Читать книгу The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools онлайн

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The schools are given up to athletic excitements and “assemblies”; “Aud Calls,” the students term them—that is, calls to the auditorium. They come to practice cheering; they follow the cheer leader, who tells them: “That wasn’t loud enough. Now give one for the team.” The young people come out from these affairs trembling with excitement, and they have no mind for their studies the rest of that day. Out in the halls are students waving balloons which they have bought in the bookstore; on athletic occasions, you see, it looks so lovely if everybody in the bleachers is waving toy balloons with the school colors. They will just get settled in class with their toy balloons, when there comes a call for “fire drill.” Or if such diversions are lacking, the pretty young things take out their vanity boxes and proceed to powder their noses and smear red paint on their lips, while the poor unhappy teachers are trying to put something into their silly heads. I have walked through the corridors of a high school and counted a dozen of the young things performing these toilet operations while chatting with their beaux.