ORION VS. MINERVA

With just and pardonable pride, the Galileo High School in San Francisco points to the recent acquisition of a shiny new telescope. Galileo's sons and daughters may now gaze enraptured at the stars and count the seven rings of Saturn. Not forgetting in their glee, the cause of science, they will make observations, and send periodic data to the Harvard Observatory.

Although in many respects unique, this happy interest in celestial affairs at Galileo is but typical of the modern trend in American secondary education. Everywhere the old and wornout standards are being stripped away. The little red schoolhouse has given place to an imposing edifice in brick, equipped with swimming pools, hot lunch counters, and the latest thing in classroom furniture. Tedious studies have been sugared over by electric maps, bolls, lantern shows, and similar kindergarten bric-a-brac. Latin and Greek, classic burden to the juvenile scholar's soul, are dying slowly away. After all, they are dead languages, unpractical, and the children do not care for them.

Naturally there will be those cynics who question the value of scientific material collected by school boys; there may even be those so ungracious as to suggest that high schools might well send to college, instead of trivial figures, rather students better equipped with the rudiments of necessary preparation. But such rusty Philistines are not in step with the times. It is the Galileo Highs of America which make modern secondary education what it is today.