Randolph Silliman Bourne

“ The “helper and observer” system, applied not only in the relations between children, but between teachers, and between teachers inside the school and visitors, is one of the most valuable features of the Gary plan. It entirely alters the usual relations, making for a coöperative instead of a competitive spirit in work, and facilitating enormously the work of both pupils and teachers. Children learn by watching and asking questions—“picking up”—in the most natural way in the world, in contrast to the formal and stilted ways of the traditional classroom work. ”

“ It must be remembered that the Gary school represents not a rigid system, or a static and completed mechanism. Its chief value is that it provides a flexible program and facility for change and development. Any examples of details in the curricula or details of administration can only be tentative, for it is an experimental school, where every one is constantly studying and learning. It is a growing organism. The only limit to its growth seems to lie in the imagination of teachers and pupils. Even when it starts with an admirable equipment, its life is only begun. ”

“ In this juxtaposition of the various activities, therefore, the child has impressed upon him that school life is a unity in breadth, just as the combining of the elementary and secondary school impresses him with the fact that his school life is a unity in length. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Maps and charts made by the pupils cover the walls, magazines lie about, pictures and books overflow the tables. The visitor realizes that he is in a room saturated with history, past and present. It is easier to learn in a room where everything appeals to the imagination.
Mr. Wirt says that you never can tell when a child is learning. The time that he makes progress is not necessarily the recitation time. It is the constant impingement of impressions that really educates him, and it is this that the intellectual side of the Wirt school is skillfully designed to cultivate. ”

“ This means that all the work and study converge upon the school life. The things that are done in the Gary school contribute to the usefulness, the beauty, or the interest of the school community. The Gary school is built on the sound psychological theory that only such work as has meaning in the life of the school, as lived by the children themselves then and there, will be really learned and assimilated. The school is not only to be a “preparation for life”: it is to be a life itself, as the old household was a life itself. ”

“ Superintendent Wirt says that when you have provided a plant where the children may live a complete life eight hours a day in work, study, and play, it is the simplest thing imaginable to permit the children in the workshops, under the direction and with the help of well-trained men and women, to assume the responsibility for the maintenance of the school plant. There can be no exploitation of the children, for masters and pupils are permitted to do only enough work to balance the wages of the masters and the cost of materials. ”

“ 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 new school plants, such as the Emerson and Froebel, are spacious and dignified buildings, with many touches of thoughtful taste that one usually associates only with the high schools of exceptionally wealthy and cultivated suburban communities. The presence of pictures, the cultivation of music, the emphasis on expression, the teaching of literature, the systematic use of the public library, indicate a determined effort to bring the cultural aspects of education to the front, and make them as real a part of the school life as the more striking special activities. ”

“ The pupils of the Gary schools seem to display greater self-control, more self-respect, and more thoughtful consideration for others than the pupils of the same age in most of the better school systems of to-day. I am inclined to think that it comes largely from their games and play, but a part of it is due to the organization of the school, and to the practices that have evolved in its administration. No child in Gary has a single teacher who is the object of his hero-worship, upon whom he tends to become more or less dependent, or his arch-enemy whom he detests with a growing hatred. ”

“ Instead of one continuous apprentice in an industry or trade, therefore, four pupils could take his place in alternation. Instead of one young workman spending all his time at work and none at school, four would be getting a full schooling of thirty-six weeks in the year, and twelve weeks of practical apprentice training in the factory. Thus the Gary plan makes it easy for the young worker to get the maximum benefit of the modern school and his apprenticeship at the same time. ”

“ No opportunity is lost to touch his imagination and excite his curiosity. The school plant itself, in its mere arrangement and construction, it will thus be seen, serves a very important educational purpose. The careful detail with which this has been worked out in these ideal school plants of Gary makes the Wirt school in its physical aspect something very much more significant than a mere collection of facilities. Those facilities fit into one another according to a very comprehensive plan. They form organs of a genuine school life, which educates the whole child. ”

“ The ideal of the Wirt plan is that the child should have every day, in some form or other, contact with all the different activities which influence a well-rounded human being, instead of meeting them perfunctorily once or twice a week, as in the ordinary school. This does not mean, of course, that every child is expected to develop into a versatile genius, equally able in science and music and shopwork and history. Most children are sternly limited in their capacities, and will be unable to assimilate more than a small part of what the school offers them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The result is that the classrooms of the Wirt schools have a character of their own, quite different from the colorless and depressing effect of the ordinary classroom. They are not merely rooms where children study together and tamely recite, but essentially workshops where children do interesting things with their minds, just as in the shops they do interesting things with their hands. The history room is a real history laboratory. ”

“ Self-control, coöperation, courage, self-respect, consideration for others, and a sense of justice have been developed in the Gary youth to a noticeable degree, largely, it seems to me, through the spirit that prevails in consequence of the administration of the physical training department. Pupils who love their school better than the streets, who have a good physical tone through their play and physical exercises, and who have good self-control and independence of thought, must naturally have a more favorable attitude toward school work. ”

“ The Wirt school seems definitely to forecast the day when the public school will have swallowed the college, and the “higher education” will have become as local and available as the three R’s.
If the school is to educate the whole child, the first need is evidently a place for him to grow. “The best of education,” says Professor Terman, “is but wisely directed growth.” “The activities of a child,” says Professor Dewey, “are the means by which he becomes acquainted with his world, and by which he learns the use and limits of his own powers.” ”

“ The criticisms of the Gary plan on the ground that the long school day and varied curriculum overload the pupil can scarcely be sustained in view of the fact that the “school day” is not merely a lengthening of the ordinary public school day, but an absorbing, in healthful activities of play, exercise and manual work, of time which would otherwise be spent in demoralizing street and alley or in idleness at home. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even if we make allowances for the fact that the average salary of teachers in elementary schools and high schools in New York City is one third higher than in Gary, it is obvious that the balance of economy is immensely in favor of Gary as against a large typical city school system operated on the conventional lines. ”

“ If you believe that vocational education is confined to specific training for a trade, and that this must be carried on in a separate trade school, and that general education has no relation to it except as it may add a fringe of culture, then you will think that there is no vocational education in Gary. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The tendency of the old public school, in spite of its fancied “liberal” curriculum, was to turn out only very low-grade specialists in book-learning. The student who comes from the well-rounded curriculum of the Gary school into the industrial world is bound to be more alert, more interested in, and more cognizant of, what he is doing. ”

“ 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 Wirt school contemplates bringing all the cultural resources of the community to bear on the school. It makes the school the proper and natural depository for whatever the community has to offer in artistic interest or intellectual resource. Like most of the features of the Wirt plan, this consolidation of gallery, museum, and library in the school is as economically efficient as it is educationally valuable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is the intention in Gary to have these park-school playgrounds distributed over the city so that few families will live more than half a mile away from one of them.
It is a cardinal principle of the Wirt plan that the parks and playgrounds of a city should be placed as adjuncts of the schools. It is the schools that they primarily serve and it is with the schools that they should be grouped. Millions of dollars have been wasted in the public-playground movement in this country through disregard of this fact. ”

“ The lavish equipment of the ideal Wirt school plant may be paralleled in other communities than Gary, but it is paralleled only in the case of the secondary schools. It is a notorious fact that, of the children who begin the American public school, only one fifth ever reach even the first year of the high school. So far it is the high school or the highest grammar grades that have received practically all of the advantages of broadening educational endeavor,—vocational training, science laboratory work, the study of civics, domestic science, etc. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All those problems of “pupil-mortality,” whereby half the children in our public schools are said never to pass beyond the sixth grade, are almost automatically avoided in a school which deliberately sets itself to meeting the individual child’s needs. The success of the Gary school in holding its pupils is indicated in the fact that, in spite of the short time the Gary schools have been in existence, the proportion of high-school pupils in Gary is said to be almost twice as large as that in the schools of New York City. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”