The school athletic field is turned into a fair-ground with ferris wheel and Bingo for a week at the end of each summer when the active Alumni Association presents its annual Carnival. As soon as textbooks are distributed for the year, it is time for football Homecoming Week. Beginning with a parade and bonfire, the celebration winds up with the crowning of the homecoming queen and her court--invariably members of Sub-Deb or Jinx.

More royalty is chosen later in the year at the kings-and-queens dance. Not satisfied with selecting the boy and girl most-likely-to-succeed, the senior class also elects kings and queens of eyes, voice, hair, laugh, figure and physique, sophistication and dashing, personality, popularity, and a few others. There is even a queen of clothes--usually the girl with the largest wardrobe of cashmere sweaters.

Indiana is the basketball state, and the football season barely ends before the Hoosier hoopsters take over in late November. The highlight of the season is the city-wide Holiday Tournament, which packs the municipal stadium for several days during Christmas vacation.

The Senior Prom and its underclass version, the Freshmore, are the two biggest dances of the year. All-night prom parties for the upperclass event are arranged by a committee of the Parent-Teachers Association in a futile attempt to keep students from driving 25 miles to Chicago night-spots after the dance.

Dress Habits Fadish

The greatest social hazard for a Horace Mann student is being different. Clothes are particularly conformist and fadish. To school the girls wear skirts and blouses or sweaters, and whatever type of shoes is the rage that year. Boys wear sport shirts or sweaters and "drapes"--slightly tapered, flannel slacks. Suit jackets and ties are never seen during school hours.

Jitterbugging to popular music and eating pizza are considered "cool" or "real gone." Enjoying one's studies is "different" and apt to be socially dangerous. There are seldom enough academically-oriented students to form an "intellectual crowd."

Unchallenged by the mediocrity of his course, the bright student often channels his excess ambitions and abilities into extracurricular activities. Music, drama, speech, and journalism are available in the clubs which meet for an hour each day.

Merits of Clubs

In the Dramatic Club a student will probably act in more "great plays" than he will ever read for English class. The group performs a Shakespearean work each year, and the senior class play is traditionally a serious drama.

Debate Club, recently demoted to after-school hours, is the most intellectually stimulating of the activities. (For the past four years, the valedictorian has been a debater.) A student who is bored with his social studies courses can explore problems of national and international politics for debates and extemporaneous speaking contests. By writing debate cases, he will gain more experience for college paper-writing than through the infrequent English course essays.

Paul N. Carlson, Horace Mann principal, sees advantages in a system which discourages bright students from becoming bookworms. He notes, "I have felt many times that many of our academically-oriented students did spend too much time in the speech arts, band, or vocal music. On the other hand, some of our most advanced students would not have fared well in college if they had not been brought out of the academic shell through the extra-curricular influence of various faculty members."

"Academic shell," however, is hardly appropriate when applied even to the most intellectually-minded Horace Mann student. It is very difficult even to form an academic shell when one's academic courses are unstimulating. The fact remains that the really interested student is forced to look to the Debate Club, the public library, or the civic symphony orchestra for extensive cultural development.

Nevertheless, the principal is probably correct when he says that "Horace Mann at least ranks above the typical mid-western high school." It is one of the two best high schools in Gary, and above average for Indiana. But this merely indicates that inadequacy is wide-spread. It does not prove that the school provides an academic experience comparable to the country's top private or public high schools. Nor does it even prove that Gary does the most it can with the resources available to a medium-sized industrial city.

Roser, the school psychologist, offers one solution: "Perhaps what we need in America is an increased use of private secondary schools with high achievement standards, to definitely train for specific leadership roles."