The Significance of the
Pearl High School Alumni Association

“For more than 100 years now families that attended Pearl High School found a common sense of togetherness that radiates even today with those who are still living. The Alumni Association continues to share that same common bond of family, friends, and classmates.”


Melvin Black, 1955 graduate, Pearl High School teacher from 1962-1971, and president of the Pearl High School (Alumni) Classes of 1949-1972.

Determining the success of any school program remains difficult even for educational evaluators who are attempting to ascertain changes in student knowledge from one year to the next. The task becomes somewhat impossible when one examines a school’s program from 50 years ago. Was Pearl High School an outstanding school? Certainly. Was the program distinguished? Absolutely. Responses become more difficult, however, when one then asks just how outstanding and distinguished? Typically, notable and “famous” graduates are listed, offering little but anecdotal perspectives on the success of the academic curriculum, sports program, and cultural activities. More scientific measurements are equally inadequate as seen by the applauded but conceptually flawed efforts of Margaret Willis who in the 1950s attempted to discern the influence and impact of progressive education, after twenty years, with her illustrative 1938 high school graduating class of “guinea pigs.” (1) Knowing the difficulties and ill-fated attempts to evaluate the curricula and students from the participating Eight Year Study schools, the principals of the Secondary School Study were adamant at the beginning of the project to insist that their programs would not be judged or compared. Their wisdom was followed then as we shall do so now.

Few measures can be held up as quantitative proof of the success of a socially-complex community known as a high school. Yet, month after month and year after year on the fourth Saturday of the month, Pearl High School graduates come together. There are no proclamations of the glories of their school; this is not necessary. They recognize the school’s power and impact upon their lives, but they need not convey their feelings in stereotypical fashion which, by definition, often prove forced and clichéd. Those Pearl High School graduate were comfortable knowing that their school was distinguished, and in June 2007 they welcomed a stranger into their Saturday morning community, with great joy and glee. Slowly I came to understand the power of a school that ultimately led the Secondary School Study.

“If the legacy of a school rests with its students, then the Secondary School Study staff and teachers would be quite proud of the spirit of community, cooperation, and democracy that was instilled at Pearl High School.”
Craig Kridel, Curator

A monthly meeting of
The Pearl High School Alumni Association

“We have never forgotten the love and passion
that every teacher showed every student who attended Pearl High.”

Endnotes:
1) Margaret Willis, The Guinea Pigs After 20 Years, Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1968. Class of 1938, Ohio State University High School, Were We Guinea Pigs?, New York: Henry Holt, 1938.