The Gary Plan for distributing Pupils and enlarging the Scope of School Work
To meet the problems of economy and of adaptation of buildings to educational needs, ingenious ways of rotating classes have been devised. The most conspicuous experiment of this type is that worked out by Superintendent Wirt in Gary, Indiana. Indeed, Superintendent Wirt has advocated the most elaborate extension of the school building and its grounds and a corresponding expansion of the school program. For him the school playground becomes an additional space of great importance in rotating the pupils. Shops and laboratories are to be kept full all day and even in the evening; corridors are to be used as assembly rooms and recreational spaces. He goes so far as to draw the churches and the public library into his plan. With all these available places in which pupils may be instructed, a program is adopted which provides that each room with its special teacher be continuously engaged in some kind of teaching. Pupils are sent from room to room, the theory being that each room shall be kept full at all hours and that each pupil shall get all the different kinds of advantages which the elaborate course of study offers. The reorganization of grade work which is necessary to carry out this program reaches deeper than the addition of new subjects. To make rotation complete, each teacher must be a special teacher and the pupils must move from room to room. Even the lowest grades must be organized under what is known as the departmental plan. Thus, even a second-grade child gets his reading with one teacher and his arithmetic with another.
Requirements to be met when the Gary Plan is adopted
The Gary plan is a very striking example of the relation between the school plant and the school program. In many quarters this relation has not been clearly recognized. For example, some school boards, hearing that twice as many pupils can be accommodated in a Gary building as in an ordinary school building, have instructed the superintendents in their own towns to adopt the Gary plan. The superintendent has to answer: We have an old four-square building which is full in every available corner, there are no shops, and the play space is inadequate.
He often has to go further and question the advisability of departmentalizing the teaching in the lower grades. He is sometimes convinced that a daily program which includes many kinds of activity is distracting and undesirable. The adoption of a new building plan involves the course of study, and the adoption of a new policy with reference to the course of study involves the use of the building. The interesting fact for our immediate purposes is that educational questions that have to do with the content of the course of study and with the methods of teaching are always related to considerations regarding the building.
The Construction of Consolidated Schools
Not only does the school building reflect the internal needs of the school organization which it houses, but there is also a close relation between the school and the distribution of the population in the community. A sparsely settled community invariably used to have a one-room school, because the distances which pupils must travel are such that it is difficult to bring together enough pupils to justify a larger building. The one-room building is likely, however, to offer only the most meager educational opportunities. There is only one teacher. There are no adequate provisions for the pupils who are supposed to be studying, because this one teacher in the one room must be hearing a class recite on some subject at practically every period in the day. The one-room building does not satisfy the progressive community. The device which has been adopted is that of consolidating a number of one-room schools and transporting the pupils through the necessary distances to make possible large schools with separate rooms for pupils of different ages. A consolidated school has facilities which are impossible in a one-room school. These facilities cannot be described without discussing the course of study and also the building and equipment.
The following quotation gives an example of such a discussion:
In Harrison County, Miss., about 8 miles out from the Gulf and in a typical south Mississippi rural community, may be found the Wool Market consolidated school, the subject of this brief study. Three medium-sized one-teacher schools—Coalville, King, and Oakhead—were brought together two years ago to form this school near the Wool Market post office, on the Biloxi River.
The new house, built by private subscription at a cost of about $2,000, was located within 2 miles of all the children in two of the old districts, while a transportation wagon was used to bring in from 25 to 30 pupils from the Oakhead district, about 3 miles from the new schoolhouse. The territory of the new school covers 27 square miles and now has within its bounds 134 children of legal school age.
Each of the teachers in the abandoned schools, having from 30 to 40 recitations daily to cover the eight grades of the elementary and grammar grades, had no time to do high-school work, and on that account had no high-school pupils. As a result of those conditions the patrons who were able financially to bear the expense sent their children out of the community to school as soon as they were ready for the high school, at an annual cost of from $150 to $200, while the larger number were forced to turn aside to take up life’s duties and responsibilities with only the meager training obtained in these little schools. Such conditions obtain in three-fourths of the schools in the South. The Wool Market consolidated school, now serving the same territory, has 23 high-school pupils—16 in the ninth grade, 5 in the tenth grade, and 2 in the eleventh grade—and 20 pupils in the music and expression classes under special teachers.
The aggregate average attendance for the original schools was 60 pupils, according to the records, while the average attendance now in the consolidated school is 110 pupils, with an enrollment of 125. There are only 9 children of school age in the district not in school. In the old schools the number was too small to form an attractive social center and to justify the employment of special teachers, but the new school is fast becoming the center of all social activities of this larger community, employs special teachers in music and expression, and has in the faculty teachers qualified to give instruction in practical agriculture and domestic science. In the interhigh-school contests last spring the Wool Market consolidated school, though only two years old, captured a fair share of the medals in declamation and recitation, while the girls’ basketball team claims the county championship.
The school is located on 5 acres of land, which are used for playgrounds, school garden, and practical agricultural demonstration work. Dr. Welch, the community physician, lectures to the school once a week on hygiene and school and home sanitation; and Mr. W. A. Cox, a trustee of the school and a practical farmer and horticulturist, gives the school weekly lectures on agricultural, horticultural, and allied subjects.
After trying the consolidated school two years the patrons and other citizens of the Wool Market community voluntarily levied a tax of $7 per thousand on the property of the district to support the school for an eight or nine months’ session.
COMPARATIVE STATISTICS
Cost of the three teachers in old school per month $128 Aggregate attendance in the three schools 60 Average cost per pupil per month $2.13 Cost of the three teachers in the elementary and grammar-school grades of the consolidated school per month $150 Entire cost of the one transportation wagon per month $50 Average cost per pupil per month in same grades $2.22 Cost of the four teachers in entire school and of the school wagon per month $280 Average cost per pupil for the elementary and high school $2.54 The Wool Market school, with its four teachers and adequate high-school advantages, costs the community only 41 cents per pupil, or a total of $45 per month more than the three little one-teacher schools. To send the 23 high-school pupils out of the community for their high-school education would cost the community at least $1,000 more than this entire school cost the community and county for eight months. Mr. W. A. Cox, referred to above, is authority for the statement that the value of land in the community had increased during the two years as a result of the good school from $10 per acre to $25 per acre.
| Cost of the three teachers in old school per month | $128 |
| Aggregate attendance in the three schools | 60 |
| Average cost per pupil per month | $2.13 |
| Cost of the three teachers in the elementary and grammar-school grades of the consolidated school per month | $150 |
| Entire cost of the one transportation wagon per month | $50 |
| Average cost per pupil per month in same grades | $2.22 |
| Cost of the four teachers in entire school and of the school wagon per month | $280 |
| Average cost per pupil for the elementary and high school | $2.54 |