Experience has shown that some teachers have a special talent for this
imaginative and constructive side of teaching, and prefer to devote
their entire time to it. In this scheme, the “application” teachers have
six classes daily out of a total of twelve classes in each of their
respective groups. They are thus able to meet each of the twelve classes
of their respective groups every other day, week, month, or term. Or
these teachers may select from each of the groups of three classes the
pupils who need special work in language and mathematics, and meet these
pupils every day. For the average pupil all of the opportunity necessary
to make an application of his language and mathematics is provided in
the regular manual-training, drawing, music, and expression classes. The
“application” teachers meet their respective classes in the
manual-training, drawing, music, and expression rooms. The facilities of
these special rooms are used for “application” purposes. The
“application” teachers are expected to make suggestions to the special
teachers of these subjects concerning the opportunities to teach
language and mathematics through the “application” opportunities of the
regular work of their respective subjects. Each “application” teacher
may be constituted the head of a group of eight teachers. The
“application” teacher is the correlating agent for all the work of the
twelve classes; also she works with all of the twelve classes as a
constructive examiner, and is constantly placing before the children
real problems of the type that the world of industry, business, and
citizenship will place before them when they leave school. She may not
be able to present these problems as well as the world will present them
later, but the immediate and daily reaction while the child is in school
should be invaluable in preparing him for meeting the more difficult
problems which arise when he has completed his school course.
* * * * *
Class periods may be 40 or 50 or 55 minutes instead of 60. Teachers have
six hours in school with 60-minute periods, five and one-half with
55-minute periods, and five hours with 50-minute periods. Pupils have a
school day of seven, six and one-half, and six hours respectively, in
addition to an hour for luncheon. The playground teachers are on duty an
additional hour. Each teacher has an hour a day free for her own work.
When her day is finished, she is supposed to leave the building. It is
expected that all paper work, as well as all the work of the children,
will be done in school. The purpose is to make the teacher’s day only
six hours, without the burden of extra time at home.
An interesting extension of this teacher-organization plan is the new
training course for outside teachers or principals who are desirous of
studying the Gary school plan and teaching methods. Visiting teachers
and principals are allowed, at a fee, to attach themselves as assistants
to teachers or principals, and follow the work through a course of weeks
or months, in exactly the same way that the small child acts as “helper”
or “observer” to the older child in the laboratory or shop or the junior
to the senior teacher. The fee goes to the teacher or principal who
instructs the visitor. This novel way of teaching the principles of the
Gary school, not by lectures, but by direct practical assistance on the
part of the visitor, is typical of that insistence upon “learning by
doing” which is the keynote of the Gary instruction.
The Gary plan acts on the theory that the good teachers should be given
initiative and responsibility, while the inexperienced and weak teachers
should be trained into initiative and responsibility. The usual plan in
school systems is to make the experienced and inexperienced, strong and
weak, coördinate with one another, and all subordinate to the supervisor
or superintendent. The Gary plan thus secures the utmost from the good
teachers, and trains the poor ones.
Instead of employing special “visiting teachers,” as is done in many
school systems, the teacher in the Gary school is given the
responsibilities of the “visiting teacher” by being made a “register
teacher” for a subdivision of the school district. In this way cases of
maladjustment to school, home, or neighborhood conditions may be met.
The school population of the city is geographically districted in such a
way that each district holds about fifty families. The children in a
district are assigned, irrespective of age or grade, to one of the grade
teachers. Each “register teacher” meets her group once a week for
general conference. She gives out the monthly reports. Failure in
self-control, irregular attendance, tardiness, and other matters are
reported to her. No child is excused from class without her permission,
and she is expected to call at the homes of the children when necessary
or to meet their parents at the school. Each “register teacher” holds
the same children from class to class as long as they live in the
district. She corresponds almost exactly to what is known as the
“faculty adviser” of the college student, a guide and friend for the
general conduct of school life and for difficulties that arise. The
“register teacher” is a sort of disciplinary and sociological overseer
for a group of children living in the same neighborhood. She has a set
of blanks which in fact provide a basis for a complete sociological
survey of her district. These she is supposed to fill in, as facts about
living conditions, etc., come to her attention. It seems evident that
this work, while exacting, involves no more than a teacher should know.
No more valuable sociological training could be imagined for the
intelligent and progressive teacher. Such work relates her at once to
the general community life, and makes her profession of a far more
serious importance than is usually given to the grade teachers in the
public schools. This work is typical of the demands for a new initiative
and intelligence that the Gary plan makes upon the teachers, and also of
the immense educative value of these demands.
The effort is constantly made in the Gary schools to bridge the gap
between teacher and pupil. An important recent innovation is the
institution of “teachers’ assistants.” Students in the sixth, seventh,
and eighth grades have ten weeks for drawing, ten weeks for science, ten
weeks for shopwork, and ten weeks for service as “teachers’ assistants.”
The students act as laboratory and studio assistants only in the
departments in which they have a special interest. Three or four
students assist the science teachers, three or four the drawing
teachers, and three or four the shop teachers. Playground teachers,
auditorium teachers, music teachers, etc., have as assistants the
students especially interested. Each student can, therefore, receive
twenty weeks of work in the department in which he has a special
interest. Many teachers confess that the first year of teaching gave
them a much clearer grasp of the subjects they taught than they were
able to secure as students. From the point of view of scholarship, the
teachers’ assistants learn more by acting in this rôle for a limited
time than they could learn by using the time for additional study. They
not only learn how to take initiative and assume responsibility, but
they enable the teacher to do much more effective work with the regular
classes.
* * * * *
This same fundamental principle of organization is applied to the pupils
themselves in their relations with one another. Fourth- and fifth-grade
pupils are considered too old for the primary manual training and
nature-study, and not quite old enough to use profitably the
laboratories and workshops as independent students. They are, therefore,
assigned as assistants to students in the higher classes. These children
in this way learn more by working with the older students than they can
be taught in separate classes by themselves. Not only does the younger
child learn by helping the older and watching him and asking questions
of him, but the older learns by being required to answer the questions
and make the younger child understand what he is doing in shop or
laboratory. The object is to make the Gary school, in the words of
Superintendent Wirt, “as much as possible like a large family wherein
the younger children are learning consciously and unconsciously from the
older, and the latter from contact with the younger children are
learning to assume responsibility and take the initiative. Some one has
said that we send our boy to school, but his playmates, not the school
faculty, educate him. This is true because in the conventional school
the faculty does not utilize the playmates as assistant instructors.”
This “helper” system has proved to be one of the most valuable features
of the Gary schools.
For the pupil, organization means a degree of flexibility and individual
instruction extraordinary for a public school. Except in the lowest
grades, the pupils are classified by subjects as well as by grades, so
that practically college methods obtain. Each pupil has his own schedule
or program, just as the college student has. The executive principal
corresponds to the college registrar in supervising these individual
records. The pupil is promoted by subjects and not by grades, and may be
promoted or demoted at any time by the supervisor of instruction, acting
with the teacher. Grades, therefore, represent merely years of schooling
and not classes which are promoted as units. Each regular class has a
maximum register of forty, but the class does not work as a unit, any
more than a college class of sophomores works as a unit. Some are taking
one group of subjects, some another. The work is thus done largely in
small groups, or even as individuals. The great wealth of equipment and
the economical use of time permit a large amount of practically
individual instruction.
The students of each grade are classified into three groups—rapid,
normal, and slow workers. The rapid workers can easily complete the
twelve years’ course in ten years. They may then enter college at
sixteen years of age. The great majority of the Gary pupils who go to
college actually come from this rapid-working group. The normal workers
complete the course in twelve years, and the slow workers in fourteen.
Many of the slow workers do not attempt to complete the course, but
specialize in the industrial departments. This grouping contemplates the
recognition of differences in the mental endowments and ambitions of
children of the same age, so that means are provided for the shortening
of school life for some children and the lengthening of it for others.
Every child is, as far as possible, working along with his equals, so
that the bright child is not held back and rendered listless by the
presence of slower members in the class, nor is the slow child
discouraged by the competition of the brighter ones. Every pupil may go
as fast as he can, and may specialize on the work which he can best do.
The presence of a great variety of activities makes it possible for the
children who falter on their intellectual work to give more attention to
the manual or artistic or physical work in which they may excel.
A special investigation was made in 1914 into the regrading of the
pupils of two ninth-grade algebra classes in the Emerson School. The
results of regrading the classes into rapid and slow workers showed
marked improvement in the interest displayed in the algebra work,
especially on the part of the slow workers. No failures were reported
among the rapid workers, and only three among the slow workers, and
these were due to absence from class. The total class average for the
slow division was in three months raised five per cent. In the Jefferson
School, which has been operated on the Gary plan longer than any other
school, fifty-two per cent of the children are one or more years _ahead_
of their normal grades.
Many features of the Gary plan afford extraordinary opportunities for
extra assistance in study and work. The pupil may take extra work in a
subject during a proportion of his play, auditorium, or shop hours. If
he is a member of the “X” school, he may get the same lesson repeated
for him the same day by attending the parallel class in the “Y” school
held at a different hour. He may come to the voluntary Saturday school
and get extra coaching from the teacher, and the vacation school
provides additional opportunity to make up back work. No home work is
allowed, except to a small extent in the high-school grades. The long
school day, and the freedom which the teacher has to distribute her time
and to conduct supervised study, obviate the necessity for carrying
books away from the school. Since the state law does not authorize the
schools to provide free textbooks, these must be provided by the pupil,
or, as in the case of most of the Gary classes, bought by the school and
loaned cooperatively to a number of classes. Since home work is not
permitted, the books may be kept in the school and distributed to the
classes as they require them.
The headquarters of the pupil in the school are not in the classroom, as
in other public schools. It is the teacher and not the class which is
assigned to the room. The teacher remains in the room and the pupils go
to him or her, moving about individually from classroom, shop,
laboratory, etc., according to the printed schedule card which each
pupil holds. The child’s headquarters is the spacious lockers which line
the corridors in the basements. Each child has a private locker for
books, papers, and wraps. Strictly speaking, the pupil in the Gary
school, except in the lowest grades, has no “teacher,” except the
“register teacher.” The departmental system gives him many teachers, but
no teacher. This system and the self-governing responsibility for his
own schedule is intended to cultivate initiative and responsibility on
the part of the pupil. It brings him from an early age into contact with
different personalities, gives him the benefit of expert teaching and a
variety of movement and exercise. The introduction of these free college
methods into the common school is, in the light of public-school
practice, a daring experiment, but the Gary school experience seems to
show that it is quite possible to give the younger children a large
measure of freedom and individuality of treatment.
Most of the schedules of the pupils are arranged with reference to the
requirements of the state course of instruction, specialization not
being permitted, of course, except in the higher grades, or where some
special weakness causes repeated failure. Yet the Gary schools have
about twenty per cent of special students who do not intend to finish
the course and are specializing in some departments. But since, owing to
the individualization of schedules, every pupil is in a sense a “special
student,” the presence of this large number of students causes no
administrative confusion, nor are the special students—as would be the
case in many schools operated on a uniform plan—marked off invidiously
from those who are following the more regular course.
The segregation of sexes which the visitor finds in some of the Gary
schools and courses is not the result of any prejudice against
coeducation. (All the activities are open equally to boys and girls
alike, so that girls are found in the printing-shop and in the
wood-working classes, etc.) It is due to the effort to give each boy and
girl what he or she needs. The organization of many classes, such as
play, gymnasium, personal hygiene, and the manual activities which do
not appeal to the girls, or the domestic science which does not appeal
to the boys, required this unisexual classification, and sometimes it
has been retained to avoid the break-up of classes in related subjects.
An example of this effort to provide for all kinds of students in the
Gary school is the first-year college work which is offered to students
who wish to remain in the school for post-graduate work. The Gary school
endeavors thus to overlap the college, just as it has made the common
school dovetail into the high school, and the day school into the
evening school. When the Gary high-school students have come up through
the Gary schools, it is hoped to be able to send students from the local
schools at the age of eighteen so prepared that they may complete the
ordinary college course in two years.
A word should be said about the interrelation of this flexibility of
schedule with the “helper” system. The choice of what subjects the pupil
shall study is not as willful and anarchical as it may seem. In the
lower grades the regular studies are, of course, prescribed. English,
arithmetic, history, and geography must be studied by all, with the
attendant “application” and “auditorium” work. All must have physical
education, music and expression, and some form of manual and scientific
work. The courses in science, industrial work, and music and expression,
below the high school, are taken in alternation. Each occupies one third
of the school year. The individual choice of the pupil comes in what
science or what shop work he or she will take. The beginning is not by
chance, but really the result of a natural process of selection by the
child. All the early years are made a sort of unconscious prevocational
school in which the child tries out his interests and powers. Things are
neither forced on him nor aimlessly selected. The child in kindergarten
or first three grades moves about the halls and corridors. Since the
shops and studios and laboratories are not segregated, but distributed
over the building, so that all seem equally significant, the child has
every opportunity to become familiar with them. His curiosity is
aroused, and, unaided, he is tempted to peer in through the glass doors
and windows, and wonder what the older children are doing. When the
child has reached the fourth grade, he already has an idea of what
activity interests him, and what he would like to try. Fourth- and
fifth-grade children then go in as helpers to the seventh-, eighth-, and
ninth-grade students in shops, studios, and laboratories. If the child
finds the work does not interest him, he still has a chance to try some
other work, and thus gradually sifts out what is likely to be valuable
to him for a vocation or avocation. If he has special skill, he may
specialize in the higher grades. Such a plan seems to be admirably
devised to bring out whatever capacities there are in the pupils, and to
insure almost automatically their interest in work which in many schools
is mere unintelligent drudgery.
Vocational guidance in such a system is simple and effective. The
“auditorium” teacher, in charge of the presentation of material relating
to the shops and industries, is able to give information as to the
desirability of the several trades and industries as occupations. For
example, the school plumber may prepare with his students a plumbing
outfit for an ordinary dwelling or apartment, and give a lesson on the
way in which plumbing should be cared for in the home. The plumbing
instructor may know much about plumbing, but very little about
presenting his information to a large body of students. The “auditorium”
teacher would assume the responsibility of supervising such auditorium
presentations in order that they might be dramatically effective. The
day that the plumber and his students present the advantages and
disadvantages of plumbing as a trade, the teacher of industries may
announce to the boys in “auditorium” period that for the remainder of
the week any boy may be excused for a personal consultation with him
concerning the desirability of joining a class in plumbing. Students are
thus directed in their shop assignments by this “auditorium” teacher of
industries. Vocational guidance is thus made possible as far as it is
probably wise to undertake such guidance in the school at present. Such
a plan directs the mechanically inclined among the children by enlisting
their interest and then their will. The “auditorium” teachers for the
other activities may also act as advisers in the same way. Teacher and
pupil thus coöperate, not in any haphazard fashion, but systematically,
in studying the various activities with a view to their future use as a
vocation. Such an attitude not only organizes and motivates the work,
but gives it seriousness and purpose. Every detail of organization in
the Gary school is devised to make the pupil as well as the teacher an
integral part of the school life, not only in its own meaning, but in
its relation to the outside world.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VI
CURRICULUM: LEARNING BY DOING
THE Gary curriculum, in spite of its many special features, is neither
eccentric nor overcrowded. It follows the regular course of study laid
down for Indiana schools by the State Department of Public Instruction.
Students who follow the full course may be ready to enter college at the
age of sixteen. The additional facilities of the Gary schools are not
gained at the expense, therefore, of the ordinary course of education.
They are made possible through a more ingenious distribution of time
throughout a longer school day, and by an integration and interrelation
of subjects which tend to vitalize them all.
The regular studies in the lower grades are conducted along the
conventional lines, with the addition of the “application” work which
has been described. The English work is further vitalized through the
employment of special teachers for “expression,” who alternate with the
special teachers of music. “Expression” is a mixture of elocution and
dramatics. The aim of the instruction is evidently to bring the pupils
to read and speak with more intelligence and appreciation than is
usually done. It is to give the training which will bear fruit in
increased expressiveness in all the studies of the school, in all
writing and reciting, in “auditorium” and “application” work. So far,
owing to the peculiar requirements of talent in the teachers and on
account of the lack of good American elocutionary and dramatic
tradition, the enterprise can scarcely be called more than a frank and
important experiment. For the Gary curriculum with its emphasis on
self-activity, such training in expressiveness is essential, and it can
be depended upon to improve rapidly in quality as the children and
teachers catch the spirit of the schools and get the practice of
“auditorium” and “application” work.
The importance of the equable division of time between regular studies
and special activities has already been discussed. An important feature
of the Gary teaching is the avoidance of that excessive subdivision of
subjects which has affected curriculum-making in many schools. History
and geography are here uniformly taught together; language, grammar,
spelling, reading, and writing are taught as much as possible together
as English; physiology is taught in connection with zoölogy. Since the
teacher is left much initiative in the distribution of her time, she may
emphasize and correlate the different studies as she finds necessary.
All the English branches are taught constantly in connection with the
other studies. The history or physics class may begin with a
spelling-lesson. Compositions in science or history, or the brochures
issued by the science departments, are supervised by the English
teacher. We have seen how the shop and commercial instructors give
special work in practical English and mathematics. The effort is
constant in the Gary curriculum to teach a subject, not as an isolated
body of subject-matter, but as knowledge which may bear on any or all
the other departments of the school community.
Studies are taught also with as much bearing as possible on the social
activities of the larger city community. The subject-matter in the
history and geography classes is really “The Sociological World we Live
in,” and textbooks, histories, atlases, globes, newspapers, and
magazines become the reference sources and the materials for
understanding that world. The working-out of such principles must, of
course, be a matter of experimentation by able teachers, and the work
cannot be described in any formal manner. Illustrations of some of the
successful methods can, however, be given. The history room in the
Emerson School, for instance, is found by the visitor to be almost
smothered in maps and charts, most of them made by the children
themselves, in their effort to “learn by doing,” and to contribute their
part to the school community. A large Indiana ballot, a chart of the
State Senate, a diagram of the state administration, a table showing the
evolution of American political parties, with many war maps and
pictures, covered the walls. The place is a workshop rather than a
classroom, with broad tables for map-drawing, and a fine spread of
papers and magazines. The ninth-grade Gary children are, in fact,
conducting what some progressive colleges have introduced as “laboratory
work in history.”
[Illustration:
THE HISTORY ROOM AT THE EMERSON SCHOOL
]