campaign for a new water-front park. The history class had for some
weeks been using this public issue as a text for their work. They had
been studying “The City: A Healthful Place in Which to Live (with
special reference to parks).” Outlines had been worked up from reference
books in the school branch of the public library. These were read to the
class and discussed by them. Such a course became almost one in
town-planning, one of the most fascinating and significant of current
social interests, and one which packs into itself a maximum of
historical, sociological, and geographical information. Such a course
provided an admirable motive for a review of history from a practical
local point of view which all the intelligent pupils could appreciate.
The outline follows:—
_The City: A Healthful Place in Which to Live: Emphasis on Parks_
1. Athenian recreation centers.
2. Roman opportunities for recreation.
3. Mediæval cities: England.
4. Mediæval cities: Continental Europe.
5. The modern British city.
6. Modern cities in Argentina, Chile, Brazil.
7. The large German city.
8. The small German city.
9. Paris, and the smaller French cities.
10. Colonial cities of America.
11. American cities during the last quarter of the eighteenth century.
12. American cities before the Civil War.
13. American cities from the Civil War to the twentieth century.
14. American cities in the twentieth century.
15. How smaller cities are replanning.
16. Parks in large American cities.
17. The city-planning conference.
18. Statistics showing total area of city, and percentage of park
space.
19. Playgrounds of Chicago and New York.
20. The Gary plan of schools and playgrounds on the same site.
The class in ancient history, owing to a belief on the part of the
instructor that no child should be allowed to leave school without a
background of modern affairs, devotes one day a week to contemporary
history. A weekly digest of the ten most important events is kept in the
history notebook, arranged, three for foreign events, three for national
events, and four for local. Reports are prepared and read upon assigned
magazine articles, especially from the _Literary Digest_, _Outlook_, and
_Independent_. Everything is thus done to get the clue of historical
study from the interesting events around the pupils. History is studied
as much as possible backward, instead of forward.
In 1912-13 the classes in modern history became interested in the past
of the Balkan nations, in order to understand the reason for their
alliance against the Turkish Empire. A digression was, therefore, made
to clear this point, and to vitalize thereby the history of the related
European countries. The next year a similar interest was kindled in
Mexico and our relations with the Spanish-American republics. During the
past year the history instructor has found the study of the last two
centuries of western Europe to move along without effort, owing to the
interest in the great war.
Such a study of history clearly obviates the necessity of any separate
study of “civics.” History and geography taught in this way become part
of one’s general information. Magazines and newspapers are freely used.
The systematic reading of the best weeklies and papers surely is an
important training, in an age of so much cheap and worthless
reading-matter.
One history class had been making a comparison of Athenian with Gary
education. This is another illustration of that constant effort to make
the pupils realize the meaning of what they are doing and what is around
them. The effort of the Gary education is to make the child acquainted
with the purposes of his school. He is not taught as an inferior who
must take without question wisdom from immensely superior teachers, but
as an equal and democratic citizen of his school community, learning
wherever and whenever he can. The ancient history class had for its
motto: “To improve its members as American citizens by a study of the
experiences of the ancient peoples.” It would be difficult to imagine a
more admirable reason for historical study than this phrase, the natural
expression of the Gary child who wrote the constitution for the class
organization. Such “social introspection” is as rare an intellectual
quality as it is valuable.
The history classes in the lower grades use sand-tables to reproduce the
topography of the localities which are being studied, or to describe the
progress of some battle or invasion. One of the pupils in 1912
constructed with his own hands in the wood-working shops a miniature
Roman temple about five feet in length, the plans of which he had worked
out from the descriptions in the histories. These classes often engage
in debates, and the written reports which are sufficiently interesting
are read in “auditorium,” and often printed in the local newspapers.
Bulletin boards are placed in the hall for displaying important
clippings. The pupils bring these, and classify them under the
headings,—foreign news, American news, state, city, and county news,
pictures and cartoons, and items on the special topics that are being
studied. The history classes have charge of a small historical museum in
the corridors, which contains a loan collection of Indian relics and of
pottery from Central America.
The teaching of science occupies a unique place in the Gary schools.
Just as the history and geography are taught as clues to the social and
political world around the pupil, so the science is used to acclimatize
him to the natural world. The theory is that children should commence
the study of the sciences while their minds are still plastic and their
interest in natural phenomena keen. The persistent questions which the
child asks are attempts to get an understanding of the world he lives
in. Unless these questions are answered, his interest is apt to wane as
he grows older. And unless he acquires a familiarity with nature that is
accompanied by true scientific information, he is apt to get only a
satisfied feeling of knowledge without any true appreciation.
Science in the Gary schools, consequently, goes beyond the simple
nature-study taught now in most elementary schools. The child has
experience with the laboratory at an early age. The smaller children
from the third, fourth, fifth, or sixth grades go into the chemistry,
physics, botany, and zoölogy laboratories as “helpers” or “observers” to
the work of the high-school classes. On the theory that “children are
natural scientists” they are allowed contact with apparatus and
materials. It is said, in fact, that experience shows the smaller
children to be as careful as the older, and actually to cause less
breakage and damage.
The science classes in the lower grades are taught neither in formal
recitation nor in formal laboratory work, but in a combination which the
instructors describe as “experience meetings.” Pupils and teacher meet
on common ground to exchange ideas about their experiences in dealing
with natural phenomena. The outside world is treated as a great
laboratory, and these “experience meetings” are used to interpret the
children’s experiences in terms of scientific principles. There are
demonstrations by the children, assisted by the teacher; a little
individual laboratory work; and considerable vocal reading from
textbooks and scientific story-books.
The Gary science instructors believe that much time and money have been
wasted in the teaching of science in high schools, owing to the
elaborate methods which have treated the students as if the purpose was
to make professional scientists of them all. Children, it is believed in
Gary, cannot resort to the detailed research methods of scientists, but
must have quick answers and quick results. There is a waste of energy in
trying to duplicate in the laboratory the fundamental experiences of
life which the children are constantly seeing outside in the great
laboratory of nature.
The care of the flowers and plants and gardens, the care of the animals
in the zoo, and the study of their habits offer endless concrete
material for building up the theoretical side of botany and zoölogy. The
pupils are trained to observe and to write down what they see. One class
in zoölogy last year made an illustrated booklet descriptive of the
school zoo. The text was written by the pupils, the photographs prepared
by them, and then the booklet was tastefully printed in the school
printing-shop by the pupils themselves. The result was a charming
brochure, in which not only the pupils themselves, but the whole school
could take pride and pleasure. Such scientific study becomes an intimate
and vital part of the entire school life.
For the physics classes, the lighting, heating, and ventilating systems
of the school afford a practical textbook. In the Jefferson School,
where the industrial shop is built around the boiler-room, the heating
plant becomes an integral part of the shop. The physics classes study
the climate and the weather. They study particularly the principles of
the machines used in the different shops. Each shop may thus act as an
extension of the physics laboratory. Classes of even the smaller
children are sent to take apart machines like the bicycle,
cream-separator, lawn-mower, and explain the construction. The
automobile and motor-cycle provide many practical lessons. An old
automobile which needs tinkering up is considered in the Gary school to
be almost a physics laboratory in itself. The writer witnessed a physics
class of twelve-year-old girls who, with their nine-year-old “helpers,”
were studying the motor-cycle. With that disregard for boundaries which
characterizes all Gary education, the hour began with a spelling-lesson.
The names of the parts and processes of the machine were rehearsed
orally and then written. After the words were learned, the parts of the
machine were explained by the instructor while the class spelled the
words over again. Their memory of certain physical principles, such as
vaporization, evaporation, were called again into play. Then the
instructor set the motor-cycle going, the girls again describing its
action. When this had been thoroughly gone over, the class copied from
the blackboard sentences describing the processes and parts, but
omitting certain crucial words which the pupil had to supply. The
intense vivacity and interest of the little group, the intelligence with
which these small children grasped the principles involved, made the
lesson seem a model of expert teaching. It was an excellent illustration
of the way concrete processes may be used to build up scientific
knowledge. It is interesting to notice that no distinction is made
between boys and girls in their science work.
This lively interest in scientific processes may have unexpected
results. The story is told of a high-school boy who, while the board of
education was discussing means of fire-prevention, made an investigation
of methods and processes which was so excellent that it was forthwith
adopted by the board.
This incident is typical of the way in which the scientific work in the
schools may correlate with the wider social community. Just as the
history classes may bring the pupil into touch with the political life
outside the school, so the physics and chemistry class may connect him
with the industry of the community and with those public services into
which scientific processes enter. A boy, for example, brings to the
chemistry class a bag of low-grade iron ore which he has found in the
vicinity. The class, under the direction of the teacher, constructs a
simple electric furnace and reduces the ore. This experiment is then
used as the basis for a study of the great steel industry upon which the
city of Gary is founded.
A part of the chemistry work makes a direct contribution to the city.
Gary has the good fortune, or the good sense, to have as chemistry
teacher in the Emerson School the man who acts as municipal chemist for
the city. As a result, the school laboratory becomes an extension of the
municipal laboratory. The high-school chemistry pupils assist the
chemist just as the smaller children assist them. With the
chemist-instructor the pupils test the city water and the various milk
supplies. Under the sanitary inspector they visit, as part of their
“application” work, dairies, factories, bakeries, food-stores. Last year
the class issued a “Milk Bulletin,” containing general information, with
reports of their tests. The various articles were recorded as part of
the English composition work, and the bulletin was printed by the pupils
in the school printing-shop. In quality these bulletins seemed scarcely
inferior to what an agricultural school might issue. On their inspection
rounds, the class takes samples of sugars and candies from the various
shops of the town, and tests them in the laboratory for purity and for
the use of harmless coloring matter. Another class experiments with the
soft drinks sold in the town, testing their composition, and studying
physiological effects. The children are practically deputy
food-inspectors, and make their reports on the official blanks. It is
said that the result of this sort of inspection is that in a prosecution
for violation of the pure-food laws in Gary a case has never been lost.
The children test also the materials supplied to the schools, the coal,
cement, etc., to see if they come up to the specifications. They are not
only using the things around them for practical textbooks, but they are
able to turn their knowledge immediately into work which is immensely
beneficial, not only to themselves, but to the whole community. The
value of enlisting pupils in this inspection work, of training them to
observe and criticize and test the physical conditions under which they
live, is incalculable. For even a small proportion of children to get
this scientific-deputy-inspector habit, and to get used to thinking in
terms of qualitative and quantitative tests, would evidently have some
effect upon political and social conditions. Such scientific training
makes science an integral part of life, not only a knowledge of how
natural forces and materials behave, but also a command of technical
resources in making them behave in desirable ways. The pupils in such a
school, from their earliest years, get a correct appreciation of the
value of science in ameliorating conditions and in improving the
healthfulness and security of the community in which they live.
The Gary curriculum seems to represent a determined effort to break down
the distinction between the “utilitarian” and the “cultural.” All the
subjects are taught, as far as possible, in concrete ways which shall
draw upon familiar experience and teach the child by making him do
something. That something is made, as far as possible, an activity which
will enhance the life of the school community, or contribute to the
social community. These activities are “utilitarian,” but they are at
the same time profoundly educative. Principles are never lost sight of
in practice. The artistic and academic work take equal rank with the
manual. Both “cultural” and “utilitarian” are, in fact, subjected to the
“_social_.” This is the key note of the Gary education.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VII
DISCIPLINE: THE NATURAL SCHOOL
THE problems of discipline in a Gary school are essentially different
from those of public schools run on the usual semi-military plan. The
large degree of coöperation between teachers and pupils and between
pupils, the emphasis on laboratory, shop, and “application” work, where
freedom of movement and conversation is essential, produces a more
natural atmosphere, and a certain amount of genuine if unconscious
self-government. The children in the Gary schools are generally
conscious of the unique features of their school; they understand what
the school is trying to do. This sense, and their pride in its fame,
cultivate an admirable school spirit denied to those schools which are
operated on conventional lines.
The organization of the Gary school permits the reduction of formal
discipline to a minimum. It allows the teachers to dispense with
disciplinary rules against whispering, with formal punishments, with
formal marks or demerits for conduct. The frequent change of activity,
with opportunities for exercise throughout the day, prevents the
children from becoming nervously overwrought. They thus escape
irritability and aimless boisterousness when left to themselves. The
“application” and shop work compel attention, so that the child is kept
busy and interested, and the mischievousness that arises from idleness
or distracted attention is avoided. As Professor Dewey says, “Trained in
doing things, the child will be able to keep at work and to think of the
other people around him when he is not under restraining supervision.”
When the teacher’s rôle changes from preceptor to that of helper, it is
obvious that what is needed in the classroom is not so much perfect
quiet and military order as freedom of expression and spontaneity.
Visitors to the Gary schools bear witness to the peculiarly beneficial
effects of this absence of formal discipline. The free and individual
way in which the children move about to their tasks and the spontaneous
way in which they talk to visitors make a marked impression. In
classroom or laboratory or shop, it is usual to find about as much
whispering as in a concert audience, with the same motives, freed of
“rules of order,” for quiet. A natural atmosphere of orderly and
tolerant conduct seems to be formed in such a school.
The writer witnessed an interesting study in spontaneous discipline in
one of the Saturday voluntary classes at the Froebel School. The
wood-working shop was filled with little boys who were fussing over the
scraps left by the week’s work and trying to make toys and knick-knacks
out of them. The teacher was in the room, but was exercising no control
over the children. Yet each little boy worked on his own little job as
indefatigably as if he were under a drill-master. If any of them became
weary and was moved to interfere with another small worker, he was apt
to be brushed off as if he were an irritating fly. The theory at the
back of such freedom is that rules in the school tempt to infraction,
and school discipline is, as a result, largely an attempt to solve
problems which the rules directly manufacture. Some visitors, appalled
by the freedom of the Gary schools, look about for signs of depredation.
But they do not seem to find any. The visitor gets the impression that
these schools have acquired a “public sense.” The schools are the
children’s own institution, and are public in the same broad sense that
streets and parks are public. The tone is of a glorified democratic
club, where members are availing themselves of privileges which they
know are theirs. One expects children, unless they are challenged to
inventive wickedness, no more to spoil their school than a lawyer is
likely to deface the panels of his club. The children seem in such a
school unaffectedly to own it, and to use it as a mechanic uses his
workshop or an artist his studio. The halls in the Gary school become
really school streets. Benches are built by the pupils along the walls,
where children are seen informally studying together. Or one comes upon
a table where a boy is drawing a map, having been excused from
recitation, on the theory that it is not necessary for every child to be
exposed to every exercise of the class when he might do something more
important outside. The children come with their parents to night school
and play and run about the broad halls quite unwatched. The visitor gets
the idea that children come to such a school, not because education is
compulsory or because their parents send them there to get rid of them,
but because what is done there is so interesting that they will not stay
away. The equipment, used so freely, makes the school a substitute for
the defects, not only of the poorer homes, but of the well-to-do also,
in supplying activities for children.
One might say that only in a free and varied school like this was such a
thing as effective discipline possible. When school activities are as
attractive as they are in the Gary school, deprivation means a distinct
punishment. There is ready at hand an instrument for inculcating reason
into the refractory which is as powerful as the stoutest disciplinarian
could wish. The ordinary school has its difficulties with discipline
largely because it tries to keep up a military system of conduct without
any means, now that corporal punishment is generally abolished, of
punishing infractions. Marks prove ineffective, “keeping in” punishes
the keeper as well as the kept, and being sent home is too often a
pleasure. But in the Gary school, “being sent home” would mean being
sent to a place infinitely less interesting, and being deprived of
school play or any special activity would mean a real hardship. The free
and spontaneous discipline of the Gary school does not mean that there
is no discipline at all. Unruly cases are sometimes punished severely by
the executive principal. But there is little talk about “mischievous and
unruly boys.” Children who, in spite of everything, are “not adapted to
our kind of a school,” may go to the school farm. This, however, is not
a reform school for juvenile delinquents. Delicate children may be sent
there for a vacation or classes go for a holiday. The farm contains a
hundred acres, with a model dairy, good orchards, and substantial farm
buildings. A graduate from one of the state universities is in charge,
and is working to bring the farm up to a high pitch of cultivation and
production. One group of boys who were there for a while, some of whom
had come from homes surrounded by unwholesome conditions, others of whom
wished to try farming for a livelihood, built themselves living quarters
and a clubroom. They were provided with a teacher, and school work went
on with the farm work. The boys received fifteen cents an hour for their
work, and earned enough to pay their board and make something besides.
These boys finally drifted back to the Emerson School or to work in the
factories. But the farm remains as a valuable adjunct to the schools.
Efforts are being made to make it a source of income and an object
lesson to farmers in the vicinity.
Freedom of discipline is obtained in the Gary schools without the
methods of “self-government” and “honor systems” which prevail
elsewhere. Where the teachers retain all authority, such schemes can be
little more than a humiliating pretense. For a time an elaborate
self-government plan was tried in the Emerson School under the name of
“Boyville,” with a sort of parody of municipal functions. But it seems
to have been too unreal to last. It has been superseded by a “students’
council,” elected by the pupils of the upper grades, and exercising
control over athletics, social, and other student affairs. This
students’ council has executive charge of the “auditorium” periods, for
which it elects a presiding officer and secretary, alternately a boy and
a girl, every month. The elections for councilors are conducted in
regular form, with ballots printed by the pupils in the school
printing-shop. Booths are erected, judges appointed, and the election
carried through, after a campaign, in which the parties meet, nominate a
boy and girl for each office, and appoint a campaign manager who
arranges a program for the campaign. The candidates make speeches,
giving their views and the arguments for their policies.