"What motivated these teachers to work so hard?" "I wish more teachers could spend a day observing here and see an exciting program in action." "How wonderfully behaved and responsive the pupils are!" "This is the finest program I have yet visited in America." (Supt. of Schools, Sweden) "Look at how bright-eyed and interested the children are! I judge a school by the responsiveness of the pupils." (Director of Teacher Recruitment) "What a wonderful school! "Thank you for the most professionally stimulating day we have ever spent." It surpasses what I have always thought was the best." (Teacher from Germany) "If I could have the money, I would spend it on more wonderful educational projects like this." (a District Superintendent) "We have visited schools all over, and this one is the greatest and most unique we have ever seen." (Teacher from Germany) From 1953 to 1963-ten years-a short time in history but one-seventh of a man's three score years and ten; for some, this decade marked both the beginning of life and the whole of it. For Chicagoans, the story of these ten years represents more than one-twelfth of the history of our Chicago public schools since that day when Miss Eliza Chappel became the Chicago public schools' first teacher in 1833. The story of the Chicago public schools is in part the story of public education, the record of a nation's concern for the individual citizen, the record of the realization by the people that, phrased in Jefferson's words, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." For the last ten years, no less than the first ten or any other segment of the period, the people in the Chicago public schools have been striving to provide excellence in education. Teachers have sought to reach each individual in many and diverse ways with an education of excellence. School administrators and members of the Board of Education have sought to secure adequate funds and to expend available funds in ways that permit and encourage teachers to reach the individual. Every period in history has its problems, its challenges, its opportunities. Probably the people of each period have felt, as we have, that their problems and challenges were the greatest ever faced by any people. Only the long view of history will place these last ten years in their proper perspective. Certainly no one will deny that we have been and are living in a time of tremendous change-change that has had and continues to have an impact of enormous proportions and that has been and continues to be felt by one and all. To continue to seek the great American dream of universal public education, of making it possible for each to become all that he can become-in the face of a population explosion, a massive mobility of people, an explosion of knowledge, the coming of automation, and an accelerated rate of change demands no less than greatness from a staff. Only through the highest order of vision, courage, the will to do, individual initiative as well as teamwork, and belief in the value and achievability of the ultimate goal shall we reach the top of the mountain. This Annual Report is dedicated to the 30,000 men and women who work for the welfare of all the boys and girls in our Chicago public schools-men and women who have given, and who are giving, unstintingly of themselves as they strive to help each boy and girl realize his American dream. We record, limited as we are by the pages of this report, some of the achievements of the people who ARE the Chicago public schools. |