is committed to carry the funda- mentals on to a higher level of accomplishment.
Continuing this report for the school year 1955-56 I shall try to point up some of the general school problems as I see them. I hope I may be forgiven if I stray from the more narrow path of the usual statistical and lauditory type of report. I also humbly submit some suggestions which I feel would bring about better education for the boys and girls in Reading.
At this point I would like to quote from the University of Massa- chusetts Foreign Language Bulletin which states in part:
ANGELO PATRI, eminent child psychologist said on 10 February 1956: "Modern communication has brought foreign countries not only to our door but through it, and it has become necessary for us to talk the languages of those peoples. . . We must, if we wish to keep our
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leadership in the world of business, friendship, diplomacy, become a people of at least 2 languages, 3 if possible. .. In many of our schools Foreign Languages are not touched until the student enters the second- ary school. That is too late. Children learn languages best during their early years, when their language-learning power is at its peak. At adolescence the speech mechanism is well set and it is not too easy then to learn the right accent, a very important element in the learning. . . One point ought to be accented in schools. During the language lesson, only the language under study be used by the teacher and the class."
In our school only the language taught is used in class for the most part.
For a number of years I have suggested that we put more emphasis on the second language for more of our high school pupils. To quote again:
"RUSSIAN. The Soviet Union has 16 autonomous republics and a number of autonomous regions, national areas, and districts and, in each of these 1 of about 200 different mother tongues is the medium of instruction in schools. The "Great Russians" or Russian-speaking population account for only 37 percent of the Union, but Russian is introduced to the other 63 percent as a second language studied inten- sively together with the vernacular. Thus, the children of all Soviet nationalities are able normally to speak, read, and write Russian by the end of their elementary school training."
The Russians are out to capture world trade and more. This requires salesmen of high calibre who know foreign languages. We must watch this to survive in many world areas.
Throughout the country there is an ever increasing demand for at least a second language for all our future citizens. I would suggest that a language - French or German - and in my opinion preferably German because of the regularity of the language, be introduced via the direct method at least in the 7th grade, or below, and that a course of study ranging from this grade through the 12th grade be adopted and supervised by the head of the language department in the high school. The reason I suggest the head of the department in the high school is not because I feel that our teachers are better teachers but bcause the high school is ultimately responsible for the final outcome of the several so-called college preparatory subjects. In reality, these subjects are becoming the common denominator by which our future high school graduates will be judged, whether they go to college or not. The supervision above noted is with respect to content and achieve- ment, rather than the method.
I suggest a study of this question be made by interested teachers and administrators. There are several communities not too far from Reading which have introduced foreign language in their schools below the high school level. The program merits thorough investiga- tion and the results might prove beneficial. I further recommend that we introduce German into our curriculum in September 1957.
That the pupils who graduate from the Reading High School have received a good standard education is evident to anybody who will
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study the progress of these graduates. We have little or no difficulty in getting our college course graduates into the better colleges. Our commercial graduates are eagerly sought for by the substantial business establishments in and around Boston. We have no difficulty in getting our graduates accepted for nurse's training in the better hospitals.
New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey high schools are in a strongly competitive position with the fine private schools of the East. That is one of the reasons why, by and large, the product of these schools of these states is good. Also the job preparation require- ments in these states are, according to leading business authorities, the highest in the country. This applies to the technical, clerical, intel- lectual requirements of the individual applying for a substantial po- sition. We must continue to meet these requirements.
A strong foundation for a good education was laid in Reading long before the writer came to Reading. Through the years up to the present, with perhaps temporary lapses, those in administrative positions and in control of the schools have worked hard to maintain and improve these high standards from the first grade through the twelfth grade. In the Reading High School our philosophy is: not quantity, but quality, and to this end we like to have our students carry perhaps fewer subjects but study them for a longer time and carry these subjects on to a higher level.
Mathematics
The national crisis in the technical manpower supply is acknowl- edged by all. It is, therefore, not news to say that mathematics train- ing is more important for everyone now than at any other period in history. Nor is it necessary to state that as the need for technicians increased, mathematics was deemphasized in many high school cur- ricula. Commission after commission which has studied this problem are greatly concerned and all agree that a definite technical manpower shortage will continue for many years, primarily because too few high school students are preparing for the technical professions.
While we submit that all mathematics should be usable, we have not allowed ourselves to be misled by this now retreating school of thought in mathematics education which has all but wrecked the mathe- matics education in the United States and is now causing a dire shortage of trained manpower in industry. Instead of following this pattern, the mathematics department has carefully differentiated between those students preparing for college and the non-college groups.
First of all, any high school today must provide mathematics in- struction for all. It must offer rigid and complete courses for those desiring technical education in advanced institutions. There must be general courses which will provide skill in mathematics for those entering business and industry after graduation from high school. An opportunity for remedial instruction for the slow learner is demanded along with the accelerated course for the brilliant student. This is the philosophy which we have followed in building our Reading High School mathematics curriculum.
There are three tracks along which a pupil may travel in his courses of study. All students must take two years of mathematics to fulfill
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graduation requirements. No crossover is permitted from one track to another if the sole purpose is to obtain grades easier. In all cross- overs, ability and ultimate goal are considered first. In the freshman year all are required to register for Algebra or Refresher Arithmetic. In the sophomore year that student chooses Practical Mathematics, Bookkeeping I, or Geometry. In the junior year a pupil may drop mathematics, since he has fulfilled the two-year requirement for a diploma, or he may continue into Advanced Practical Mathematics, Advanced Algebra, or Advanced Bookkeeping. In the senior year Trig- onometry and Solid Geometry complete the requirements for college entrance into engineering and technical institutions beyond high school. In all courses the minimum essentials are thorough and rigid.
The accelerated course, for bright students and those intending to matriculate into scientific and engineering institutions beyond high school, is called CP3. This course has had over the years a peak of 35 and a minimum of 15 seniors and they meet twice weekly. The
material studied is a preview of approximately two-thirds of the material studied in the freshman year of mathematics in any college. This course had its origin at the Reading High School about 25 years ago and has been highly commended by college admission officers.
The teachers in our mathematics department as in other depart- ments of the Reading High School have kept abreast of the times; in fact, have anticipated the needs of society in developing programs of study.
Science
A large proportion of our Reading children are entering upon and continuing through the period of secondary education. On this level opportunity is afforded for increasingly intensified and enlarged study of educational materials that are deemed fundamental to the welfare of the individual and of the race. The work of the secondary school should be consciously molded so as to provide the continued enlarge- ment and enrichment of the work which has its beginning in the cur- riculum of the elementary school. Mental growth is gradual. In the senior high school there is opportunity for exploration within special fields, which in some cases may lead to beginnings in specialization.
Biology is the field for the special study of living things, while the physical sciences offer a field for the study of energy and its manifes- tations through inorganic matter. In our school the sciences are taught under two schemes for different objectives. Biology B, Pre-Induction Physics, and Earth Science are on a more general and less specialized level. Biology A, Chemistry, Physics, and Anatomy are taught on a more specialized and less general level.
Earth Science, introduced two years ago, is proving to be a popular course, of great interest to the pupils. The two-year-old Anatomy course falls into this same category and besides, it prepares the way for specialization in the field of hygiene, nursing, physical education, and even perhaps medicine.
That the beginning of specialization may take place in the secon- dary school can be amply supported by results of our pupils in college. Through the generalized courses in science enough material is offered
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not only for the pupil to understand the phenomena of science but also to attain some real appreciation of the scientific method and some appreciation of scientific attitude.
Our science teachers have for a number of years come to the realization that there is no escape from the social and economic effects of modern science. Science and human interpretation of science are inseparable. Thus the general courses of science help meet the needs of many of our pupils. However, strong courses in physics, chemistry, and biology as specialized fields must be maintained if Reading is to do its share in the national effort to develop future scientists for the development of our industry and the protection of our country. All of our graduates do well in college sciences and many now hold respon- sible positions in industrial science and in the armed services' effort to make our land more safe through science.
English
The English Course is planned to help students to write and speak clear, idiomatic English; to understand as fully as possible what they read; to increase their understanding of men and society through knowl- edge of the best English and American literature; and to find enduring pleasure in reading good books.
Since we have in our school many kinds of pupils, all of whom are required to study English, the teachers have made a serious and, I believe, successful effort to help meet the problems thus created. Prep- aration for college, while still recognized as an important element in our school program for many pupils, has for several years assumed its proper place; and the education of all pupils - the college-preparatory, the general, the slow - is given equal emphasis in the program. Thus we offer courses in three broad levels. In the lower level the funda- mentals basic to good citizenship and to the interests of the pupil are taught on what amounts to two or three tracks. Our program results, we believe, in more homogenous classes with opportunity for differ- entiated programs of study.
Since the responsibility for teaching reading does not stop with the grades of the elementary school, we make an effort to help the poor reader as much as possible. Eventually a teacher for remedial reading should be engaged for the high school, since the number of non-readers seems to be on the increase.
Social Studies
This field of education carries on where the 8th grade leaves off. Society supports schools primarily to train youth for constructive par- ticipation in the life of the community, the nation, and the world. The satisfactory product of our school should be an active, intelligent citizen, a self-reliant and cooperative member of our society, and one which holds a firm belief in our form of government. It is toward this end that our Social Studies courses are planned.
A study of community and state government for a half year, followed by a half year of human geography, is required of all 9th grade pupils. Beyond this, the only other social study requirement for graduation is United States History. To avoid duplication, little time is spent with United States History events before the industrial
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revolution. The discovery of America, Early Colonial days, and the Westward expansion are covered in the elementary and junior high grades, thus duplication is avoided to a large degree. Since the course in United States History is taught in our school through the unit plan, stress and focus of attention can be shifted from time to time onto those aspects of current affairs which are most pronounced. In addition current affairs are a regularly scheduled part of each course. In this way history becomes a living thing of importance to the students' im- mediate and future interests. Of course, basic concepts form the back- bone of the course.
For those students who desire a deeper knowledge of history, three additional courses are offered, namely Ancient, Modern European, and World History. In history, as in our other courses, the offerings are such as to make sure that each student acquires at least a minimum degree of understanding in the various fields of human knowledge, behavior, ethical standards, and general knowledge, while those who have the intelligence, desire, and intellectual curiosity will find ad- vanced courses to satisfy their needs.
Commercial
There are many pupils in school today who are not headed toward college, and justly so. Many of our brighter pupils have determined that they want to go into commercial work. To help these pupils prepare more fully for their chosen careers we have a strong commercial course so-called because these pupils include typewriting, stenography, and bookkeeping in their four-year course. What is more important, these students get not a mere smattering of these subjects but rather at least two, and in many cases three, consecutive years of these com- mercial subjects. But this is not all. These students are in most cases taking the same strong mathematics, English, history, foreign language, and science courses that the college pupils take. They receive a well-rounded education besides specific commercial training. Provisions in other subjects such as English, mathematics, history and science are made for the pupil who will probably do mere routine office work.
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