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.