THE RELATION OF THE SCHOOL TO THE COMMUNITY
Work is essentially social in its character, for the occupations which
people carry on are for human needs and ends. They are concerned with
maintaining the relations with things and with others which make up
the world we live in. Even the acts that are concerned with keeping
alive are arranged to fit into a social scheme which has modified all
man’s instinctive acts and thoughts. Everything about this scheme is
dependent upon the ability of people to work together successfully. If
they can do this a well-balanced, happy and prosperous society results.
Without these occupations, which are essentially social life--that
is human life--civilization can not go on. The result is a sort of
social education by necessity, since every one must learn to adapt
himself to other individuals and to whole communities. When it is left
to circumstances this education, although necessary, is haphazard and
only partial. We send children to school supposedly to learn in a
systematic way the occupations which constitute living, but to a very
large extent the schools overlook, in the methods and subject-matter
of their teaching, the social basis of living. Instead of centering
the work in the concrete, the human side of things, they put the
emphasis on the abstract, hence the work is made academic--unsocial.
Work then is no longer connected with a group of people all engaged
in occupations, but is isolated, selfish and individualistic. It is
based on a conception of society which no longer fits the facts, an
every-man-for-himself society which ceased to exist a hundred years
ago. The ordinary school curriculum ignores the scientific democratic
society of to-day and its needs and ideals, and goes on fitting
children for an individualistic struggle for existence, softened by a
little intellectual “culture” for the individual’s enjoyment.
Schools started in this country in pioneer days, when a comparatively
small number of people were scattered over an immense country that
offered them unlimited and unexplored opportunities. The pioneer was
dependent upon his own ability in seizing these opportunities, in
getting ahead, in his use of nature’s raw material. He lived much alone
and for himself; no one was really dependent upon his relations with
others; for there were few people, endless material, and unorganized
communities, without traditions or institutions. The welfare of the
country was dependent upon the spread of the doctrines of getting
on, and every man for himself. It was entirely natural that the new
schools should reflect this ideal and shape their work to drive home
the lesson. Our early settlers came from countries with traditions of
culture and “learning”; and it was natural that they should look to
their schools to keep alive these transplanted ideals in the midst of
their struggle with nature. Culture did not mean to them a harmonious
development of all the child’s faculties, but it meant rather the
storing up of historical facts and the acquiring of knowledge and the
literatures of the past. Learning, too, did not mean finding out about
the things around them or about what was going on in other parts of
the world; it meant reviewing the achievements of the past, learning
to read the dead languages, the deader the language the greater the
reputation for “learning.” The school curriculums were principally
devoted, therefore, to turning the eyes of the pupils to the past,
where alone they could find things worth studying and where, too, they
might find the refinements of esthetic and intellectual development. A
knowledge of the “three R’s” and a little natural “smartness” was all
the social equipment the child needed, all the preparation that was
necessary for him to begin to get on in the world. Once he had that
equipment the schools could then turn their attention to giving him
culture.
However interesting or enlightening such culture might be to the
individual, obviously the first business of the public school is to
teach the child to live in the world in which he finds himself, to
understand his share in it, and to get a good start in adjusting
himself to it. Only as he can do these things successfully will he have
time or inclination to cultivate purely intellectual activities.
The public schools started with the awakening of the spirit of liberty
and democracy. More and more people realized that there was no
possibility of an equal chance for every one, if a very small minority
of the population had entire control of the material of science, which
was so rapidly changing all social and industrial conditions. Naturally
enough when these popular schools were started, the community turned to
the schools already in existence for their curriculum and organization.
The old schools, however, were not conducted to give equal opportunity
to all, but for just the opposite purpose, to make more marked the line
between classes, to give the leisure and moneyed classes something
which every one could not get, to cater to their desire for distinction
and to give them occupation.
People lived generation after generation in the same place, carrying
on the same occupations under the same conditions. Their world was so
small that it did not seem to offer much in the way of material for a
school education; and what it did offer was primarily concerned with
earning a living. But the schools were for people who did not earn
their own livings, for people who wished to be accomplished, polished
and interesting socially, so the material was abstract, purposely
separated from the concrete and the useful. Ideals of culture and
education were and still are to a surprising extent based entirely upon
the interests and demands of an aristocratic and leisure class. Having
such an ideal of culture it was natural to the pioneers to copy the
curriculum of the schools made for this ideal, even when the purpose
of their schools was to give an equal industrial and social chance to
all. From the very beginning of the public schools in this country
the material of the curriculum reflected social conditions which
were rapidly passing away: ideals of education that a feudal society,
dependent upon its aristocracy, had developed.
The tremendous change in society which the application of science to
industry brought about, changes which caused the French Revolution and
the general revolution of 1848, effected a reconstruction of nearly
all the institutions of civilization, the death of a great many, and
the birth of many more. The need of popular education was one of the
results of the change, and with this need came the public schools.
As their form did not adapt itself to the new conditions, but simply
copied the schools already existing, the process of reconstruction to
fit the new society is still going on, and is only just beginning to
become conscious. A democratic society, dependent upon applications of
science for all its prosperity and welfare, can not hope to use with
any great success a system of education which grew up for the ruling
body in an autocratic society using only human power for its industries
and wealth. The ever-increasing dissatisfaction with the schools and
the experiments in trade and industrial training which are being
started, are protests against clinging to this outworn inheritance.
They are the first steps in the process of building a new education
which shall really give an equal chance to every one, because it will
base itself on the world in which the children live.
There are three things about the old-fashioned school which must
be changed if schools are to reflect modern society: first, the
subject-matter, second, the way the teacher handles it, and third,
the way the pupils handle it. The subject-matter will not be altered
as to name. Reading, writing, arithmetic and geography will always be
needed, but their substance will be greatly altered and added to. In
the first place modern society realizes that the care and growth of the
body are just as important as the development of the mind; more so,
for the latter is dependent upon the former, so schools will become
places for children to learn to live physically as well as mentally.
Again we need to know how to read and write nowadays so that we may be
able to do the simplest daily actions, take the right street-car, avoid
dangerous places, and keep in touch with people and events we can not
see, and, in fact, do almost everything connected with our occupations.
But the schools are still teaching reading and writing as if they were
ends in themselves, simply luxuries to be acquired by pupils for their
private edification. The same thing is true of geography; pupils learn
boundaries, populations and rivers as if their object was to store up
facts that everybody may not know. But in a society where railroads
and steamboats, newspapers and telegraph, have made the whole world
neighbors, and where no community is self-supporting, the desirability
of really knowing about these neighbors is obvious. In other words our
world has been so tremendously enlarged and complicated, our horizons
so widened and our sympathies so stimulated, by the changes in our
surroundings and habits brought about by machinery, that a school
curriculum which does not show this same growth can be only very
partially successful. The subject-matter of the schoolroom must be
enlarged to take in the new elements and needs of society. This can be
done without overburdening the pupils by effecting the second and third
necessary changes.
The complication and multiplication due to machinery and the increase
in the mere number of facts that are known about things through
scientific discoveries, make the task of mastering even one subject
almost impossible. When we consider all the facts connected with
teaching the geography of our own country, the climatic and geological
facts, the racial facts, the industrial and political facts, and the
social and scientific facts, we begin to realize the hopelessness of
teaching with lists of facts. Geography embraces nearly the entire
range of human knowledge and endeavor. The same thing is true to a
lesser extent of all the subjects in the curriculum. The great number
of facts at our disposal in any one branch makes a mere classification
of the principal ones seem like a makeshift. So teachers, instead
of having their classes read and then recite facts from textbooks,
must change their methods. Facts present themselves to every one in
countless numbers, and it is not their naming that is useful, but the
ability to understand them and see their relation and application to
each other. So the function of the teacher must change from that of a
cicerone and dictator to that of a watcher and helper. As teachers come
to watch their individual pupils with a view to allowing each one the
fullest development of his thinking and reasoning powers, and to use
the tables of reading, writing, and arithmetic as means of training the
child’s abilities to judge and act, the rôle of the child necessarily
changes too. It becomes active instead of passive, the child becomes
the questioner and experimenter.
It is the rare mind that can get relations or draw conclusions from
simply hearing facts. Most people must see and handle things before
they can tell how these things will behave and what their meaning is.
The teacher then becomes the one who sees that the pupils get proper
material, and that they use it in ways that are true; that is, in ways
that represent relations and conditions that actually exist outside the
classroom. This is simply another way of saying that in a society where
every one is supposed to take care of himself, and is supposed to have
liberty of person and action, up to the point of harming others, it is
pretty important that every one should be able to conduct himself, that
is, to act so that he can take care of himself successfully. For its
own sake society can not afford to train up its children in a way that
blunts and dulls the quickness and accuracy of judgment of the baby
before it begins school. If it does this it is increasing the number
of incompetents who will be a drag on the whole of society. Dogmatic
methods which prescribe and make for docility and passivity not only
become ineffective in modern society but they actually hinder the
development of the largest possibilities of society.
All the educational reformers following Rousseau have looked to
education as the best means of regenerating society. They have been
fighting against the feudal and pioneer notion that the reason for a
good education was to enable your children and mine to get ahead of
the rest of the community, to give individuals another weapon to use
in making society contribute more to their purse and pleasure. They
have believed that the real reason for developing the best possible
education was to prevent just this, by developing methods which would
give a harmonious development of all the powers. This can be done by
socializing education, by making schools a real part of active life,
not by allowing them to go their own way, shunting off all outside
influences, and isolating themselves. Froebel, Pestalozzi, and their
followers tried to effect just this linking up with society which would
result in the development of a social spirit in every one. But they
did not have the means for making their schools embryo communities.
The demand for popular education was still so small that the community
was not willing to recognize the schools as an integral part, and the
idea that children were anything but miniature grown-ups, was still
so new that successful methods of handling groups of children had
not been developed. The rôle of the community in making the schools
vital is just as important as the rôle of the school itself. For in a
community where schools are looked upon as isolated institutions, as
a necessary convention, the school will remain largely so in spite of
the most skillful methods of teaching. But a community that demands
something visible from its schools, that recognizes the part they
play in the welfare of the whole just as it recognizes its police and
fire departments, that uses the energies and interest of its youthful
citizens, not simply controlling their time until they are prepared to
be turned out as citizens--such a community will have social schools,
and whatever its resources, it will have schools that develop community
spirit and interests.
A great deal has been written lately about the public school system
at Gary, Ind., with special reference to the novel features of school
administration that are being worked out there, or else with emphasis
on the opportunities for industrial training. But the biggest idea
there is the one behind these new features. It is the social and
community idea. Mr. Wirt, the superintendent of schools, has had an
opportunity to make the schools of the steel town almost from the
very beginning of the town, and he has wanted to do it right. He
did not visit the most famous schools all over the country or send
for the best school architect; instead he stayed right at home, and
forgetting what had or had not been done in other places, he tried
to make the best possible schools for Gary. The question he tried to
answer was this: What did the Gary children need to make them good
citizens and happy and prosperous human beings, and how could the
money available for educational purposes supply all these needs? The
industrial features of his schools will be taken up later, but it may
be well to point out in passing that they were not instituted to turn
out good workers for the steel company, nor to save the factories the
expense of training their own workers, but for the educational value
of the work they involved. In the same way it would be a mistake to
consider the Gary schools simply as an attempt to take the unpromising
immigrant child and turn him into a self-supporting immigrant, or as an
attempt to meet the demand of an industrial class for a certain sort of
training.
[Illustration: The pupil stays in the same building from day nursery
through high school. (Gary, Ind.)]
Mr. Wirt found himself the superintendent of schools in an American
town, responsible for thousands of children coming from all sorts of
surroundings. It was his problem to take care of them for a number
of years in such a way that at the end of the time each child would
be able to find his own job and do it successfully, whether this was
feeding a machine or managing a business, whether it was taking care
of a family or working in an office, or teaching school. His problem
is not to give the special information each one may need for the
details of his work, but to keep the natural interests and enthusiasms
of childhood, to enable each pupil to gain control of his mind and
body, and to insure his being able to do the rest for himself. To be
successful as a human being and an American citizen, is the goal that
the public schools of the country have set for their pupils: earning
a living forms part of this ideal, and follows as a matter of course
if the larger training is successful. There are many factors to be
considered in deciding on the best ways of reaching this goal: such as
the individual peculiarities of every child that goes to school; the
people that will teach; the neighborhood in which the child lives; and
the larger community which pays for the schools. Mr. Wirt’s plan takes
advantage to their full value of the contributions each one has to make
to the whole scheme. Each factor is a contributory asset; without it
the others could not perform their work; therefore it means a weak spot
in the result if anything is overlooked.
A tremendous waste in the organization of the ordinary public school
appears at the first glance to a critic who is seeking to spend the
school taxes with the greatest possible benefit to the children and
to the taxpayers. The entire school equipment of building, yard, and
supplies stands empty for half of every school day, besides summer
vacation and Saturdays. The buildings are expensive and for the greater
part of the time are not in use at all. This is an extravagance in
itself, but when we consider the way the average child who goes to
public school in town or city spends the hours when he is not in
school, and the very incomplete education he gets during the school
hours, we begin to realize just how serious this extravagance is. Mr.
Wirt decided to keep the schools open all day in Gary, so that the
children would not be forced to spend the greater part of their time
playing in the alleys and on crowded street corners, exposed to all the
dangers to health and morals that such places offer for the loiterer.
Still the buildings would be closed for many hours a day and for many
weeks, and he decided that the people who built the buildings--the
taxpayers--ought to have a chance to use them for public purposes
during this time, so the Gary schools have evening school, Saturday
classes, and summer sessions. This makes the up-keep of the buildings
much more expensive than having them open for a few months only,
therefore some way of running the plant more economically must be
discovered.
Children can not sit still all day at their desks as they do for five
hours in most schools; therefore other things must be provided for them
to do if they are to keep well and busy during eight hours of school.
The Gary buildings obtain this necessary economy by using a building
for twice as many pupils as the ordinary building is supposed to be
able to take care of. There are two schools in every house, one from
eight to three and the other from nine to four, and each takes its turn
at the regular classrooms during alternate hours, the remaining half of
the day being spent in the various occupations that make Gary unique.
In this way enough money is saved to equip shops and pay extra teachers
for the subjects that supplement the regular curriculum, and to pay
for the extra sessions. Thus with taxes of ordinary size the people
of Gary get schools that utilize the children’s time, and give them
greatly increased facilities for learning, besides offering the adults
of the community opportunities for special courses in evening school.
At present in Gary the number of adults using the school buildings
is greater than the number of children, though of course the number
of hours they attend school is much shorter. By having two duplicate
schools in every building one half the usual cost per classroom is
saved, and enough money to supply healthy activities for the children
for eight hours a day and to keep the schools open evenings, holidays
and Sundays for adults is obtained.
Each building is equipped with a gymnasium, swimming pool, and
playground, and has physical directors that are in attendance for the
entire eight hours. Physical training is as much a part of the regular
school work as anything else, and besides the work that is part of
every pupil’s program there are two hours a day when the playground
is open for the children to use as they please. Instead of going to
the streets to play, the children stay in the school and use the play
opportunities it offers. For the most part the physical training takes
the form of supervised play and apparatus work. Experimentation has
shown here as in so many other places that the pupils are not really
interested in the formal group exercises, and that they go through
with them under compulsion and so lose most of the benefit. So for
the gymnastic drill, swimming pool, tennis courts, and apparatus are
largely substituted. The directors see that the individual gets the
special exercise that he needs so that the work does not lose its
orderliness or effectiveness, and besides getting physical development
suited to his needs, every child has a healthy and pleasant place to
play or otherwise spend his time outdoors.
The Gary pupil is expected to gain physically during the school year
just as he is expected to keep up with his grade in his other work.
Each child is examined by a doctor, and the pupils who are not strong
enough for the strain of the classroom work are not sent home to do
nothing until they are stronger, but are kept in school and given a
program suited to their strength, their classroom time is cut down
to a minimum, and they spend most of the day on the playground or in
the gymnasium, doing the sort of things the doctor says they need to
get strong. The physical growth of the pupils is just as important as
the mental, and by devoting the same care to it that is given to the
child’s progress through the grades, the schools go a long way towards
making themselves a small community which gives every opportunity for
a normal and natural life.
The schools are open eight hours a day, but the grade teachers teach
for only six hours, while the physical directors are on duty for the
whole time. Four hours of each school’s time is given to the regular
classroom work or laboratories, and one hour for the auditorium and one
hour for “application” or play. Then there are the other two hours when
the children may use the play facilities if they wish, and they all do
use them. By rotating the classes the number of teachers does not have
to be increased, and the pupils get the benefit of teachers especially
trained for the subject they are teaching. By dividing each school into
groups of pupils the classes are smaller than in most public schools.
For the first two hours in the morning--from 8:15 to 10:15--one school
has the use of the classrooms, studios, shops and laboratories, one
group in a recitation room for the first hour and in the shops for
the second, the second group beginning with the shop work. The other
school uses the playground for the first hour and attendance is not
compulsory, for the second hour one group goes to the auditorium and
the other remains on the playground for systematic gymnastics or has
an “application” period. Then at 10:15 the first school goes to the
auditorium and playgrounds for its work and the second school takes
possession of the class and shop rooms for two hours. Grades one to
five have two hours daily in regular classrooms for formal instruction
in language, history, literature, and mathematics. Grades six to twelve
have three hours daily for this formal instruction. The additional hour
is taken from the play and application periods. Grades one to five
have one hour of laboratory work in science or shop work in industrial
training, thirty minutes for music or literature, and thirty minutes
for physical training. Grades six to twelve have the entire two hours
for shop work in industrial training, laboratory work in science, or
music and drawing.
By this scheme of alternation of classes and schools twice the number
of children that are usually cared for in one building are taken
care of in smaller classes by teachers who are specialists in their
subjects. For besides the industrial teachers, there are teachers for
French, German, history, mathematics, literature, music, art, nature
study, and the sciences. This additional efficiency is paid for by the
saving on buildings effected by the two school systems. Each grade room
is used by at least four different classes, so each child does not
have a desk where he keeps his things and belongings, but has a locker
for his books and changes his classroom at the end of the hour. No one
teacher is responsible for one set of pupils, but for her own work, and
in the same way the pupils are responsible for themselves. Obviously
such a scheme as this requires a real spirit of coöperation among the
pupils and teachers, and also good business management.
Mr. Wirt believes that lack of just this has been one of the reasons
why the public schools have lost so many of the opportunities that Gary
is using. Running a big institution successfully from the business end
is a large order in itself, and Mr. Wirt feels that school principals
and supervisors have been too greatly handicapped in being expected to
do this business while carrying out an educational program. He believes
that the school principal or superintendent should be a business
manager, an administrative officer simply for the building or for the
city. The educational policy of the schools, the program, and methods
should be looked out for by experts who are free from the details of
administration. These supervising educators should not be appointed for
districts but for subjects, and should move their offices from time
to time from one school to another, so that they may really keep in
touch with all the work in their subject, and so that no one school
will be overstrong in one subject. These supervisors should act as the
educational principals of the schools where they have their offices
for the time, and the whole body of supervisors arrange the curricula
for all the schools. Gary has too few schools as yet to enable the
completion of such a plan, but the present organization shows the same
broad-mindedness and desire to get the coöperation and value of all the
work of all the teachers through the system, from the newest assistant
to the superintendent himself.
In discipline, in social life, and in the curriculum the Gary schools
are doing everything possible, in coöperation with church and home,
to use to the best educational purpose every resource of money,
organization and neighborhood influence. The school is a small
community in its discipline, and a democratic one. The work is so well
arranged that the children want to go to school; there is no need to
drag them with truant officers or overawe them by a show of stern
authority. Once in the school building they feel at home and take the
same interest and responsibility in the work that they take in their
own homes. Each child knows what all the other children and classes
are doing, for all the children are constantly meeting in the locker
rooms or as they pass through the halls for their change of classroom
at the end of every hour. The auditorium and the system of visiting
classes, and the repairing and manufacturing of school equipment by
the students, are strong factors in creating the spirit that prevails
among the scholars. There is a student council in each school elected
by the students to attend to the interests of the student body and
to the order of the building. There are health campaigns carried on
by the school doctors coöperating through the school printing press
with the English classes and the auditorium periods. The children take
such a keen interest in these, and work so hard that there is a larger
percent of contagious diseases among the children under school age than
among those in school, in spite of the greater chances for contagion
among the latter. Instead of simply enforcing the health laws, the
school authorities tell the children what the laws are, why they were
made and how they can help to keep down contagion and all sorts of
sickness; in chemistry and cooking the pupils are taught enough about
germs and physiology so that they understand what contagion and dirt
mean. The result is that the children themselves take every precaution
to prevent sickness, and when a classmate is sick they see to it that
quarantine is enforced and that the school doctor is notified.
The schools have carried on a pure milk campaign in the same way; the
pupils brought samples of milk from home and tested it, and then saw
that their parents did something about it if impurities were found. An
anti-fly campaign goes on all the time and meets with a real response
from the children. In the matter of health the schools not only do
their share as a part of the whole community, they do more than this,
acting as assistants to the board of health and getting rid of the
prejudice and fear of city doctors which is so common in our foreign
communities, and which makes it so hard to keep down disease and take
care of school children. Once the coöperation and understanding of the
children is gained by the city doctors, it is not hard to have their
adenoids or eyes attended to. The children know why these things need
to be done even if their parents do not, and they see to it that the
parents are kept from interfering and that they help.
Another difficult problem for the public schools in an industrial
community with a foreign population is to keep the children in school
after the legal age at which they may leave. The Gary schools go
about this just as they attack the question of public health, not by
making more rules or trying compulsion, but by getting the children
themselves to help, by making the schools so obviously useful for
each individual that he wants to stay. There are no “High Schools” in
Gary! A pupil goes to school in one building from the day he enters
kindergarten until he is ready for college or until he goes into
business or the factory. There is no graduation with a celebration
and a diploma at the end of the eighth grade. When a pupil begins the
ninth grade his program deviates from the plan of previous years, but
otherwise there is nothing done to make the child think he has gone
as far as he needs, that from now on he will simply be getting frills
and luxuries. The teachers do not change. The same history, language
and literature teachers conduct all the grades; and in the shops the
pupils get a chance to learn some one thing thoroughly. The pupils
do not look forward to the last four years of school with dread of a
hard and useless grind, they look at it as a continuation of their
school life, getting harder from year to year as their own ability
increases. And especially they regard this period as an opportunity
to get training whose immediate value they can see. The arguments of
the school to persuade the pupils to stay in school are practical,
telling arguments, things the children can see. The school press prints
from time to time bulletins explaining to the pupils and their parents
the opportunities that the Gary schools offer in the way of general
education and of special training. These bulletins give statistics
and information about the opportunities in the different fields of
work; they show the boys and girls in figures the relative positions
and salaries of high-school graduates and those who leave school at
fourteen--as they appear one, two, or ten years after leaving school.
Business men come to the schools and tell the students what the chances
for graduates and non-graduates are in their business and why they want
better educated employees. Statistics of Gary pupils are kept and shown
to the pupils. The usual break between the eighth grade and high school
does not exist, and, therefore, parents do not think it necessary to
take their children out of school. They find that the sacrifices they
have made to keep the children in can be kept up for a few years more.
If children are going to learn a trade better by staying in school
than by leaving, and if children are keen to continue in school with
definite plans for the future, even the most poverty-stricken parent
is unwilling to thwart the advantage of his children. It is well known
that in big cities where the proportion of pupils who leave school at
fourteen is overwhelming, and where the usual reason given is that the
parents need the financial help of the children, the real reason for
defection is the indifference of the pupils themselves to school. The
almost invariable answer given by the child to the question, “Why did
you leave school?” is, “Because I did not like it.” This fact taken
with the poverty at home is enough to make them leave school at the
first chance. Give the child work that he recognizes as interesting and
valuable and a chance to play, and his hatred of school will speedily
be forgotten.
The inflexibility of the ordinary public school tends to push the
pupils out of school instead of keeping them in. The curriculum does
not fit them, and there is no way of making it fit without upsetting
the entire organization of the school. One failure sets a pupil back
in all his work, and he soon gets the feeling that his own efforts
are not important, because the school machinery works on at the same
rate, regardless of any individual pupil or study. Indifference or
dislike is almost surely the result of feeling that work is making no
impression, that the machine for which he is working is not after all
affected or dependent upon his work. In Gary organization has been
made to fit each individual child, and is flexible enough so that even
the most difficult pupil can not upset its working. The child and the
school get along together. We have explained in an earlier paragraph
how the two-school system works so that an individual can spend more
or less time on any one subject, or can drop it altogether. The child
who is weak physically spends much of his time on the playground, while
the child who is weak in arithmetic or geography can take these lessons
with both schools or even with a grade below, and hundreds of children
in the same building can make the same sort of change in their program
without disturbing the orderly conduct of the school routine. A pupil
who is stronger in one subject than in the rest of his work, can take
that subject with a higher grade. The pupil who is losing interest in
school and falling behind in most of his studies, or who is beginning
to talk of leaving, is not punished for this lack of interest by being
put still further back. His teachers find out in what he is good and
give him plenty of time to work at it, and to get ahead in it so
that his interest in his work is stimulated. If he later wakes up to
an interest in the regular school program, so much the better. Every
facility is given him to catch up with his grade in all the work. If
this awakening does not come, the boy or girl has still been kept in
school until he or she learned some one thing, probably the one most
suited to the pupil’s ability, instead of leaving or failing entirely
by being held back in everything until even the one strong faculty died
and the pupil was without either training or the moral stimulus of
success.
[Illustration: Special teachers for special subjects from the very
beginning. (Gary, Ind.)]
The school program is reorganized every two months and the pupil may
change his entire program at any one of these times, instead of having
to struggle along for half a year with work that is too hard or too
easy or not properly apportioned. For administrative convenience the
schools still keep the grade classifications, but pupils are classified
not according to the grade number, but as “rapid,” “average,” and
“slow” workers. Rapid pupils finish the twelve years of school at about
sixteen years of age, average workers at eighteen, and slow workers
at twenty. This classification does not describe the quality of work
done. The slow worker may be a more thorough scholar than the rapid
worker. The classification is used not to distinguish between the
abilities of scholars, but to take advantage of the natural growth of
the child by letting his work keep abreast with it. The rapid child
moves as quickly as possible from grade to grade instead of being held
back until his work has no stimulus for him, and the slow worker is not
pushed into work before he is ready for it. Does this flexible system
work successfully or does it result in easy-going, slap-dash methods?
We have only to visit the schools and see the pupils hard at work, each
one responsible for his own movements through the day, to be convinced
that the children are happy and interested; while from the point of
view of the teacher and educator, the answer is even more positively
favorable, when we consult the school records. Fifty-seven per cent.
of all the school children in Gary who are thirteen years old are in
the seventh grade or above it. This is a better showing than most
industrial communities can make, and means that the majority of all the
Gary school children go through school at about the same rate as the
average pupil who is preparing for college. Even more remarkable than
this are the figures regarding the pupils who have gone on to higher
schools or colleges after leaving the Gary schools. One-third of all
the pupils that have left the Gary schools during the eight years of
their existence are now in the state university, in an engineering
school, or a business college. When we remember that the population
of Gary is made up principally of laborers in the steel mills, and is
sixty per cent. foreign born, and compare with this the usual school
history of the second generation in this country, we realize how
successful Mr. Wirt has been in making a system which meets the needs
of the pupils, a system that appeals to the community as so good that
they want to go on and get more education than mere necessity requires.
The motive back of these changes from the routine curriculum is always
a social one. Mr. Wirt believes that if the social end of the school
is properly emphasized the pedagogical will take care of itself. The
public schools must study the needs and qualities of its pupils,
the needs of the community and the opportunities that the community
contributes to the schools’ welfare. We have seen how the physical life
of the child and the health of the community are used in the school
curriculum, so as to make the curriculum more interesting, and for
the good of the community as well. This same close connection is kept
up between the school work and other community interests and matters
of daily life. Every advantage is taken of the social instincts of
children in the teaching. Instead of isolating each grade and cutting
off the younger children from the older, the two are thrown together
as much as possible. The younger grades use the laboratories and shops
which would be an unwarranted extravagance if the high-school pupils
were not in the same buildings and using them also for technical
training. They use them not only for beginning lessons in science or
manual training, but they go into them when the older classes are
working there to act as helpers or as an audience for the higher
grades. Fourth and fifth grade pupils thus assist seventh, eighth, and
ninth grade students in shops, studios, and laboratories.
The older children learn responsibility and coöperation from having to
look out for the little people, and the latter learn an astonishing
amount about the subject from waiting on, watching, and asking
questions of the older pupils. Both grades find out what is going on
in the school and get thereby a large feeling of fellowship, while
the interest of the lower one grows and finds reasons for staying
in school. The work of the older children is used, wherever it is
feasible, in teaching the lower grades. Maps and charts made in drawing
are used for less advanced pupils in nature study or geography; the
printing shop makes the spelling lists and problem sheets for the whole
school; the doctor in his health campaigns calls in the art and English
workers to make posters and pamphlets. The halls of the schools are
hung with notices of what is going on in the school, with especially
good and interesting drawings or maps, with information about what is
being made in the different shops, or about anything that the whole
school ought to see or know.
Another strong element in making public opinion is the auditorium,
where every pupil in the school spends one hour each day, sometimes
for choral singing, sometimes to hear an older grade tell about an
interesting experiment in physics, to find out from a cooking class
about cheap and nutritious bills of fare, or to hear the doctor
tell how the school can improve the health conditions in its home
neighborhoods. The auditorium period is for the use of the general
community as well. Ministers, politicians, any one in the city who is
doing anything interesting, may come in and tell the children about it.
The school invites all social agencies in the neighborhood to come in
in this way.
The hour for “application” contributes to the same end. The children
go to the nearest public library to read or to look up references for
their class work, or simply for a lesson on the use of library books;
or they may go to the neighboring Y. M. C. A. building to use the
gymnasium or to listen to a lecture; or they may go to any church or
club that offers religious instruction desired by the parents. The
school is a social clearing house for the neighborhood. The application
period is also used to supplement the regular classroom studies by
means of practical work in the shops or on the playground. Thus an
arithmetic class may get a lesson in applied mathematics by laying out
the foundation for a house on the playground, or by spending an hour
in the school store, a room fitted up like a grocery store, where the
children get practice in mental and oral arithmetic and in English by
playing “store.” The application period may also be spent in doing work
for the school building. Thus an older pupil, studying stenography
and typewriting or bookkeeping, might go to the school office and
do an hour of real work, helping one of the clerks. The boys in the
fifth grade put in this time in tending the school storeroom. They
take entire charge of the school supplies, check up all the material
sent in by the board and distributing it through the building to the
teachers and janitors. The records of the pupils in the different
shops are kept by other pupils in their application time. One paid
bookkeeper has general charge of an office, where the pupils come with
printed slips filled out by the shop teacher, giving them credit for
so much time at a certain rate of skill; the pupil clerks give the
pupils credit on their record for this work and keep all the records.
Pupils also run a post office for the building, and the writer saw a
sixth grade boy delivering salary checks and collecting receipts for
them through the building. Children who do this kind of work are not
only learning arithmetic and bookkeeping, they are learning as well
responsibility and reliability. They get an appreciation of what their
school means, and are made wide-awake to its welfare; they learn that
they are the real school, identical with its interests.
The school lunch room is conducted by the cooking department. When the
Emerson School was first built it was equipped with the regulation
cooking school desks, individual gas burners, tables and lockers.
All this has since been turned into a serving table where student
waiters serve the food they have cooked--real lunches to their fellow
students, who pay a student cashier. The younger girls get their
cooking lessons by going to the older girls’ cooking lessons as helpers
and watchers. The girls do all the menu planning and buying for the
lunch room and keep the accounts. They have to pay expenses and serve
menus that come up to the standard set by the chemistry department,
where they have analyzed food and made tables of comparative values.
The result is steaming hot food, nourishing and well cooked, sold very
cheaply. The daily menu is posted with the price of each article and
its food value, and the walls of the lunch room are hung with posters
and charts showing the relative values of foodstuffs, sample menus for
cheap and nourishing meals, and the extravagance of poor food. These
have all been made by the cooking school students and are the result of
actual experimentation.
Gary schools do not teach civics out of a textbook. Pupils learn civics
by helping to take care of their own school building, by making the
rules for their own conduct in the halls and on the playgrounds, by
going into the public library, and by listening to the stories of
what Gary is doing as told by the people who are doing it. They learn
by a mock campaign, with parties, primaries, booths and ballots
for the election of their own student council. Pupils who have made
the furniture and the cement walks with their own hands, and who
know how much it cost, are slow to destroy walks or furniture, nor
are they going to be very easily fooled as to the value they get in
service and improvements when they themselves become taxpayers. The
health campaigns, the application work which takes them to the social
agencies, of the city, the auditorium periods when they learn more
about their city, all give civics lessons that make their own appeal.
The children can see the things with their own eyes; they are learning
citizenship by being good citizens.
The value of this practical civics is doubly great because of the
large number of children with foreign parents, who know nothing about
the government or organization of the city in which they are living,
and who, because they do not understand what they see about them,
cannot know its possibilities and limitations. The parents learn
nothing of the laws until they break them, of public health until
they endanger it, nor of social resources until they want something.
They are naturally suspicious of government and social authority in
consequence, and it is very important that their children should have
some real knowledge on which to base a sounder judgment. Besides giving
them this, the schools try to teach American standards of living to
the pupils and so to their parents. On entering school every pupil
gives the school office, besides the usual name, age, and address,
certain information about his family, its size, its resources, and the
character of the home he lives in. This record is kept in the school
and transferred if the child moves out of the school district. Every
grade teacher takes a certain number of squares in the school district,
and they make plans of this area. The children make a large scale map,
with streets, walks, lamp posts and mail boxes, locating every house,
barn, or shed and every empty lot. This is altered as changes are made.
Every child brings measurements of the rooms in his home and draws a
floor plan of his house. These plans are kept with the teacher’s map of
her district, so that she has a complete map of the neighborhood and
home of every child living in it. By comparing these with any family
record, it is a simple matter to tell if the family are living under
proper moral and hygienic conditions.
The teacher has a district small enough to know it thoroughly,
and as far as possible she gets acquainted with all the children
living in it. If bad conditions are due to ignorance or poverty, the
teacher finds out what can be done to remedy them, and sees to it
that the family learn how they can better themselves. If conditions
are very bad, neighborhood public opinion is worked up through the
other children on the block. From time to time an auditorium period
is devoted to showing these maps and pointing out the good and bad
features of blocks and neighborhoods. Children always carry the
news home to their parents, and as rents and accommodations are
freely discussed, these reports are often acted upon. The parents
are encouraged to come to the school and ask for information, and on
more than one occasion some newly arrived family has moved from an
overcrowded rear shack to a comfortable flat with the same rent because
through the children they found out that their bad quarters were
unnecessary. Because the school does this work to help, and as part of
its regular program, it is accepted by the children and their parents
as a matter of course. Information about improvements, sanitation, the
size and comfort of the houses, and the rents, is given to the parents.
If a block is poor a good block near by where conditions are better
and the rents the same, is shown them. Thus the schools not only teach
the theory of good citizenship and social conditions, they give the
children actual facts and conditions, so that they can see what is
wrong and how it can be bettered.
Gary schools use the community as much as possible as a contributor to
the educational facilities, and in so doing they give good return in
immediate results, besides the larger return in alert and intelligent
citizens. Conditions in Gary are not ideal. The schools have no larger
sums to spend than any city of its size, the teachers might be found
in any other town, and the pupils come for the most part from homes
that offer their children no training, while the parents are trying
to adjust themselves to entirely new surroundings. But these schools
have done much by showing a good business management, by spending
the taxpayers’ money in an economical way so as to give the younger
generation the largest possible facilities for spending their time
profitably. The results of the system as seen in the school buildings
and playgrounds, the alert and happy students, and the statistics of
their progress through school as well as their careers afterwards,
are doubly inspiring just because they have been accomplished with the
resources available in any public school.