MHS Celebrates Its 150th Anniversary
By Joshua Kery

The Seniors of 2016 were the 150th class to graduate from Milton High School. While there is no specific ceremony being held to recognize this historic year, Milton High School’s employees and oldest graduates celebrated its arrival.

John Cronin, who served as Milton’s Town Administrator for 34 years and was a member of the Class of 1955, notes that the anniversary marks “Milton’s 150-year commitment to providing an excellent public high school education.”

“As we think about this 150^th Anniversary it’s important for students to understand the importance of public education,” comments MHS Humanities Department Head Barbara Wright, “As Americans we may sometimes take for granted the public education we are afforded, but that was not always the case.”

“It was just a year after the Civil War that Milton High School was opened. I can only imagine a fair share of students enrolled in those first classes were young men who returned from fighting to face an uncertain future. Imagine the benefits of knowing they were able to advance their education and train for a profession.”

Milton established its first public high school in 1866, just before the rise of the United States’ high school movement. This movement popularized public secondary education across the U.S. as a ticket to better employment as the service industry and white collar jobs expanded in the country’s economy. The high school movement reached its peak in the early twentieth century, according to Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz of Harvard University.

Read more: http://blog.miltonps.org/?p=2068