Ilion High School - Class of 1936

Herkimer Evening Telegram - January 12, 1965

Ilion Native Heads Group Of 400 School Principals

Article 6

ILION - Stuart D. Wooley, a native of Ilion and son of the late Leon and Irma Dayton Wooley, is principal to more than 1,000 youngsters at Nautilus Junior High School Miami, Fla., and also chairman of the Dept. of Secondary School Principals, sitting at the head of a class composed of about 400 Florida senior and junior high school chiefs.

A recent feature article in a Miami newspaper tells of many other activities of the Ilion High School graduate who played in both the Ilion School and the Rand Typewriter Bands as a young man, and later with the Army Air Force Band while in the service. He was leader of the Air Force Band at Miami Beach in 1942.

His father was an Ilion police sergeant. Robert Wooley, now of Saratoga Springs, formerly of Ilion and Mohawk, is an uncle.

As chairman of the Secondary School Principals Dept., Wooley is also a member of the parent association, the Florida Education Assn., comprised of his department plus departments of higher education such as colleges and universities, superintendents, supervisors and classroom teacher departments.

Wooley is also publicity chairman for the National Assn. of Secondary Principals which will meet at Miami Jan. 16 in convention, and a member of the National Committee on Junior High School Education, representing 13 southeastern states.

Wooley was a music education major graduate at Ithaca College in 1941 and earned a master of arts degree in educational supervision at Syracuse University. He began teaching in Walton High School where he was music supervisor of bands, orchestras and choruses in two elementary, one junior and one senior high school when he entered the service. He also taught at Holland Patent after the war.

His Dade County, Florida, debut in 1947 was at Kinloch Park Junior High School where be started as music director and graduated to the chairmanship of the guidance department. He then went to Nautilus, where he has been since 1956.

Junior High School, Wooley asserts is most important. "It's in junior high that the children fall apart," he says, "and then they grow up and develop. They need the maximum of understanding from teachers and parents. Sometimes they don't get it from either place."

Wooley, the father of five, added, "sometimes I don't think my own youngsters get it." The greatest problem all principals face in education, he said, is finances and how to get enough money to bring education to the point needed.

Dade county's school system with around 200,000 students is seventh largest in the country, he added, and is recognized as one of the finest educational systems in the country. Asserting, "it always has been." Wooley stressed, "we still have a long way to go."

At Nautilus, Wooley pointed out, experimental direction is being given in many areas. "We do many things here that educators from other parts of the country write to us about and want to know about. Most of the things are done by some schools in the county, some are done by all," be said.

Right now, Nautilus is trying a unique resource period - eighth and ninth graders have individual periods to develop themselves in various areas.

Children have changed, along with teaching procedures, Wooley believes. "Kids are a product of their environment," he said. "The changes they exhibit grow out of our world and what we go through as the world change."

He recalled when a youngster in Ilion, if he had an opportunity to see in his own living room a world series game . . . "it would have been fantastic. Today it's so ordinary, they almost shrug it off," he pointed out.

However, Wooley said, "we've lost certain values we held, but we've gained some advantages along the way. Youngsters are much better prepared intellectually than they used to be. By and large, those going into college are very well informed young people, aware of world events, politics, many things."

Touching on whether they have "learned to think," Wooley marked that question doubtful. "I think we're in a transition period here," he said. "One of our biggest objectives is to teach boys and girls to learn to think by themselves. But they may not be challenged to think as much as they should be. The problems are different now. There's so much materialism, so many things are around them."

He sees a "definite trend toward emotional disturbances, which fall back on environment." Today's life, being different, "we have emotional strains that didn't exist before - nuclear power is one aspect. Every young man and woman knows if a button is pressed, one fourth of the nation may be destroyed," he said.

The former Ilionite would like to see education reach the point where knowledge and the use to which it can be put is stressed, rather than grades.

"We're grade conscious and the kids are grade conscious," he said. "Sometimes seventh and eighth grade marks have a bearing on college entrance."

It takes a lot of time to travel about in his duties, Wooley said, leaving little time to think. But when he does have time, he thinks "we should never lose faith in our young people. For every one youngster you read bad things about, we have 100 more with good."