Chapter X: Introduction (3)

Class periods may be 40 or 50 or 55 minutes instead of 60. Teachers have six hours in school with 60-minute periods, five and one-half with 55-minute periods, and five hours with 50-minute periods. Pupils have a school day of seven, six and one-half, and six hours respectively, in addition to an hour for luncheon. The playground teachers are on duty an additional hour. Each teacher has an hour a day free for her own work. When her day is finished, she is supposed to leave the building. It is expected that all paper work, as well as all the work of the children, will be done in school. The purpose is to make the teacher’s day only six hours, without the burden of extra time at home.

An interesting extension of this teacher-organization plan is the new training course for outside teachers or principals who are desirous of studying the Gary school plan and teaching methods. Visiting teachers and principals are allowed, at a fee, to attach themselves as assistants to teachers or principals, and follow the work through a course of weeks or months, in exactly the same way that the small child acts as “helper” or “observer” to the older child in the laboratory or shop or the junior to the senior teacher. The fee goes to the teacher or principal who instructs the visitor. This novel way of teaching the principles of the Gary school, not by lectures, but by direct practical assistance on the part of the visitor, is typical of that insistence upon “learning by doing” which is the keynote of the Gary instruction.

The Gary plan acts on the theory that the good teachers should be given initiative and responsibility, while the inexperienced and weak teachers should be trained into initiative and responsibility. The usual plan in school systems is to make the experienced and inexperienced, strong and weak, coördinate with one another, and all subordinate to the supervisor or superintendent. The Gary plan thus secures the utmost from the good teachers, and trains the poor ones.

Instead of employing special “visiting teachers,” as is done in many school systems, the teacher in the Gary school is given the responsibilities of the “visiting teacher” by being made a “register teacher” for a subdivision of the school district. In this way cases of maladjustment to school, home, or neighborhood conditions may be met. The school population of the city is geographically districted in such a way that each district holds about fifty families. The children in a district are assigned, irrespective of age or grade, to one of the grade teachers. Each “register teacher” meets her group once a week for general conference. She gives out the monthly reports. Failure in self-control, irregular attendance, tardiness, and other matters are reported to her. No child is excused from class without her permission, and she is expected to call at the homes of the children when necessary or to meet their parents at the school. Each “register teacher” holds the same children from class to class as long as they live in the district. She corresponds almost exactly to what is known as the “faculty adviser” of the college student, a guide and friend for the general conduct of school life and for difficulties that arise. The “register teacher” is a sort of disciplinary and sociological overseer for a group of children living in the same neighborhood. She has a set of blanks which in fact provide a basis for a complete sociological survey of her district. These she is supposed to fill in, as facts about living conditions, etc., come to her attention. It seems evident that this work, while exacting, involves no more than a teacher should know. No more valuable sociological training could be imagined for the intelligent and progressive teacher. Such work relates her at once to the general community life, and makes her profession of a far more serious importance than is usually given to the grade teachers in the public schools. This work is typical of the demands for a new initiative and intelligence that the Gary plan makes upon the teachers, and also of the immense educative value of these demands.

The effort is constantly made in the Gary schools to bridge the gap between teacher and pupil. An important recent innovation is the institution of “teachers’ assistants.” Students in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades have ten weeks for drawing, ten weeks for science, ten weeks for shopwork, and ten weeks for service as “teachers’ assistants.” The students act as laboratory and studio assistants only in the departments in which they have a special interest. Three or four students assist the science teachers, three or four the drawing teachers, and three or four the shop teachers. Playground teachers, auditorium teachers, music teachers, etc., have as assistants the students especially interested. Each student can, therefore, receive twenty weeks of work in the department in which he has a special interest. Many teachers confess that the first year of teaching gave them a much clearer grasp of the subjects they taught than they were able to secure as students. From the point of view of scholarship, the teachers’ assistants learn more by acting in this rôle for a limited time than they could learn by using the time for additional study. They not only learn how to take initiative and assume responsibility, but they enable the teacher to do much more effective work with the regular classes.

* * * * *

This same fundamental principle of organization is applied to the pupils themselves in their relations with one another. Fourth- and fifth-grade pupils are considered too old for the primary manual training and nature-study, and not quite old enough to use profitably the laboratories and workshops as independent students. They are, therefore, assigned as assistants to students in the higher classes. These children in this way learn more by working with the older students than they can be taught in separate classes by themselves. Not only does the younger child learn by helping the older and watching him and asking questions of him, but the older learns by being required to answer the questions and make the younger child understand what he is doing in shop or laboratory. The object is to make the Gary school, in the words of Superintendent Wirt, “as much as possible like a large family wherein the younger children are learning consciously and unconsciously from the older, and the latter from contact with the younger children are learning to assume responsibility and take the initiative. Some one has said that we send our boy to school, but his playmates, not the school faculty, educate him. This is true because in the conventional school the faculty does not utilize the playmates as assistant instructors.” This “helper” system has proved to be one of the most valuable features of the Gary schools.

For the pupil, organization means a degree of flexibility and individual instruction extraordinary for a public school. Except in the lowest grades, the pupils are classified by subjects as well as by grades, so that practically college methods obtain. Each pupil has his own schedule or program, just as the college student has. The executive principal corresponds to the college registrar in supervising these individual records. The pupil is promoted by subjects and not by grades, and may be promoted or demoted at any time by the supervisor of instruction, acting with the teacher. Grades, therefore, represent merely years of schooling and not classes which are promoted as units. Each regular class has a maximum register of forty, but the class does not work as a unit, any more than a college class of sophomores works as a unit. Some are taking one group of subjects, some another. The work is thus done largely in small groups, or even as individuals. The great wealth of equipment and the economical use of time permit a large amount of practically individual instruction.

The students of each grade are classified into three groups—rapid, normal, and slow workers. The rapid workers can easily complete the twelve years’ course in ten years. They may then enter college at sixteen years of age. The great majority of the Gary pupils who go to college actually come from this rapid-working group. The normal workers complete the course in twelve years, and the slow workers in fourteen. Many of the slow workers do not attempt to complete the course, but specialize in the industrial departments. This grouping contemplates the recognition of differences in the mental endowments and ambitions of children of the same age, so that means are provided for the shortening of school life for some children and the lengthening of it for others. Every child is, as far as possible, working along with his equals, so that the bright child is not held back and rendered listless by the presence of slower members in the class, nor is the slow child discouraged by the competition of the brighter ones. Every pupil may go as fast as he can, and may specialize on the work which he can best do. The presence of a great variety of activities makes it possible for the children who falter on their intellectual work to give more attention to the manual or artistic or physical work in which they may excel.

A special investigation was made in 1914 into the regrading of the pupils of two ninth-grade algebra classes in the Emerson School. The results of regrading the classes into rapid and slow workers showed marked improvement in the interest displayed in the algebra work, especially on the part of the slow workers. No failures were reported among the rapid workers, and only three among the slow workers, and these were due to absence from class. The total class average for the slow division was in three months raised five per cent. In the Jefferson School, which has been operated on the Gary plan longer than any other school, fifty-two per cent of the children are one or more years _ahead_ of their normal grades.

Many features of the Gary plan afford extraordinary opportunities for extra assistance in study and work. The pupil may take extra work in a subject during a proportion of his play, auditorium, or shop hours. If he is a member of the “X” school, he may get the same lesson repeated for him the same day by attending the parallel class in the “Y” school held at a different hour. He may come to the voluntary Saturday school and get extra coaching from the teacher, and the vacation school provides additional opportunity to make up back work. No home work is allowed, except to a small extent in the high-school grades. The long school day, and the freedom which the teacher has to distribute her time and to conduct supervised study, obviate the necessity for carrying books away from the school. Since the state law does not authorize the schools to provide free textbooks, these must be provided by the pupil, or, as in the case of most of the Gary classes, bought by the school and loaned cooperatively to a number of classes. Since home work is not permitted, the books may be kept in the school and distributed to the classes as they require them.

The headquarters of the pupil in the school are not in the classroom, as in other public schools. It is the teacher and not the class which is assigned to the room. The teacher remains in the room and the pupils go to him or her, moving about individually from classroom, shop, laboratory, etc., according to the printed schedule card which each pupil holds. The child’s headquarters is the spacious lockers which line the corridors in the basements. Each child has a private locker for books, papers, and wraps. Strictly speaking, the pupil in the Gary school, except in the lowest grades, has no “teacher,” except the “register teacher.” The departmental system gives him many teachers, but no teacher. This system and the self-governing responsibility for his own schedule is intended to cultivate initiative and responsibility on the part of the pupil. It brings him from an early age into contact with different personalities, gives him the benefit of expert teaching and a variety of movement and exercise. The introduction of these free college methods into the common school is, in the light of public-school practice, a daring experiment, but the Gary school experience seems to show that it is quite possible to give the younger children a large measure of freedom and individuality of treatment.

Most of the schedules of the pupils are arranged with reference to the requirements of the state course of instruction, specialization not being permitted, of course, except in the higher grades, or where some special weakness causes repeated failure. Yet the Gary schools have about twenty per cent of special students who do not intend to finish the course and are specializing in some departments. But since, owing to the individualization of schedules, every pupil is in a sense a “special student,” the presence of this large number of students causes no administrative confusion, nor are the special students—as would be the case in many schools operated on a uniform plan—marked off invidiously from those who are following the more regular course.

The segregation of sexes which the visitor finds in some of the Gary schools and courses is not the result of any prejudice against coeducation. (All the activities are open equally to boys and girls alike, so that girls are found in the printing-shop and in the wood-working classes, etc.) It is due to the effort to give each boy and girl what he or she needs. The organization of many classes, such as play, gymnasium, personal hygiene, and the manual activities which do not appeal to the girls, or the domestic science which does not appeal to the boys, required this unisexual classification, and sometimes it has been retained to avoid the break-up of classes in related subjects.

An example of this effort to provide for all kinds of students in the Gary school is the first-year college work which is offered to students who wish to remain in the school for post-graduate work. The Gary school endeavors thus to overlap the college, just as it has made the common school dovetail into the high school, and the day school into the evening school. When the Gary high-school students have come up through the Gary schools, it is hoped to be able to send students from the local schools at the age of eighteen so prepared that they may complete the ordinary college course in two years.

A word should be said about the interrelation of this flexibility of schedule with the “helper” system. The choice of what subjects the pupil shall study is not as willful and anarchical as it may seem. In the lower grades the regular studies are, of course, prescribed. English, arithmetic, history, and geography must be studied by all, with the attendant “application” and “auditorium” work. All must have physical education, music and expression, and some form of manual and scientific work. The courses in science, industrial work, and music and expression, below the high school, are taken in alternation. Each occupies one third of the school year. The individual choice of the pupil comes in what science or what shop work he or she will take. The beginning is not by chance, but really the result of a natural process of selection by the child. All the early years are made a sort of unconscious prevocational school in which the child tries out his interests and powers. Things are neither forced on him nor aimlessly selected. The child in kindergarten or first three grades moves about the halls and corridors. Since the shops and studios and laboratories are not segregated, but distributed over the building, so that all seem equally significant, the child has every opportunity to become familiar with them. His curiosity is aroused, and, unaided, he is tempted to peer in through the glass doors and windows, and wonder what the older children are doing. When the child has reached the fourth grade, he already has an idea of what activity interests him, and what he would like to try. Fourth- and fifth-grade children then go in as helpers to the seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-grade students in shops, studios, and laboratories. If the child finds the work does not interest him, he still has a chance to try some other work, and thus gradually sifts out what is likely to be valuable to him for a vocation or avocation. If he has special skill, he may specialize in the higher grades. Such a plan seems to be admirably devised to bring out whatever capacities there are in the pupils, and to insure almost automatically their interest in work which in many schools is mere unintelligent drudgery.

Vocational guidance in such a system is simple and effective. The “auditorium” teacher, in charge of the presentation of material relating to the shops and industries, is able to give information as to the desirability of the several trades and industries as occupations. For example, the school plumber may prepare with his students a plumbing outfit for an ordinary dwelling or apartment, and give a lesson on the way in which plumbing should be cared for in the home. The plumbing instructor may know much about plumbing, but very little about presenting his information to a large body of students. The “auditorium” teacher would assume the responsibility of supervising such auditorium presentations in order that they might be dramatically effective. The day that the plumber and his students present the advantages and disadvantages of plumbing as a trade, the teacher of industries may announce to the boys in “auditorium” period that for the remainder of the week any boy may be excused for a personal consultation with him concerning the desirability of joining a class in plumbing. Students are thus directed in their shop assignments by this “auditorium” teacher of industries. Vocational guidance is thus made possible as far as it is probably wise to undertake such guidance in the school at present. Such a plan directs the mechanically inclined among the children by enlisting their interest and then their will. The “auditorium” teachers for the other activities may also act as advisers in the same way. Teacher and pupil thus coöperate, not in any haphazard fashion, but systematically, in studying the various activities with a view to their future use as a vocation. Such an attitude not only organizes and motivates the work, but gives it seriousness and purpose. Every detail of organization in the Gary school is devised to make the pupil as well as the teacher an integral part of the school life, not only in its own meaning, but in its relation to the outside world.

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VI

CURRICULUM: LEARNING BY DOING

THE Gary curriculum, in spite of its many special features, is neither eccentric nor overcrowded. It follows the regular course of study laid down for Indiana schools by the State Department of Public Instruction. Students who follow the full course may be ready to enter college at the age of sixteen. The additional facilities of the Gary schools are not gained at the expense, therefore, of the ordinary course of education. They are made possible through a more ingenious distribution of time throughout a longer school day, and by an integration and interrelation of subjects which tend to vitalize them all.

The regular studies in the lower grades are conducted along the conventional lines, with the addition of the “application” work which has been described. The English work is further vitalized through the employment of special teachers for “expression,” who alternate with the special teachers of music. “Expression” is a mixture of elocution and dramatics. The aim of the instruction is evidently to bring the pupils to read and speak with more intelligence and appreciation than is usually done. It is to give the training which will bear fruit in increased expressiveness in all the studies of the school, in all writing and reciting, in “auditorium” and “application” work. So far, owing to the peculiar requirements of talent in the teachers and on account of the lack of good American elocutionary and dramatic tradition, the enterprise can scarcely be called more than a frank and important experiment. For the Gary curriculum with its emphasis on self-activity, such training in expressiveness is essential, and it can be depended upon to improve rapidly in quality as the children and teachers catch the spirit of the schools and get the practice of “auditorium” and “application” work.

The importance of the equable division of time between regular studies and special activities has already been discussed. An important feature of the Gary teaching is the avoidance of that excessive subdivision of subjects which has affected curriculum-making in many schools. History and geography are here uniformly taught together; language, grammar, spelling, reading, and writing are taught as much as possible together as English; physiology is taught in connection with zoölogy. Since the teacher is left much initiative in the distribution of her time, she may emphasize and correlate the different studies as she finds necessary. All the English branches are taught constantly in connection with the other studies. The history or physics class may begin with a spelling-lesson. Compositions in science or history, or the brochures issued by the science departments, are supervised by the English teacher. We have seen how the shop and commercial instructors give special work in practical English and mathematics. The effort is constant in the Gary curriculum to teach a subject, not as an isolated body of subject-matter, but as knowledge which may bear on any or all the other departments of the school community.

Studies are taught also with as much bearing as possible on the social activities of the larger city community. The subject-matter in the history and geography classes is really “The Sociological World we Live in,” and textbooks, histories, atlases, globes, newspapers, and magazines become the reference sources and the materials for understanding that world. The working-out of such principles must, of course, be a matter of experimentation by able teachers, and the work cannot be described in any formal manner. Illustrations of some of the successful methods can, however, be given. The history room in the Emerson School, for instance, is found by the visitor to be almost smothered in maps and charts, most of them made by the children themselves, in their effort to “learn by doing,” and to contribute their part to the school community. A large Indiana ballot, a chart of the State Senate, a diagram of the state administration, a table showing the evolution of American political parties, with many war maps and pictures, covered the walls. The place is a workshop rather than a classroom, with broad tables for map-drawing, and a fine spread of papers and magazines. The ninth-grade Gary children are, in fact, conducting what some progressive colleges have introduced as “laboratory work in history.”

THE HISTORY ROOM AT THE EMERSON SCHOOL
]

When the writer visited the school, the town of Gary was waging a campaign for a new water-front park. The history class had for some weeks been using this public issue as a text for their work. They had been studying “The City: A Healthful Place in Which to Live (with special reference to parks).” Outlines had been worked up from reference books in the school branch of the public library. These were read to the class and discussed by them. Such a course became almost one in town-planning, one of the most fascinating and significant of current social interests, and one which packs into itself a maximum of historical, sociological, and geographical information. Such a course provided an admirable motive for a review of history from a practical local point of view which all the intelligent pupils could appreciate. The outline follows:—

_The City: A Healthful Place in Which to Live: Emphasis on Parks_

1. Athenian recreation centers.
2. Roman opportunities for recreation.
3. Mediæval cities: England.
4. Mediæval cities: Continental Europe.
5. The modern British city.
6. Modern cities in Argentina, Chile, Brazil.
7. The large German city.
8. The small German city.
9. Paris, and the smaller French cities.
10. Colonial cities of America.
11. American cities during the last quarter of the eighteenth century.
12. American cities before the Civil War.
13. American cities from the Civil War to the twentieth century.
14. American cities in the twentieth century.
15. How smaller cities are replanning.
16. Parks in large American cities.
17. The city-planning conference.
18. Statistics showing total area of city, and percentage of park
space.
19. Playgrounds of Chicago and New York.
20. The Gary plan of schools and playgrounds on the same site.

The class in ancient history, owing to a belief on the part of the instructor that no child should be allowed to leave school without a background of modern affairs, devotes one day a week to contemporary history. A weekly digest of the ten most important events is kept in the history notebook, arranged, three for foreign events, three for national events, and four for local. Reports are prepared and read upon assigned magazine articles, especially from the _Literary Digest_, _Outlook_, and _Independent_. Everything is thus done to get the clue of historical study from the interesting events around the pupils. History is studied as much as possible backward, instead of forward.

In 1912-13 the classes in modern history became interested in the past of the Balkan nations, in order to understand the reason for their alliance against the Turkish Empire. A digression was, therefore, made to clear this point, and to vitalize thereby the history of the related European countries. The next year a similar interest was kindled in Mexico and our relations with the Spanish-American republics. During the past year the history instructor has found the study of the last two centuries of western Europe to move along without effort, owing to the interest in the great war.

Such a study of history clearly obviates the necessity of any separate study of “civics.” History and geography taught in this way become part of one’s general information. Magazines and newspapers are freely used. The systematic reading of the best weeklies and papers surely is an important training, in an age of so much cheap and worthless reading-matter.

One history class had been making a comparison of Athenian with Gary education. This is another illustration of that constant effort to make the pupils realize the meaning of what they are doing and what is around them. The effort of the Gary education is to make the child acquainted with the purposes of his school. He is not taught as an inferior who must take without question wisdom from immensely superior teachers, but as an equal and democratic citizen of his school community, learning wherever and whenever he can. The ancient history class had for its motto: “To improve its members as American citizens by a study of the experiences of the ancient peoples.” It would be difficult to imagine a more admirable reason for historical study than this phrase, the natural expression of the Gary child who wrote the constitution for the class organization. Such “social introspection” is as rare an intellectual quality as it is valuable.

The history classes in the lower grades use sand-tables to reproduce the topography of the localities which are being studied, or to describe the progress of some battle or invasion. One of the pupils in 1912 constructed with his own hands in the wood-working shops a miniature Roman temple about five feet in length, the plans of which he had worked out from the descriptions in the histories. These classes often engage in debates, and the written reports which are sufficiently interesting are read in “auditorium,” and often printed in the local newspapers. Bulletin boards are placed in the hall for displaying important clippings. The pupils bring these, and classify them under the headings,—foreign news, American news, state, city, and county news, pictures and cartoons, and items on the special topics that are being studied. The history classes have charge of a small historical museum in the corridors, which contains a loan collection of Indian relics and of pottery from Central America.

The teaching of science occupies a unique place in the Gary schools. Just as the history and geography are taught as clues to the social and political world around the pupil, so the science is used to acclimatize him to the natural world. The theory is that children should commence the study of the sciences while their minds are still plastic and their interest in natural phenomena keen. The persistent questions which the child asks are attempts to get an understanding of the world he lives in. Unless these questions are answered, his interest is apt to wane as he grows older. And unless he acquires a familiarity with nature that is accompanied by true scientific information, he is apt to get only a satisfied feeling of knowledge without any true appreciation.

Science in the Gary schools, consequently, goes beyond the simple nature-study taught now in most elementary schools. The child has experience with the laboratory at an early age. The smaller children from the third, fourth, fifth, or sixth grades go into the chemistry, physics, botany, and zoölogy laboratories as “helpers” or “observers” to the work of the high-school classes. On the theory that “children are natural scientists” they are allowed contact with apparatus and materials. It is said, in fact, that experience shows the smaller children to be as careful as the older, and actually to cause less breakage and damage.

The science classes in the lower grades are taught neither in formal recitation nor in formal laboratory work, but in a combination which the instructors describe as “experience meetings.” Pupils and teacher meet on common ground to exchange ideas about their experiences in dealing with natural phenomena. The outside world is treated as a great laboratory, and these “experience meetings” are used to interpret the children’s experiences in terms of scientific principles. There are demonstrations by the children, assisted by the teacher; a little individual laboratory work; and considerable vocal reading from textbooks and scientific story-books.

The Gary science instructors believe that much time and money have been wasted in the teaching of science in high schools, owing to the elaborate methods which have treated the students as if the purpose was to make professional scientists of them all. Children, it is believed in Gary, cannot resort to the detailed research methods of scientists, but must have quick answers and quick results. There is a waste of energy in trying to duplicate in the laboratory the fundamental experiences of life which the children are constantly seeing outside in the great laboratory of nature.

The care of the flowers and plants and gardens, the care of the animals in the zoo, and the study of their habits offer endless concrete material for building up the theoretical side of botany and zoölogy. The pupils are trained to observe and to write down what they see. One class in zoölogy last year made an illustrated booklet descriptive of the school zoo. The text was written by the pupils, the photographs prepared by them, and then the booklet was tastefully printed in the school printing-shop by the pupils themselves. The result was a charming brochure, in which not only the pupils themselves, but the whole school could take pride and pleasure. Such scientific study becomes an intimate and vital part of the entire school life.

For the physics classes, the lighting, heating, and ventilating systems of the school afford a practical textbook. In the Jefferson School, where the industrial shop is built around the boiler-room, the heating plant becomes an integral part of the shop. The physics classes study the climate and the weather. They study particularly the principles of the machines used in the different shops. Each shop may thus act as an extension of the physics laboratory. Classes of even the smaller children are sent to take apart machines like the bicycle, cream-separator, lawn-mower, and explain the construction. The automobile and motor-cycle provide many practical lessons. An old automobile which needs tinkering up is considered in the Gary school to be almost a physics laboratory in itself. The writer witnessed a physics class of twelve-year-old girls who, with their nine-year-old “helpers,” were studying the motor-cycle. With that disregard for boundaries which characterizes all Gary education, the hour began with a spelling-lesson. The names of the parts and processes of the machine were rehearsed orally and then written. After the words were learned, the parts of the machine were explained by the instructor while the class spelled the words over again. Their memory of certain physical principles, such as vaporization, evaporation, were called again into play. Then the instructor set the motor-cycle going, the girls again describing its action. When this had been thoroughly gone over, the class copied from the blackboard sentences describing the processes and parts, but omitting certain crucial words which the pupil had to supply. The intense vivacity and interest of the little group, the intelligence with which these small children grasped the principles involved, made the lesson seem a model of expert teaching. It was an excellent illustration of the way concrete processes may be used to build up scientific knowledge. It is interesting to notice that no distinction is made between boys and girls in their science work.

This lively interest in scientific processes may have unexpected results. The story is told of a high-school boy who, while the board of education was discussing means of fire-prevention, made an investigation of methods and processes which was so excellent that it was forthwith adopted by the board.

This incident is typical of the way in which the scientific work in the schools may correlate with the wider social community. Just as the history classes may bring the pupil into touch with the political life outside the school, so the physics and chemistry class may connect him with the industry of the community and with those public services into which scientific processes enter. A boy, for example, brings to the chemistry class a bag of low-grade iron ore which he has found in the vicinity. The class, under the direction of the teacher, constructs a simple electric furnace and reduces the ore. This experiment is then used as the basis for a study of the great steel industry upon which the city of Gary is founded.

A part of the chemistry work makes a direct contribution to the city. Gary has the good fortune, or the good sense, to have as chemistry teacher in the Emerson School the man who acts as municipal chemist for the city. As a result, the school laboratory becomes an extension of the municipal laboratory. The high-school chemistry pupils assist the chemist just as the smaller children assist them. With the chemist-instructor the pupils test the city water and the various milk supplies. Under the sanitary inspector they visit, as part of their “application” work, dairies, factories, bakeries, food-stores. Last year the class issued a “Milk Bulletin,” containing general information, with reports of their tests. The various articles were recorded as part of the English composition work, and the bulletin was printed by the pupils in the school printing-shop. In quality these bulletins seemed scarcely inferior to what an agricultural school might issue. On their inspection rounds, the class takes samples of sugars and candies from the various shops of the town, and tests them in the laboratory for purity and for the use of harmless coloring matter. Another class experiments with the soft drinks sold in the town, testing their composition, and studying physiological effects. The children are practically deputy food-inspectors, and make their reports on the official blanks. It is said that the result of this sort of inspection is that in a prosecution for violation of the pure-food laws in Gary a case has never been lost.

The children test also the materials supplied to the schools, the coal, cement, etc., to see if they come up to the specifications. They are not only using the things around them for practical textbooks, but they are able to turn their knowledge immediately into work which is immensely beneficial, not only to themselves, but to the whole community. The value of enlisting pupils in this inspection work, of training them to observe and criticize and test the physical conditions under which they live, is incalculable. For even a small proportion of children to get this scientific-deputy-inspector habit, and to get used to thinking in terms of qualitative and quantitative tests, would evidently have some effect upon political and social conditions. Such scientific training makes science an integral part of life, not only a knowledge of how natural forces and materials behave, but also a command of technical resources in making them behave in desirable ways. The pupils in such a school, from their earliest years, get a correct appreciation of the value of science in ameliorating conditions and in improving the healthfulness and security of the community in which they live.

The Gary curriculum seems to represent a determined effort to break down the distinction between the “utilitarian” and the “cultural.” All the subjects are taught, as far as possible, in concrete ways which shall draw upon familiar experience and teach the child by making him do something. That something is made, as far as possible, an activity which will enhance the life of the school community, or contribute to the social community. These activities are “utilitarian,” but they are at the same time profoundly educative. Principles are never lost sight of in practice. The artistic and academic work take equal rank with the manual. Both “cultural” and “utilitarian” are, in fact, subjected to the “_social_.” This is the key note of the Gary education.

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VII

DISCIPLINE: THE NATURAL SCHOOL

THE problems of discipline in a Gary school are essentially different from those of public schools run on the usual semi-military plan. The large degree of coöperation between teachers and pupils and between pupils, the emphasis on laboratory, shop, and “application” work, where freedom of movement and conversation is essential, produces a more natural atmosphere, and a certain amount of genuine if unconscious self-government. The children in the Gary schools are generally conscious of the unique features of their school; they understand what the school is trying to do. This sense, and their pride in its fame, cultivate an admirable school spirit denied to those schools which are operated on conventional lines.

The organization of the Gary school permits the reduction of formal discipline to a minimum. It allows the teachers to dispense with disciplinary rules against whispering, with formal punishments, with formal marks or demerits for conduct. The frequent change of activity, with opportunities for exercise throughout the day, prevents the children from becoming nervously overwrought. They thus escape irritability and aimless boisterousness when left to themselves. The “application” and shop work compel attention, so that the child is kept busy and interested, and the mischievousness that arises from idleness or distracted attention is avoided. As Professor Dewey says, “Trained in doing things, the child will be able to keep at work and to think of the other people around him when he is not under restraining supervision.” When the teacher’s rôle changes from preceptor to that of helper, it is obvious that what is needed in the classroom is not so much perfect quiet and military order as freedom of expression and spontaneity.

Visitors to the Gary schools bear witness to the peculiarly beneficial effects of this absence of formal discipline. The free and individual way in which the children move about to their tasks and the spontaneous way in which they talk to visitors make a marked impression. In classroom or laboratory or shop, it is usual to find about as much whispering as in a concert audience, with the same motives, freed of “rules of order,” for quiet. A natural atmosphere of orderly and tolerant conduct seems to be formed in such a school.

The writer witnessed an interesting study in spontaneous discipline in one of the Saturday voluntary classes at the Froebel School. The wood-working shop was filled with little boys who were fussing over the scraps left by the week’s work and trying to make toys and knick-knacks out of them. The teacher was in the room, but was exercising no control over the children. Yet each little boy worked on his own little job as indefatigably as if he were under a drill-master. If any of them became weary and was moved to interfere with another small worker, he was apt to be brushed off as if he were an irritating fly. The theory at the back of such freedom is that rules in the school tempt to infraction, and school discipline is, as a result, largely an attempt to solve problems which the rules directly manufacture. Some visitors, appalled by the freedom of the Gary schools, look about for signs of depredation. But they do not seem to find any. The visitor gets the impression that these schools have acquired a “public sense.” The schools are the children’s own institution, and are public in the same broad sense that streets and parks are public. The tone is of a glorified democratic club, where members are availing themselves of privileges which they know are theirs. One expects children, unless they are challenged to inventive wickedness, no more to spoil their school than a lawyer is likely to deface the panels of his club. The children seem in such a school unaffectedly to own it, and to use it as a mechanic uses his workshop or an artist his studio. The halls in the Gary school become really school streets. Benches are built by the pupils along the walls, where children are seen informally studying together. Or one comes upon a table where a boy is drawing a map, having been excused from recitation, on the theory that it is not necessary for every child to be exposed to every exercise of the class when he might do something more important outside. The children come with their parents to night school and play and run about the broad halls quite unwatched. The visitor gets the idea that children come to such a school, not because education is compulsory or because their parents send them there to get rid of them, but because what is done there is so interesting that they will not stay away. The equipment, used so freely, makes the school a substitute for the defects, not only of the poorer homes, but of the well-to-do also, in supplying activities for children.

One might say that only in a free and varied school like this was such a thing as effective discipline possible. When school activities are as attractive as they are in the Gary school, deprivation means a distinct punishment. There is ready at hand an instrument for inculcating reason into the refractory which is as powerful as the stoutest disciplinarian could wish. The ordinary school has its difficulties with discipline largely because it tries to keep up a military system of conduct without any means, now that corporal punishment is generally abolished, of punishing infractions. Marks prove ineffective, “keeping in” punishes the keeper as well as the kept, and being sent home is too often a pleasure. But in the Gary school, “being sent home” would mean being sent to a place infinitely less interesting, and being deprived of school play or any special activity would mean a real hardship. The free and spontaneous discipline of the Gary school does not mean that there is no discipline at all. Unruly cases are sometimes punished severely by the executive principal. But there is little talk about “mischievous and unruly boys.” Children who, in spite of everything, are “not adapted to our kind of a school,” may go to the school farm. This, however, is not a reform school for juvenile delinquents. Delicate children may be sent there for a vacation or classes go for a holiday. The farm contains a hundred acres, with a model dairy, good orchards, and substantial farm buildings. A graduate from one of the state universities is in charge, and is working to bring the farm up to a high pitch of cultivation and production. One group of boys who were there for a while, some of whom had come from homes surrounded by unwholesome conditions, others of whom wished to try farming for a livelihood, built themselves living quarters and a clubroom. They were provided with a teacher, and school work went on with the farm work. The boys received fifteen cents an hour for their work, and earned enough to pay their board and make something besides. These boys finally drifted back to the Emerson School or to work in the factories. But the farm remains as a valuable adjunct to the schools. Efforts are being made to make it a source of income and an object lesson to farmers in the vicinity.

Freedom of discipline is obtained in the Gary schools without the methods of “self-government” and “honor systems” which prevail elsewhere. Where the teachers retain all authority, such schemes can be little more than a humiliating pretense. For a time an elaborate self-government plan was tried in the Emerson School under the name of “Boyville,” with a sort of parody of municipal functions. But it seems to have been too unreal to last. It has been superseded by a “students’ council,” elected by the pupils of the upper grades, and exercising control over athletics, social, and other student affairs. This students’ council has executive charge of the “auditorium” periods, for which it elects a presiding officer and secretary, alternately a boy and a girl, every month. The elections for councilors are conducted in regular form, with ballots printed by the pupils in the school printing-shop. Booths are erected, judges appointed, and the election carried through, after a campaign, in which the parties meet, nominate a boy and girl for each office, and appoint a campaign manager who arranges a program for the campaign. The candidates make speeches, giving their views and the arguments for their policies.

Like everything in the Gary schools, this political practice is put into effect on a broader scale. During a recent campaign the students’ council in the Emerson School arranged a public meeting at which prominent men of the city appeared and argued for their respective parties. The meeting was entirely organized and managed by the pupils. Such practical application seems far more real and instructive than the usual play at self-government.

Student organization in the Gary schools grows out of real work. Athletic teams and sports of various kinds are connected directly with the gymnasium work and organized play. Glee clubs and orchestras grow out of the music work. A monthly paper is conducted by the high-school pupils as part of their English work, and printed by them in the school printing-shop. There are, strictly speaking, no “extra-curricular activities” in the Gary schools. The curriculum deliberately provides for all wholesome activities, and the student interests grow out of it. Problems of “fraternities” and of the control of school athletics, which confront so many schools, are thus avoided. The students do not get into the habit of thinking of their clubs and teams as something outside of the school community life.

An example of how spontaneous organization may spring up is that of the boys’ ninth-grade English class last year in the Emerson School, which formed itself into the Emerson Improvement Association. It tries to suggest civic improvements for the school community, and the speaking and writing necessary to the conducting of the affairs of the organization provide the basis for the English work.

DRAWING FROM A MODEL AT THE EMERSON SCHOOL
Notice frieze on wall designed and painted by the children themselves
]

This illustrates the way that effort is made to take advantage of all the spontaneity and initiative which pupils display in organization. The moral effects of this active form of education are clearly great. Professor Dewey thinks it is a mistake to consider that an interesting and free school “makes things too easy for the child.” In the ideal school the interests and needs of the child are identical. It is a mistake, he says, to think that interesting things are necessarily easy. They may be hard, but the interest overcomes the difficulty, and it is in the overcoming that the moral value lies. Irksome tasks may be valuable, but it is not in their irksomeness that their value lies. Work that appeals to pupils as worth while, that holds out the promise of resulting in something to their own or the school’s interests, involves just as much persistence and concentration as work given by the sternest advocate of disciplinary drill.

Most of the visitors to the Gary schools bear witness to the excellent tone of the pupils, “the free and natural way,” to quote one authoritative teacher, “in which pupils govern themselves without the rigorous discipline found in other systems.” Dr. Harlan Updegraff, of the Federal Bureau of Education, says, “The pupils of the Gary schools seem to display greater self-control, more self-respect, and more thoughtful consideration for others than the pupils of the same age in most of the better school systems of to-day. I am inclined to think that it comes largely from their games and play, but a part of it is due to the organization of the school, and to the practices that have evolved in its administration. No child in Gary has a single teacher who is the object of his hero-worship, upon whom he tends to become more or less dependent, or his arch-enemy whom he detests with a growing hatred. The Gary pupil has several teachers, each of whom affects him in a different way. He becomes more conscious of his individuality in this way, and learns to determine for himself what he should do and become. Under such a system the influence of fellow pupils becomes relatively stronger than in the ordinary school. It is, therefore, highly important that care be taken to further the development of right ideals in the student body. Organized play has its great value here. Self-control, coöperation, courage, self-respect, consideration for others, and a sense of justice have been developed in the Gary youth to a noticeable degree, largely, it seems to me, through the spirit that prevails in consequence of the administration of the physical training department. Pupils who love their school better than the streets, who have a good physical tone through their play and physical exercises, and who have good self-control and independence of thought, must naturally have a more favorable attitude toward school work.”

Such a school will evidently train character as a by-product. Self-activity, self or coöperative instruction, freedom of movement, _camaraderie_ with teachers, interesting and varied work, study, and play, a sense of what the school is doing, social introspection,—all combine to give an admirable moral training and to produce those desirable intellectual and moral qualities that the world most needs to-day. Not obedience but self-reliance does such a school cultivate.

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VIII

CRITICISMS AND EVALUATIONS

THE criticisms directed against the Gary schools by superintendents and teachers are criticisms rather of the whole educational philosophy behind the institution than objections to the detailed working-out of the philosophy. Those who follow Professor Dewey’s philosophy find in the Gary schools—as Professor Dewey does himself—the most complete and admirable application yet attempted, a synthesis of the best aspects of the progressive “schools of to-morrow.”