the upper grades, the industrial and science work is used as the basis.
Practical instruction is given by the shop and laboratory teachers, in
addition to that given by the regular teachers. The special teacher has
his pupils for one hour in the classroom, followed by two hours in the
shop or laboratory where direct application is made of the theoretical
instruction. This extra time is taken out of that assigned to group 4.
The division of time between the various activities in the new program
therefore works out as follows:—
_For grades 1 to 3_:—
Language and mathematics 2 hours
Music, literature and expression, 1 hour
gymnastics
Application 1 hour
Auditorium 1 hour
Lunch 1 hour
Manual work and nature-study 1 hour
Free play 1 hour
_For the other grades, 4 to 8_:—
Language, mathematics, history, geography 2 hours
Science and manual work 2 hours
Mathematics and English taught by shop and 1 hour
laboratory instructors
Physical training and play 1 hour
Auditorium 1 hour
Lunch 1 hour
This is the new program for a school of eight grades. In the case of the
complete school plant, such as those of the Emerson and Froebel Schools
in Gary, with their twelve grades and their forty or more classes
apiece, the program becomes much more complicated. But the division of
time follows essentially the outlines given above, the high-school
classes resembling the upper grammar grades’ distribution of time and
subjects.
The noteworthy thing about this program, apart from the ingenious and
successful multiple use of the school plant it represents, is the
equable distribution of time between the “regular studies” and the
“special activities.” In the Gary school, the “special work,” more or
less an appendage in the ordinary public school, is as regular as the
“regular work.” Yet the amount of academic work is no less than that in
the ordinary schools. The various fundamental groups are participated in
on equal terms. No subject is slighted, no age is slighted. The extended
school day, which absorbs the “street and alley time” of the city child,
affords ample opportunity for all activities. No activity is continued
long enough to cause fatigue, while the constant daily cultivation of
each activity provides the constant drill and the thoroughness of
training which the ordinary school, with its short day and crowded
curriculum, is compelled to slight. Such a program seems to be a highly
rational distribution of school activities, as ingenious from the point
of view of educational engineering as it is pedagogically sound. By
treating the daily use of the schools as a public service, the Gary
program obtains, for twice the number of children ordinarily
accommodated, twice the number of facilities ordinarily provided. Each
individual is immensely benefited because all are served. “The only
reason why the public—that is, ourselves collectively—can afford to
provide things for each of us individually that we cannot provide for
ourselves privately, is that collectively we secure a multiple use of
the facilities.”
The same principles of administrative economy—an economy which creates
rather than impoverishes—are applied to the yearly schedule as to the
daily program. The Gary authorities find that they cannot afford to let
their plant stand idle two or three months of the year, and are
therefore working toward an all-year school. This effort coincides with
a growing general belief that the long summer vacations not only
demoralize the city child, but are a great waste of educational
influence. At the present time state laws hinder the completion of the
all-year plan. The Gary schools now have ten months of regular
compulsory school, and ten weeks of voluntary vacation school, but they
are working toward an organization of four quarters of twelve weeks
each. This plan was approximated by Superintendent Wirt in the Bluffton
schools before he came to Gary. Under this scheme pupils are required to
attend any three of the four quarters, attendance in the remaining
quarter being wholly voluntary. In Bluffton it was found that the
attendance of the younger children for the summer quarter was greater
than for any other quarter in the year. With the traditional term
organization, many children are unavoidably absent in the winter on
account of sickness and weather. Under the four-quarter arrangement,
however, the allotted vacation of these children could be so organized
as to include this absence and thus insure thirty-six weeks of
schooling. “When people are given a chance,” says Superintendent Wirt,
“it is found that they do not want to go to school at the same time any
more than they all want to travel at the same time.”
The all-year school would not increase the cost of maintenance. For with
the same number of pupils per teacher, the cost is the same whether the
pupils are all taught together for thirty-six weeks, on the traditional
plan, or whether only three quarters of them are taught at a time
throughout a school year of forty-eight weeks.
The economies which this multiple use of school facilities effects are
so large as to provide ample funds for all the special features of the
Gary plan of education. These savings are in construction, in operation
and maintenance, and in instruction. Savings in construction alone are
very large. Since, under the duplicate-school plan, two complete schools
may be accommodated in one building, the number of school plants may be
greatly reduced. In the light of the Gary plan, therefore, those cities
which are confronted with problems of school congestion are in the
paradoxical situation of having, not too few buildings, but actually too
many. Fewer and better plants would accommodate their children under the
Gary plan. It must be remembered that the Gary schools at present have
accommodations for many more children than there are children to use
them, and this in spite of a phenomenal growth of population. The
erection of a number of Gary unit plants is less expensive than the
erection of a much larger number of ordinary school-buildings of the
common school type. For the cost of building construction does not
increase in proportion to the size of the building, and large sums may
be saved on the fewer sites required. The diminution in the number of
classrooms in the Gary school plant is a distinct source of economy,
owing to the fact that the classroom is uniformly the most expensive
portion of the school plant. The Gary experience seems to show that the
best and completest unit school plant is also the cheapest. The plan of
having the twelve grades under one roof avoids the reduplication of
expensive equipment in several centers. And the self-sustaining
industrial shops cut off an item of “vocational training” expense which
most cities find almost financially prohibitive.
As for the costs of operation and maintenance, it is obvious that
increasing the size of the school plant makes for economy. The cost of
janitor service, administrative charges, heating, lighting, etc., are
much reduced by consolidation. Nor, in order to effect these economies,
need the size of the school plant be made so large as to make
administration unwieldy. The largest Gary school plant, operating with
all these economies, accommodates only twenty-seven hundred children,
forty children to a teacher, while it is the intention to reduce the
average number of children per teacher to thirty, and the building
capacity to two thousand children.
Finally, the cost per pupil for instruction is decreased by the plan of
specializing and departmentalizing the work, and thus eliminating
overhead charges for supervisors. It should be pointed out again that
_all these economies actually increase the educational efficiencies of
the school_.
The figures show that the Gary school plan does not increase public
expenditures for educational purposes. The Jefferson School, built
before Superintendent Wirt came to Gary, and representing the common
type of modern school-building, was erected at a cost of $90,000 to
accommodate 360 pupils, with 40 pupils per teacher. This is a
_per-capita_ construction cost of $250, a cost exactly equal to that of
a typical New Jersey High School recently erected at a cost of $125,000,
with a maximum capacity of 500 pupils. The capacity of the Emerson
School, constructed as an ideal Gary school plant, is 1800, with 30
pupils to a teacher. Its cost, with a large playground and the wealth of
facilities already described, was about $300,000. The _per-capita_ cost
of construction was therefore $166. At its maximum capacity, with 40
pupils to the teacher, the _per-capita_ cost of construction would be
only $111, as against $250 for the Jefferson School, with no facilities.
Further tables of comparative costs will be found in the Appendix.
The funds liberated by the application of these simple economical
principles to public-school finance are so large as to give Gary the
means to provide, as Superintendent Wirt says, “any kind of a school
desired.” Extraordinarily complete educational and recreational
facilities may be furnished for all the people all the year round. Money
is thus provided for an evening school for adults on an almost
unprecedented scale. The Gary evening schools, held in the four largest
school plants, four evenings a week throughout the regular school year
from 7 to 9.30 P.M., have an attendance over two thirds that of the
regular day schools. The cost of the evening school is only thirteen per
cent of the day-school cost.
The evening schools of Gary resemble a people’s university. Practically
every study authorized by state law is given, and the bulletin of
courses is like a university catalogue. All the shops, laboratories,
studios, and classrooms are thrown open, either to repeat the day
studies or to present more advanced work. All the work, industrial and
academic, is open on equal terms to men and women. During 1914-15, 4300
students, representing all classes in the community, are said to have
been enrolled in the Gary evening schools, with an average monthly
enrollment of 3103. Over two thousand of the nine thousand voters at the
last city election were said to be enrolled in the Gary evening schools.
There are said to be more men over twenty-one attending evening schools
in Gary than there are boys of all ages attending the day schools.
The Gary evening schools in the last year have achieved an even closer
articulation of the work of the day and evening schools. A large number
of short-unit courses were offered for busy men and women who wished
particular branches of certain studies, and who could not remain in
school to pursue their studies in the usual way. It has also been
arranged to connect into group units the studies that bear upon a given
industrial occupation, so that the school may correlate directly with
all the occupations of the community, and the adult worker may come and
secure the additional experimentation or theory which will help him in
his work.
In addition to this instruction offered in academic and industrial work,
to the evening pupils is given free use of the gymnasiums, pools,
playgrounds, etc. The playgrounds are artificially lighted so that games
may be played successfully at night. Playgrounds and swimming-pools are
open on Sundays also, and the auditoriums for lectures, moving pictures,
community forums, and the like. All wholesome social gatherings and
entertainments are welcomed any evening of the week. The auditoriums are
freely lent for political meetings, conferences, meetings of
neighborhood or other private associations. The Gary school plant thus
becomes in the fullest sense a social or community center. The “wider
use of the school plant” here involves almost the widest possible use in
the interests of all classes of the population; for the lavish Gary
school plants contain equipments which serve the needs not only of
children, but of all classes of adults as well, from the well-to-do
woman who wishes to learn French to the sheet-metal worker in the mills.
By using the schools as a public service, the Gary educational
authorities are thus able to provide for all the people facilities at no
more expense than other communities are paying now for meager
opportunities which do not even meet the needs of the children, while
they leave the majority of adults entirely uninfluenced by the schools.
“The private exclusive use of public-school facilities has meant and
will continue to mean,” says Superintendent Wirt, “that all of the
people collectively can provide for only a part of their number.”
The Gary school is evidently a genuine “public school” in a sense more
“public” than is generally known. In many communities the public school
is “still the old private school publicly supported.” School boards
often act as if they were trustees of private property. They gravely
discuss “wider use of the school plant” as if this were some gracious
extension of privilege instead of a public right. The public in many
communities scarcely feel yet that the schools are their own. The Gary
schools seem to have produced a different spirit. They are public in the
same broad sense that streets and parks are public. They are used with
the same freedom and lack of reserve. In such a community and such a
school education would never be finished. Just as there is no break
between common school and high school in the Gary plan, so there need be
none between child and adult. The child would not “graduate,” “complete
his or her education,” but would tend to drift back constantly to the
school to get the help he or she needed in profession or occupation, or
to keep on enjoying the facilities which even the wealthy private home
would not be able or willing to afford. It is toward such a public
educational ideal that the Gary plan seems to work. Toward this all the
economies and ingenious schemes of organization are directed—toward
making the public schools veritable “schools of the public.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
V
ORGANIZATION
THE distinctive features of organization in the Gary school are the
separation of administrative from pedagogical supervision; the extension
of departmental teaching throughout the entire school; the increased
initiative and coöperation of the teaching force; the flexibility and
simplicity obtained by the “helper” or “observer” system.
The school administration is vested in a single head, the superintendent
of schools, who is appointed by the board of education of three members.
In charge of each school-building is an executive principal, whose
duties are concerned with program-making, with supervision of the
pupil’s schedules, with the general maintenance of order and discipline,
and ordinary administrative work. He has no supervision of the
instruction.
For all the schools there are two general supervisors of instruction,
who oversee the teaching, work out the curricula in coöperation with the
teachers, conduct examinations for promotion, make promotions or
demotions after consultation with the teacher.
The industrial and manual-training shops are under the direction of a
director of industrial work, who is also practical head of the
school-building and repair department. The teacher-workmen in the shops
are employed by him in the dual capacity of manual-training and
industrial teachers and of regular workmen engaged in repair and
construction. Each building has a head manual-training teacher, who
supervises the work of the industrial classes, of the part-time classes,
and acts as vocational adviser for the school’s pupils. Gymnasium and
swimming-pool attendants are employed by the head teachers of the
physical education departments.
The departmental teachers in the head building (Emerson School) act as
assistant supervisors of instruction in their subjects and have general
oversight of the courses in their subjects as taught in the other
buildings.
Departmental teaching is carried out in the Gary schools to an extent
generally unrealized in other public schools. It is considered that,
with the exception of the lowest grades, no arguments which apply to the
institution of departmental teaching in the high school are inapplicable
to the grades of the common school. The special activities undoubtedly
call for specialists to conduct them. History, language, literature,
mathematics can also be much better taught if the teacher can devote his
or her attention to the particular methods and orientation of the
respective subjects, and not be required to be equally at home in the
technique of all of them. Teachers can rarely be found who are
many-sided enough to teach well even all the common branches, without
the special activities. The Gary schools, therefore, adopt for all,
except the first two or three grades, what are practically advanced
high-school or college methods of specialized teaching.
[Illustration:
THE MACHINE-SHOP AT THE EMERSON SCHOOL
]
In these lowest grades all the regular subjects are taught by the one
grade teacher; in the other grades practically all the subjects are
departmentalized. A unit school plant which should have fifty-six
classes, divided proportionately among the grades, in addition to the
nurseries and kindergartens and special classes, would employ for grades
1 to 3, _sixteen_ teachers, as follows: For English, mathematics, 8; for
manual training, 2; for nature-study, 2; for music, 1; for expression,
1; for physical training, 2.
For grades 4 to 12, _forty-six_ teachers would be employed: For English,
4; for mathematics, 2; for Latin, 1; for German, 1; for French, 1; for
Spanish, 1; for history, 1; for fourth-and fifth-grade English,
mathematics, history, and geography (either departmentalized or
undepartmentalized), 8; for chemistry, 2; for botany, 2; for physics, 2;
for zoölogy, 2; for freehand drawing, 2; for architectural drawing, 2;
for mechanical drawing, 1; for music, 2; for expression, 2; for cooking,
1; for sewing, 1; for manual training (not including the industrial
shops), 2; for physical training, 6. Four teachers would be employed in
the kindergarten department. A unit plant of this size would require one
executive building principal, and one supervisor of instruction. Two
school nurses and a school physician would also be employed.
Such a distribution of the teaching force would be considered the ideal
for a unit school plant of all grades, accommodating between fourteen
hundred and twenty-two hundred and fifty children in two duplicate
schools. It will be observed that this most careful specialization of
teaching does not increase the number of teachers required. At least
fifty-six teachers, with a number of special teachers, would be required
in any school of fifty-six classes, run on an undepartmentalized plan.
The Gary plan, therefore, without increasing the number of teachers,
provides for a much higher expertness of service. Indeed, Superintendent
Wirt has worked out a form by which a school of thirty-two classes would
only require thirty-two teachers, including the special teachers, and
with most of the work departmentalized.
Programs may be arranged for schools with any number of classes. The
number of classrooms and teachers required will be approximately as
follows, including supervisors, special teachers, librarians and
playground instructors:—
A 12-class school requires 8 classrooms and 12 teachers.
A 24-class school requires 15 classrooms and 23 teachers.
A 36-class school requires 22 classrooms and 33 teachers.
A 48-class school requires 29 classrooms and 43 teachers.
A 60-class school requires 36 classrooms and 54 teachers.
A 72-class school requires 43 classrooms and 64 teachers.
In the 72-class school, 43 classrooms and 54 teachers are required, in
addition to the provision for auditorium, playrooms, and library. For
this work 10 teachers are required, making a total of only 64 teachers
for 72 classes. The traditional elementary school requires 72 teachers
and 72 classrooms for 72 classes; the manual-training shops and the
manual-training teachers are extra. In addition there would be
librarians in branch public libraries, playground directors in public
playgrounds, and special teachers as supervisors of music, drawing,
physical training, manual training, and nature-study. Often in the
traditional school 80 or more persons are employed for the instruction
of 72 classes, not including the building principal and assistants.
An important feature of the teacher organization in the Gary school is
the division into senior and junior teachers, or head teacher and
assistant teacher. Since each classroom accommodates two teachers
according to the duplicate-school plan, the teacher who has been longer
in service is designated as head teacher. The less experienced teacher
acts under her direction. The head teachers, for instance, in the “X”
school may visit and criticize the work of the assistant teachers in the
“Y” school during the last hour of the day when the “X” school is not in
session. Similarly the junior teacher in the “Y” school may visit the
work of the “X” school during the first hour. Inexperienced or weak
teachers may thus be developed under the direction of the more
experienced. New teachers are thus being constantly trained in the new
régime and spirit of the Gary school. The school is thus made an
extension of the normal or training-school for teachers. The teachers
continue to learn as well as the pupils. The question how teachers are
to be procured for the new demands which the Gary plan puts upon them is
thus answered. The school itself trains the teachers.
The responsibilities of the teachers for the auditorium period have been
discussed. Under the old Gary plan each auditorium period was in charge
of one teacher who acted as assistant principal. The teachers alternated
in organizing the dramatic and other features of the auditorium work.
Recently Superintendent Wirt has decided that this auditorium work
functions better if it is specialized. In the new 72-school program,
four teachers give their time exclusively to the auditorium exercises.
One teacher has charge of the music; one has charge of the art,
literature, history, civics, and current events; one has charge of the
presentation of material relating to the science work; and one has
charge of the presentation of the material relating to the shops and
industries. In a properly equipped auditorium, with stereopticon
lantern, motion-picture machine, stage, player-piano, organ, and
phonograph, the auditorium teachers can do many things better with large
numbers of children than the regular teachers can do with small numbers.
The regular classroom teachers are expected to coöperate in this
frequent presentation of work by their classes in the auditorium in
order to use it as a place for “application” work and for motivating the
academic work of the school.