Unnumbered pageScan 32 of 53
It is highly desirable to attract more boarders by reducing the boarding fees for another reason also. As practically no new students will be admitted to the I and II Gymnasium classes in the future, the only remaining channel of admission of new students to Athens College will be the Demotic School. Many parents will hesitate to send their boys away from home as boarders at the Demotic School age, the more so if a prohibitive cost is added to their natural hesitancy. Considerably reduced boarding fees and a more extensive granting of regional scholarships may offset this disadvantage of our otherwise judicious and necessary registration restrictions.
On the other hand, it is true that the rapidly increasing cost of living in this country may make such a reduction unnecessary, as the amount charged for boarding fees at present may before long cover no more than the actual cost of maintenance. No final decision can be reached so long as the present financial instability continues to exist.
The House is administered under President Davis' supervision by the Housemaster and the Internal Staff. There were twenty members on the Internal Staff, including the matron and the resident nurse, during the year 1936-1937. Ten of the eighteen men were Americans, eight were Greeks. The Internal Staff has the responsibility of supervising the boarders in all phases of their life in the House and of doing its best to inculcate in them high standards of conduct. The Housemaster's responsibilities involve the administration of discipline, the distribution of specific duties among the members of his staff and the general supervision of all activities in the House. Mr. Julius Abbot Rick served as secretary of the Internal Staff during the past year.
Of the ten American members of the Internal Staff six were new this year and had to be initiated not only into their specific responsibilities but, what is more important, in the general spirit of our work and in an entirely new environment. This is usually a long and tedious process. Four new Americans will have to be trained next fall. This instability of our American interne staff results in loss of energy and inefficient output. By the time a new American tutor has adapted himself more or less satisfactorily to the varied demands of our life here, his term of service is almost over, and he has to go. This is all the more regrettable as the Internal Staff serves in a very real sense as the nucleus for the entire School. Most of the extra-curricular activities which distinguish Athens College from the rest of the Schools here have to be supervised and managed by men who are young and strong and energetic and who have lived themselves, in their own student days, the corporate life of a modern school or college.
It is true that only a few young Americans have proved sufficiently adaptable and adequate to justify reappointments. In my opinion, the solution of this question lies in the selection of young men who expect to make teaching their profession and who are earnestly interested in their great opportunities to interpret and promote the best of American education and culture among the youth of a foreign country. The fascinating prospect of spending three years in Greece and of travelling in the Near East and in Western Europe during the vacations is quite a legitimate incentive, but it should not be the only one or even the chief one. I think that previous experience in teaching is also a most valuable asset, but not an indispensable qualification for our work. A decrease in the size of our American Staff would be most unfortunate, as it it mostly on the Americans and on the few Greeks who have received their education in America that we depend to set the tone in the School and particularly in the House.
In this connection I wish to express my appreciation of the responsible and efficient work done in the House during the past two years by Mr. Robert Hallock who resigned at the end of the year to accept a position as Assistant Physical Director of the Los Angeles Y.M.C.A.
As the ages of our boarders range all the way from nine to twenty years, the multiplicity of interests and problems presented by them in the House is too enormous to permit anything like a uniform system of discipline. Every effort is, therefore, being made to segregate them in approximately homogeneous groups, to legislate differently for different age levels and to give as much personal attention to individual cases as time and energy allow; but the fact remains that this mingling of boys of widely different ages under the same roof presents many serious problems. As it happens, there has been a tendency for the middle-age group, which is the largest and the most difficult to handle, to set its standards
65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain