Bio: Horswill, Hugh D. (Retires - 1979)

Contact: Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon
E-mail: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org 

Surnames: Horswill, Eyster

----Source: Clark County Press (Neillsville, Clark Co., WI) 5/24/1979

Horswill, Hugh D. (Retires - 1979)

Hugh D. Horswill, a Clark County Native, will retire as principal of Parker Senior High School in Janesville at the end of June. He has over 40 years of service in public education in Wisconsin.

Horswill will be honored at a retirement tea on Saturday, June 9. According to coordinators for the event, the public may attend. A “memory album” will be presented to Horswill at the tea and sponsors are requesting the letters from former students and friends will be welcomed. Communications should be sent, by June 6, to John Eyster, Parker High School, Janesville, 53545. A retirement fund is also being created.

Horswill, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Richard M. Horswill, was born in the Longwood area and graduated from Neillsville High School in 1935. He attended UW-Eau Claire, playing football there, earing his degree in 1939.

His teaching career began in 1939 when he accepted a position at Granton High School where he taught social studies and coached. He moved to Alma Center’s school in 1941 and to Osceola in 1942 filling similar posts to that of Granton. And he saw military action serving in the Seventh Army, 100th Division, from 1943-46 in Europe.

He joined the faculty at Janesville High School in 1946 and, after teaching algebra for a year, he moved back to social studies and coaching. During this time, he completed master’s degree from the University of Wyoming.

In 1955, after nine years at the school, he was selected as an assistant principal at the new Janesville High School. Later he was named principal at Parker Senior High School. “He put Parker Senior High School on the national and world map of public education. Having developed Variable Time Block programming and Arean Self-Scheduling, Horswill has been called upon to share these developments with other high schools,” says a fellow administrator.

Under Horswill’s leadership, Parker has become nationally recognized for its Integrated Studies curriculum with a “Roads to Learning” component and seminars, which annually involve students in field study work in Washington, D.C. and the United Nations.

When asked why the high school he administered these twelve years had achieved such an outstanding record, Horswill reflected, “I always felt the most important question to be: “ ‘Is it good for the students we are working with?’ The top priority for education must be programs which are educationally sound for your young people! We must keep abreast to develop skills and abilities of students to meet and cope with the challenge of a changing social order.”