School superintendents and principals from Cherokee, Clay and Graham Counties met in the Murphy High School building last Saturday morning from 9:30 to 12:30 and discussed with State High School Inspector for Western North Carolina, Lawrence A. Lohr, some of the problems that confront the present day high school. The three county superintendents, Martin of Cherokee, Bell of Clay, and Moody of Graham; Superintendents Justice of the Robbinsville High School, Jones of the Hayesville High School, and Kanoy of the Murphy High School, and several of the local high school teachers participated in the conference.
Records and reports, classification, promotion, athletics, debating and a number of other problems were touched upon, but the discussions centered about the high school curriculum and methods of making the high school meet the needs of the pupils. It was brought out that the real purpose of education is to fit pupils for their life’s work.
Since a great many of the high school pupils end their formal education with the high school, it was argued, the high school will have to arrange to give a wider range of courses so that different pupils may choose the course that will best fit them for what they want to do in life. Three-, four- and five-teacher high schools cannot offer the varied course that such a condition demands. The remedy for the situation, therefore, seems to be, according to the best informed school men, is larger high schools, which will make possible more teachers and more subjects in the course of study to choose from. For most counties, this means a consolidation of high schools. It means the establishment of a few good high schools, centrally located. State officials predict that such consolidations and such enlargements of the high school course must take place in the next few years, if the high schools are to longer justify their existence.
Such a plan of consolidation for Cherokee County was gotten under way last year by Miss Elizabeth Kelley. With the completion of the main state and county roads in Cherokee, this plan can be made effective in this county.
From the front page of the Cherokee Scout, Murphy, N.C., Friday, Oct. 3, 1924
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn83004710/1924-10-03/ed-1/seq-1/
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