place of general assembly, some forum or theater where the school may
take stock of itself. This is provided in the “auditorium,” one of the
original and essential features of the Gary plan. “Auditorium,” to which
a daily hour is given, is devoted to purposes different from the
religious exercises, declamations, and moral homilies common to the
“opening exercises” of the ordinary school. It does not even open the
day, for the Gary program makes it necessary for the “auditorium” hour
to come at periods throughout the day, differing for different classes.
The aim is to make it an occasion where anything that is happening of
peculiar interest in any part of the school may be dramatically brought
to the attention of the rest of the school. In the Gary school, each
child goes to “auditorium” for a full hour each day, and listens to a
program contributed by pupils or teachers or outside visitors. There is
always choral singing; there may be instrumental or phonograph music
besides. Lantern-slides and motion-pictures are often shown. There may
be talks by the special teachers about their work. The child may see
there gymnastic exhibitions,—as has been said, the stage at the Froebel
School is so large that a full-sized basketball game may be played upon
it before the audience,—folk-dancing, or dramatic dialogues and little
plays written by the pupils themselves about interesting things in their
study or reading. There may be debates on school issues. What is to be
presented in “auditorium” is limited only by the imagination and
expressiveness of teachers and children. The teachers in turn have the
responsibility of arranging the program, in coöperation with their
pupils. Children of widely different ages are sent together to the
“auditorium” hour, so that the younger may have their curiosity
stimulated about the work of classes that they perhaps have not yet
reached, and so that the older may lose that snobbery of age which often
causes so much unhappiness in childhood, and tends to fill the adult
mind with delusions about the young. This plan, therefore, makes for
sympathy between the pupils, makes each child familiar with the
activities of the whole school, and prevents that unfortunate
segregation and confinement of the ordinary school. Besides being able
to look into the various rooms through the glass doors, the child in the
Gary school has an opportunity of seeing in “auditorium” in dramatic
form the life of his school. The influence of this “auditorium” hour
upon the school work, particularly the academic work, can hardly fail to
be marked, for it directly motivates all the studies. It is a sort of
communal “application” activity. History and literature take on a new
meaning, because the material may be studied now always in the light of
its possible presentation to the rest of the school in dramatic and
intelligent form. Many schools use the dramatic sense to vitalize these
studies, but no other school provides so definite and regular a focus,
and so constant and interested an audience for the products of such a
vitalization. The “auditorium” in the Gary school seems to be a genuine
school-community theater, an inevitable and integral part of the school
life.
In the words of Superintendent Wirt, the Gary school aims to be a
“clearing-house for children’s activities.” The ideal is to render the
school community as self-sustaining and self-stimulating as possible.
Whatever the school cannot itself contribute to the education of the
child, it may find in the institutions of the surrounding community. Any
outside agency which provides wholesome activities for children becomes
then a sort of extension of the school. Children in the Gary school are
permitted to go out from their play or “auditorium” hour to do special
work at home, take private music or art lessons, visit the Y.M.C.A.,
settlement or neighborhood house, attend the Boy Scouts or Camp-Fire
Girls, or receive religious instruction in the churches. This outside
work is then ranked as an integral part of the school work.
It is this community coöperation which has particularly roused the
interest of religious educators. It suggests to many of them a solution
of the problems of religious education, and of separate denominational
schools. Religion does not enter the Gary school in any form, not even
in Bible reading and prayer. But children may go out, for one hour a
day, two, three, or even four times a week, to classes in religious
instruction, privately organized and supported by the various churches
of the city. To meet the situation in Gary, the churches have in some
instances engaged special instructors for these classes in religion. The
Presbyterian, Methodist, and Christian churches are said to have united
in engaging a teacher at a relatively high salary. Such coöperation not
only insures the services of well-trained and liberal teachers, but must
necessarily banish sectarian dogmatism from the teaching. In Gary, the
Baptist, Roman Catholic, and Hebrew churches, besides the Y.M.C.A., are
said to be giving this special instruction. In the Jefferson School more
than half the children attend these classes at the churches. This
feature of the Gary plan is one of the most interesting, and perhaps has
the most far-reaching possibilities, in the way of transforming
religious instruction in this country. This plan is characteristic of a
school which seeks to meet the demands of the individual child, and to
make everything in the community which is truly educational, or which,
for any reason, parents and children believe to be genuinely
educational, contribute to the life of the school community.
Since the other institutions have the same privileges as the churches,
they are all given the opportunity in this plan of enlarging their
effective resources. City schools which wish to adopt the Gary plan, but
lack the ideal school plant or the varied facilities, may often avail
themselves of the gymnasium, pools, playgrounds, etc., of near-by
Y.M.C.A. or settlement houses, and use the public library and public
playground, and thus acquire, by systematic coöperation with these other
agencies, an effectively working Gary school. This plan has been adopted
with great success in the case of the New York schools, a number of
which are in the course of adopting the Gary plan, or many features of
it. Their experience has shown that, by making the school a
“clearing-house for children’s activities,” the social resources of all
these communal institutions are vastly increased.
* * * * *
To sum up, the Gary school forms a children’s community, which aims to
provide the practical natural education of the old school, shop, and
home which educated our forefathers. It is a necessary evolution and
reorganization of the public school to meet the changed social and
industrial conditions of the modern city. The school community, by
providing a fourfold activity of work, study, and play, uses the
children’s time and keeps them from the demoralizing influence of the
streets. In the “auditorium” it provides a public theater which may
motivate all the work and study. By coöperating with all the community
agencies which provide wholesome activities for children, it makes them
all more valuable and effective. And by making the school as far as
possible a self-sustaining community, it gives meaning and purpose to
all the work, trains the children for the outside world, and cultivates
the social virtues.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IV
PROGRAMS: THE SCHOOL AS A PUBLIC UTILITY
SCHOOLS such as those in Gary, with their elaborate equipment and
special school enterprises, obviously require methods of financing
radically different from those of the ordinary public school. It is,
perhaps, this problem of how a small and relatively poor city like Gary
could afford to maintain such schools that has aroused the interest of
practical school men in the Gary plan. When the public schools were
first started in the new town, the authorities found themselves in a
peculiarly difficult situation, owing to the limited funds at hand and
the demands of a rapidly increasing population. The conventional method
of meeting the situation would have been to erect inferior buildings, to
omit playgrounds, laboratories, workshops, to employ cheap teachers, to
increase the size of classes, to limit the yearly term, or else to try
to accommodate all the children in a few buildings on half-time work.
These have been the methods which our large cities have almost
universally felt themselves obliged to adopt when confronted with these
problems of economy and congestion.
The other possible method—and this seems to be the unique contribution
of the Gary plan to the economics of education—was to treat the public
school as a public service, and apply to it all those principles of
scientific direction which have been perfected for the public use of
railroads, telephones, parks, and other “public utilities.” The new city
of Gary could create thoroughly modern, completely equipped school
plants, and operate them so as to get the maximum of service from them.
Superintendent Wirt and the school board believed that this plan would
be the true economy.
Mr. Wirt says, “You can afford any kind of school desired if ordinary
economic public-service principles are applied to public-school
management. The first principle in turning waste into profit in school
management is to use every facility all the time for all the people.”
Instead, therefore, of counting their financial resources and then
deciding what limited educational facilities could be provided with
them, the Gary authorities seem to have decided upon the ideal school
plant desired to meet the needs of the modern city child, and then to
have proceeded, by the ingenious application of principles well
recognized in business and industry, to utilize their resources so as to
support the desired facilities. The Gary plan has made evident the great
wastes involved in the conventional methods of managing the
public-school plant. All school men will agree with Superintendent Wirt
when he says that “most certainly playgrounds, gymnasiums, and
swimming-pools are good things for all children to have. I believe that
gardens, workshops, drawing and music studios are good things for
children to have. I believe that museums, art galleries, and libraries
are good things for children to use systematically and regularly. In my
judgment opportunities for religious instruction, for private
instruction in music, and for assisting in desirable home work are good
things for children. So also are coöperative classes between the
academic school and the industrial activities of the school business
departments, and between the school and industrial activities outside
the school. In what way will the use of these facilities handicap a
child in his efforts to secure an education?”
The answer is, of course, “in no way.” These are the things the most
advanced higher schools and wealthy private schools are providing for
their pupils. School men may have desired to provide all these things
for all the children of the elementary schools too, but rarely has
economic skill combined with educational philosophy to bring such an
ideal within the bounds of possibility. The Gary school seems to have
found a way. It has actually realized the ideal, and made practicable
that school-community life which other schools have only envisaged. It
has found that any kind of school desired may be had if classrooms,
auditoriums, playgrounds, etc., are in constant use all day long by all
the children in alternating groups and out of school hours by adults.
“The modern city,” says Superintendent Wirt, “is largely the result of
the application of the principle of the common use of public facilities
that we need for our personal use only part of the time. We are willing
that other people use public services when we cannot use them. How many
street-cars and what sort of service could we afford if each citizen had
to have his own private street-car seat for his own exclusive use?” Yet
the educational ideal in school management generally remains what is set
forth in the report of the 1913 Part-Time Committee of the New York
public schools,—“Every pupil is entitled to an individual seat and desk.
The teacher is entitled to the exclusive possession of a classroom....”
In the light of the Gary plan this ideal is absurd. It means, as has
been discovered in the New York experience, that school facilities can
never be made to catch up to school population. And it is absurd because
it assumes that all persons in school want to do the same thing at the
same time. But all “modern public conveniences are made possible only by
their common use and the fact that we do not want to use the same public
conveniences at the same moment. We are willing to have some one else
use our public library, look at our pictures in our public museum, walk
in our public park, sleep in our Pullman berth or in our hotel bedroom,
or travel in our steamboat when we are otherwise engaged.” It proves to
be as financially prohibitive to attempt to provide an individual desk
and seat for every school-child as it is to provide an individual seat
for every citizen who may sit in the park. “The great masses of children
in our city schools can never have ample play spaces, suitable
auditoriums, gymnasiums and swimming-pools, workshops, libraries,
museums, or even ordinary schoolrooms for study and recitation, if all
children at the same time must be using each of these facilities
separately.” The more people use these public services, the cheaper they
become for each one of us. And the more evenly the public use is
distributed, the more valuable becomes the service to each one of us.
“Increasing the number of persons using any public facility either under
public or private ownership betters the service for all, provided the
load can be uniformly distributed during operating hours. The problem
with a public lighting or transportation service is to eliminate
‘peak-loads’ as far as possible.”
We have had constantly before us the gradual extension of the principle
of multiple service of public facilities. The Gary plan makes the public
school the last of these public services to come under the operation of
these principles. As generally managed the public school has not
recognized these principles. The effect of its administrative methods,
its rigid school hours, its uniform curriculum, its emphasis on academic
work, has been rather to increase the “peak-loads” and thus
inadvertently to increase the costs of operation. In many schools, the
use of the “auditorium” does not average more than ten minutes a day for
each day of the year, and the playgrounds barely an hour each day of the
year. And for every hour that shops, etc., are empty, there is a waste
and leakage, which would be permitted in no other public-service
institution.
The Gary plan, therefore, has worked out a multiple use of the school
plant in the most comprehensive form. By distributing classes in
alternating groups, so that every department and room is in use as
nearly as possible every hour of the eight-hour day, the “peak-loads”
are prevented and the costs of operation reduced to the minimum. This
system, variously called a “rotation-of-crops” or a “platoon” system,
permits almost the actual doubling of the capacity of the school plant.
Two duplicate schools may function together in the same building all day
long. This “duplicate-school” plan is not, it must be observed, that
used in some cities, where one school occupies the rooms for a few hours
while the other remains at home, to take its turn in the rooms while the
other goes out. That is merely a “part-time” scheme, and only
accentuates the usual evils of fragmentary schooling and demoralizing
street life. The Gary plan involves two distinct schools, known as the
“X” and the “Y” schools, each of which has the entire program and the
full day. The Gary plan, in other words, can accommodate twice the
ordinary number in a school-building, not by shortening the time for
each child, but actually by lengthening it.
How this plan works out in detail for a school unit of eight classes may
be shown by the following program, which was used in the Jefferson
School when Superintendent Wirt first came to Gary. The Jefferson School
has been described as a conventional school-building, which was adapted
to the Gary plan by the institution of shops, gymnasium, etc., and the
conversion of classrooms into laboratories and studios. The program
shows how a small eight-room school, ordinarily accommodating three
hundred and twenty children (forty to a class), may, with a small
auditorium, playground, attic gymnasium, and basement shops accommodate
two duplicate schools of eight teachers each, with a total of six
hundred and forty children. The first column gives the teachers,—grade
teachers for the regular studies of the eight grades, and special
teachers for the special activities. The second column gives the rooms
where the work is conducted; the other columns give the distribution of
time. “1X” means the first grade of the “X” school; “1Y” means the first
grade of the “Y” school, etc. The program shows the ingenious
distribution of classes throughout the school and throughout the course
of the day,—six hours in this case, to which one hour and a quarter must
be added for lunch-time.
─────────────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────
Studies │ Forenoon │ Afternoon
────────────┬────────────┼────────┬────────┼────────┬────────
Teachers │ Room │90 min. │90 min. │90 min. │90 min.
────────────┼────────────┼────────┼────────┼────────┼────────
1st Grade │Classroom │ 1X │ 1Y │ 1X │ 1Y
2d Grade │Classroom │ 2X │ 2Y │ 2X │ 2Y
3d Grade │Classroom │ 3X │ 3Y │ 3X │ 3Y
4th Grade │Classroom │ 4X │ 4Y │ 4X │ 4Y
5th Grade │Classroom │ 5X │ 5Y │ 5X │ 5Y
6th Grade │Classroom │ 6X │ 6Y │ 6X │ 6Y
7th Grade │Classroom │ 7X │ 7Y │ 7X │ 7Y
8th Grade │Classroom │ 8X │ 8Y │ 8X │ 8Y
Music │Auditorium │ 1Y 2Y │ 1X 2X │ 3Y 4Y │ 3X 4X
Drawing │Basement │ 3Y 4Y │ 3X 4X │ 1Y 2Y │ 1X 2X
Literature │Library │ 5Y 6Y │ 5X 6X │ 7Y 8Y │ 7X 8X
Science or │Basement │ 7Y 8Y │ 7X 8X │ 5Y 6Y │ 5X 6X
manual arts │ │ │ │ │
│{Attic │ 2Y 1Y │ 2X 1X │ 6Y 5Y │ 6X 5X
Physical │{Playground │ 4Y 3Y │ 4X 3X │ 8Y 7Y │ 8X 7X
education │ │ │ │ │
(2 │{Attic │ 6Y 5Y │ 6X 5X │ 2Y 1Y │ 4X 3X
teachers and│ │ │ │ │
principal)│{Playground │ 8Y 7Y │ 8X 7X │ 4Y 3Y │ 2X 1X
────────────┴────────────┴────────┴────────┴────────┴────────
According to this program, only eight regular schoolrooms are required
for the sixteen classes. While these eight classrooms are occupied by
the classes engaged in the regular studies, the eight other classes are
engaged in special activities in other parts of the school plant, in
basement shops, attic gymnasium, or playground. Half the day is given to
the regular studies, and half to the special activities. The regular
studies occupy two periods of ninety minutes each, one in the forenoon
and one in the afternoon. The same amount of time is given to the
special activities, but the ninety-minute periods are divided into two
forty-five-minute periods. The time devoted to the regular studies is
divided as the teachers see fit. Each teacher has but one class at a
time, and the way in which the time is distributed between the
arithmetic, reading, spelling, geography, history, etc., depends upon
the needs of those in the class. It will be seen from the program that
each class of the two duplicate schools has time not only for three
hours a day of the traditional school studies, but for three hours of
play and special activities besides. And since this is the daily
program, each class gets this varied work, study, and play every day,
and not, as is the case of the special work in most public schools, only
once or twice a week. Thus, according to this program, the day’s work
for the third grade in the “X” school would be mapped out in this
way,—regular studies, drawing or manual training, playground or
gymnasium, lunch, regular studies, music, and playground again. The
sixth grade in the “Y” school has a program of physical education, music
or literature, regular studies, lunch, play, science or manual arts, and
regular studies again. The program shows not only how double the number
of classes are accommodated, but how all are given a longer and more
varied day than is possible in the ordinary school.
This program represents the simplest framework of the application of
public-service principles to the daily school program, with its multiple
use of facilities. It is known as the “Old Gary School Program,” and
has, of course, been much modified and refined and complicated as the
need for flexibility and for the further departmentalizing of studies
has arisen, and as it has had to be adapted to schools of different
sizes. As here presented it does not include the high-school classes.
The program of the complete school plant is much more elaborate. The
“Old Gary School Program,” however, contains the essential principles of
the distribution of classes and of school time.
Since September, 1913, a new and more satisfactory program has been
followed in the four larger Gary schools. The new school day is eight
and one quarter hours in length, and the work is divided into four
groups, as follows:—
──────┬────────────────────────────────────────┬──────
Group│ Program │Hours
──────┼────────────────────────────────────────┼──────
1.│History and geography, English and │ 2
│mathematics │
2.│Manual work, science, drawing, music │ 2
3.│Auditorium │ 1
4.│Play, physical training, application │ 2
│ │
│Lunch │ 1¼
──────┴────────────────────────────────────────┴──────
The first group of studies is conducted in the ordinary classrooms; the
second group in the shops, laboratories, and studios; the third group in
the auditorium; the fourth group in the gymnasiums, swimming-pools,
playrooms and playgrounds. Four groups of children are simultaneously
engaged in these four different departments throughout the day. If A
represents one half of the classes of grades 1 to 4; B, one half of
grades 5 to 8; C, the other half of grades 1 to 4; and D, the other half
of grades 5 to 8—then A and B together will represent the “X” school of
our old program, and C and D together will represent the “Y” school,
each school with its own corps of teachers and classes of all grades
from 1 to 8. The new program for the duplicate school then works out in
operation as follows. (The new day is an hour longer.)
────────────┬───────────────────────────────────
│
Time │ Studies for
│
────────────┼────────┬───────┬──────────┬───────
│ Group │Group 2│ Group 3 │Group 4
│ 1[2] │ │ │
────────────┼────────┼───────┼──────────┼───────
8.15- 9.15│ A │ B │ │ C D
9.15-10.15│ B │ A │ C │ D
10.15-11.15│ C │ D │ A │ B
11.15-12.15│ D │ C │Lunch-hour│
│ │ │ for A B │
12.15- 1.15│ A │ B │Lunch-hour│
│ │ │ for C D │
1.15- 2.15│ B │ A │ D │ C
2.15- 3.15│ C │ D │ B │ A
3.15- 4.15│ D │ C │ — │ A B
────────────┴────────┴───────┴──────────┴───────
4.15- 5.00 Playgrounds, gymnasiums, and shops open for volunteers.
------------------------------------------------------
Footnote 2:
See preceding table.
Since C D, or the “Y” school, has physical education the first hour in
the morning, and A B, or the “X” school, has it the last hour of the
afternoon, pupils in the “Y” school are permitted to come an hour later
in the morning, and the pupils in the “X” school are permitted to leave
an hour earlier in the afternoon. It will be observed from this program
that only one fourth of the pupils are engaged in group 1 during any
hour of the day. Four separate classes are, therefore, accommodated in
each regular classroom. Consequently, the capacity of the school plant
is four times that of the regular classrooms. But since a number of
rooms which would otherwise be used for classrooms are used for
laboratories and studios, the net capacity of the school plant operating
under the new program is, as under the old program, twice the capacity
of the total number of classrooms.
In the lower grades it is found desirable to use for formal physical
training, half an hour out of the two hours assigned to group 2. An
exchange is, therefore, made with the grammar and high-school grades,
which are assigned to the regular classrooms for an additional hour of
English and mathematics. In all grades the time assigned to group 4 is
divided between the teachers of physical education and play, and the
teachers of the subjects in groups 1 and 2. In the lower grades,
teachers of the regular studies use their share of the time—one hour—in
games and constructive plays that apply the subject-matter taught in the
classes. This is the “application” work which is so distinctive a
feature of the Gary school. It is planned systematically to give the
formal work of the school opportunity for expression through activity.
The music and literature teachers use the “application” period for
folk-dances, musical games, dramatics, modeling in clay and sand, and
for free imaginative play and construction. This “application” work is
carried on informally in the broad halls or in corners of the
playgrounds and playrooms. Whatever work has permanent value or interest
may then be practiced for presentation in the “auditorium” period. The
nature-study and science teachers use the application period for the
care of the lawns, trees, shrubbery, the conservatories, the gardens,
the animal pets. In the upper grades, mathematics teachers use this
period for the practical measuring and planning of the various
mechanical construction projects of the shops or grounds, or in
practical accounting in connection with the clerical work of the school.
In other words, it is in the “application” periods that that work is
done which contributes to the school community life which has been
described in the chapter on “The School as a Community.”