Page Forty-six
THE UNITED AMERICAN
JUNE 1925
Adult Education Made Part of School Plan in Portland
y HE NIGHT SCHOOLS for adults in Portland had
1
their beginning eleven years ago, according to Mr.
A. M. Gray, City Superintendent of the night schools.
He began his work in the outlying suburb of Montavilla.
To create an interest he had posters printed at his own
expense and distributed them, for the most part in
person.
Subsequently he organized two classes and
taught these during the first year. The following year
a successor was selected to carry on in the Montavilla
School and Mr. Gray was sent to the district of the
Albina Homestead to create night school interest in that
vicinity. He organized two classes also at this school
and conducted these for two years, before he was again
transferred, this time to the Jefferson High. Through
kindness of Mr. Franklin T. Griffith, president of the
Portland Electric Power Company, an extensive adver
tising campaign in the interest of adult night schools
was put on, by streetcar signs, which carried the news
of the schools to every home for a long time.
In 1919 Mr. Gray was appointed superintendent of
the night schools. The limited funds available for night
schools permitted no further expansion and all adver
tising had to be discontinued for a time.
For several years the high point in the Portland
Night School budget was seven thousand five hundred
dollars. Due to aroused public interest, the school ad
ministration and the Board pledged last year, preceding
the school levy election, that if the levy carried the fi-
FRIENDSHIP
A ruddy drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs;
The world uncertain comes and goes,
The lover rooted stays.
I fancied he was fled —
And after many a year,
Glowed unexhausted kindliness,
Like daily sunrise there.
My careful heart was free again;
A friend, my bosom said,
Through thee alone the sky is reached,
Through thee the rose is red;
•
All things through thee take nobler from,
And look beyond the earth;
The mill-round of our fate appears
A sun-path in thy worth.
Me, too, thy nobleness has taught
To master my despair;
The fountains of my hidden life
Are through thy friendship fair.
—Emerson.
THE RIVAL QUESTS
Of our mixed life two quests are given control:
Food for the body, friendship for the soul.
High as the spirit hovers o’er its flesh
The second quest is free, serene and fresh.
O sorrow, that so oft the first betrays
This eager searching of celestial ways!
0 bitter sorrow, that the first can rise
And pluck his soaring brother from the skies!
But there is joy in musing how there be
These twain in some lives ruling tranquilly.
— The late Arthur Upson in the Bellman.
Often a man who sustains a financial loss insists upon
adding to it a loss of efficiency caused by worry.
nancial allocation for the night schools would be
doubled. The election was successful, and so it hap
pened that Portland from 1925 on, until otherwise de
cided, will be able to expend for night schools not to
exceed fifteen thousand dollars annually.
With the opening of the school year this fall, Mr.
Gray states that he will have a general Americaniza
tion program ready for the city, a program that will in
clude night school classes, home schools for mothers,
social center activities, and school sings—an innovation
started last winter which has created an intense
interest among the adult students.
The night schools in certain designated centers will
remain open for the summer for the accommodation of
ciizenship students, in particular. Home classes for
citizenship students, in particular. Home classes for
mothers in some suburban centers have already been
started as an advance part of the program that is
scheduled for this fall.
Miss Elsie Pond, a language instructress, from 'the
Teachers’ College at Santa Barbara, California, will
teach an Americanization class this year in the Oregon
University Summer Center. Mr. Gray states that hi.
has approved the university’s choice of instructor for
this year and will for that reason suggest to his
teachers that they attend, inasmuch as a cerificate,
showing their attendance, will be required by hin
this fall as a qualification to assignment.
WHAT IS SUCCESS?
By Bessie A. Stanley
HE HAS achieved success who has lived well, laughed
often, and loved much; who has gained the respect of
intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled
■his niche and accomplished his task, whether 'by an improved
poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked
appreciation of earth’s beauty, or failed to express it; who
has always looked for the best in others and given the best
he had; whose life was an inspiration and whose memory
is a benediction.
THE NEW AGE
By Frederick Lawrence Knowles
When navies are forgotten
And fleets are useless things,
When the dove shall warm her bosom
Beneath the eagle’s wings,
When memory of battles,
At last is strange and old,
When nations have one banner
And creeds have found one fold,
When the hand that sprinkles midnight
With its powdered drift of suns
Has hushed this tiny tumult
Of sects and swords and guns;
Then Hate’s last note of discord
In all God’s worlds shall cease,
In the conquest which is service,
In the victory which is peace.
Habits of actions grow from habits of thought.