Excerpted from the Ryan Leader, February 5, 1909 - The Academy
Department
Parents are hereby notified that the school age is from six to twenty-one
years of age. The children must be six on or before the 15th day of this
January to get the benefit of school next fall. It is not enough that the
child's sixth birthday come any time during the school year, but it must be six
on the 15th day of January and be enrolled as a scholastic of the district to
get the benefit of the free school until the next September year.
Our primary department is entirely too crowded with little tots, who are too
young to be in school, and others who are old enough to get the benefit of
school are being crowded out. Up to date there are in this department
about 110 pupils, and we know this is entirely too many for our teacher to
handle successfully.
We ask parents to keep their children at home if they do not meet the above
requirements.
Quite a number of young men and women from other places have said that they
are going to attend the Academy next year. When they have thoroughly made
up their minds that they want an education we shall be glad to have them.
There are, however, a great many boys and girls like the seed on stony ground,
they have good impulses, do all right for a while, but the sun of difficulties
soon scorches them, and we hear of them no more.
The teachers of the Jefferson County Normal met last Saturday and arranged
plans for the normal to be held here in June. The Normal will last for
four weeks, and will afford a splendid opportunity for students of the Academy
to review and complete subjects in which they are behind. A student can
easily take one subject and finish it during the four weeks. Let us attend
the normal instead of lying around and wasting that time.
The academy wants young men and women with purpose, eternal purpose, that is
not quenched by every obstacle. It wants boys and girls who are not afraid
to work, who are willing to undergo the hardships incident to the acquisition of
an education and if you are not this sort you had better work yourself up to
that point before you join us.
The young men or women without any purpose, and in for a good time, will not
be pleased with way things are done at the Academy. They will soon seek
what they call a better school - a school where they can do as they please, and
have a good time.
When a boy or girl decides to enter school and remain there, he or she
decides for life. He who decides to quit school without an education
decides against life. No one can live in the highest sense of the term
without development.