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REPORT OF THE HOUSEMASTER
In spite of its many difficulties and frequent moments of anxiety, the school year just past has been one marked by a steadily increasing degree of pupil cooperation and by substantial returns in the realm of constructive discipline. Throughout the year morale was high among the boarders. The most concrete expression of the boys' growing sense of cooperation and their ability to participate in governing themselves occurred at the end of the year when the Housemaster invited them to take over the complete supervision and management of all functions and discipline in the House for two consecutive days. The boys responded to this invitation enthusiastically and were able to carry responsibility conscientiously and effectively while their teachers and monitors were conspicuous for their absence. The dining rooms, the halls, the dormitories, the Common Room, the study halls and the campus were under student control and supervision for two complete days. Naturally, the idea underlying this innovation is not the shifting of adult responsibilities to young shoulders; nor has this experiment been of sufficient duration to warrant any too optimistic prophecies about the near future. But when due regard is made to the tradition of student - teacher antagonism which prevails in this country, this successful venture in self - government may be considered a step forward in the right direction and perhaps a significant development in the history of Greek education.
In some ways the House is the experimental ground for the testing of progressive educational methods and the proper soil for the cultivation of healthy traditions. This is only natural as the School can exert its fullest influence on boys who live in it and come in contact with the teachers in everyday life situations. The delegating of privileges and liberties to the boarders has been a slow but steady process and has always been balanced by a corresponding assignment of duties and responsibilities. We may sometimes be impatient for more reforms but most of us have also a pious fear of "raw haste." Preparing the ground for a new idea among the boys usually involves the education of the parents as well. In many respects we have already moved too far in advance of public opinion.
The total registration in the House this year amounted to 101 students - a figure which represents the highest enrollment of boarders since 1931. This figure also represents the maximum capacity of the House under the present crowded conditions. The building of the unfinished west wing will enable the School to take in more boarders, provided, of course, more continue to apply, and to accommodate them in quarters which are planned specially with a view to the needs of a modern boarding school.
The Boarding Department draws its students not only from Greece proper but from many other parts of the world, especially Constantinople, Albania, Egypt, the Dodecanese, Cyprus and Roumania. Fifteen American boys of Greek parentage lived in the House during the year just past. In addition to a fair percentage of boarders who come from several Greek provinces and the islands, the House also attracts many boys from Athens, the Piraeus and the environs. The public is beginning to recognize the intrinsic values of a good boarding school education with the result that an increasingly larger number of people who live nearby and who might have easily sent their children only for the day prefer to enroll them as boarders. It is true that about 10% of our boarders come from maladjusted homes but this percentage is really too negligible to support the view, which prevails in some countries, that a boarding school is good only for the children of divorced parents or touring actors and for boys whose only qualification for the rigidity of boarding school life is their hopeless unmanageability at home.
As soon as financial conditions allow, I believe our high boarding fees should be decreased in amount. Such a reduction will enable more boys of moderate means to derive the benefits of our boarding education; it will attract boys from the less prosperous provinces, not all of which are now represented in the House; it will result in an increase in the total income from fees by increasing the size of our Boarding Department; and, by mixing our present clients, most of whom are very rich, with the barely prosperous, it will exert a beneficial influence on the general morale in the House.
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