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.