Author: Homer “Les” Morgan

Published: In “The Parrot,” the Chaska High School student newspaper, under the original title, “1,000 lessons.”

When: May 1964

Who was he? Morgan worked in the district from 1948 to 1975. He served as superintendent from 1956 to 1964. As superintendent, he spearheaded the purchase of a new high school campus, north of downtown Chaska. (Now the site of Chaska Elementary School, and the two middle schools.) Morgan, a WWII veteran, died in 2003.

By H.L. Morgan

In a few short days, another class will cross the stage of the auditorium and receive their diplomas, which say that the individual concerned has been graduated from high school.

Before that event takes place, the teachers will once more try to determine whether or not the individual has learned anything that he was supposed to learn during the past school year.

But let’s turn the tables today and ask the superintendent if he has learned anything from the youngsters that have gone through is school. Were any lessons taught by the nearly 1,000 youngsters that have graduated from CHS since 1948?

The answer is an unqualified “yes.”Perhaps the most striking lesson is that today’s youngsters are much more mature than were the youngsters of only 15 years ago. They are more knowledgeable of the world. They are more self-assured. They have better formed plans than did the youngster of only a few years ago. They are bigger physically. They are better prepared scholastically. They are less awed by the problems facing them as individuals and as citizens of the community, state and nation.

But all is not gold that glitters. Countering to a degree all of these plus factors in today’s graduates are some factors that did not exist a few years ago.

First of all, the greater maturity and better preparation of today’s seniors must face toward a world that has become even more complex than that which the youth a few years ago had to face. To the threat of an atomic explosion in the fifties has been added the concern for a population explosion in the sixties.

To the perennial farm problem of former years there has been added the concern of what to do about automation. From the generation that fought the misguided race theories of a foreign dictator we have moved to the generation that is trying to cope with race problems within its own boundaries.

From the threatening but comparatively simple world that was being contested by the United States and the Soviet Union, we have moved to a world that lives with the results of the disintegration of world empires, the rise of new nations, the development of rival social philosophies and increased dissension between the allies of World War II.

To sum up the lesson that I have been taught: As the world has changed socially, economically and politically, the youth of this nation as I have observed them, have moved forward with courage and confidence to meet the new challenges.