The headquarters of the pupil in the school are not in the classroom, as in other public schools. It is the teacher and not the class which is assigned to the room. The teacher remains in the room and the pupils go to him or her, moving about individually from classroom, shop, laboratory, etc., according to the printed schedule card which each pupil holds. The child’s headquarters is the spacious lockers which line the corridors in the basements. Each child has a private locker for books, papers, and wraps. Strictly speaking, the pupil in the Gary school, except in the lowest grades, has no “teacher,” except the “register teacher.” The departmental system gives him many teachers, but no teacher. This system and the self-governing responsibility for his own schedule is intended to cultivate initiative and responsibility on the part of the pupil. It brings him from an early age into contact with different personalities, gives him the benefit of expert teaching and a variety of movement and exercise. The introduction of these free college methods into the common school is, in the light of public-school practice, a daring experiment, but the Gary school experience seems to show that it is quite possible to give the younger children a large measure of freedom and individuality of treatment.
Most of the schedules of the pupils are arranged with reference to the requirements of the state course of instruction, specialization not being permitted, of course, except in the higher grades, or where some special weakness causes repeated failure. Yet the Gary schools have about twenty per cent of special students who do not intend to finish the course and are specializing in some departments. But since, owing to the individualization of schedules, every pupil is in a sense a “special student,” the presence of this large number of students causes no administrative confusion, nor are the special students—as would be the case in many schools operated on a uniform plan—marked off invidiously from those who are following the more regular course.
The segregation of sexes which the visitor finds in some of the Gary schools and courses is not the result of any prejudice against coeducation. (All the activities are open equally to boys and girls alike, so that girls are found in the printing-shop and in the wood-working classes, etc.) It is due to the effort to give each boy and girl what he or she needs. The organization of many classes, such as play, gymnasium, personal hygiene, and the manual activities which do not appeal to the girls, or the domestic science which does not appeal to the boys, required this unisexual classification, and sometimes it has been retained to avoid the break-up of classes in related subjects.
An example of this effort to provide for all kinds of students in the Gary school is the first-year college work which is offered to students who wish to remain in the school for post-graduate work. The Gary school endeavors thus to overlap the college, just as it has made the common school dovetail into the high school, and the day school into the evening school. When the Gary high-school students have come up through the Gary schools, it is hoped to be able to send students from the local schools at the age of eighteen so prepared that they may complete the ordinary college course in two years.
A word should be said about the interrelation of this flexibility of schedule with the “helper” system. The choice of what subjects the pupil shall study is not as willful and anarchical as it may seem. In the lower grades the regular studies are, of course, prescribed. English, arithmetic, history, and geography must be studied by all, with the attendant “application” and “auditorium” work. All must have physical education, music and expression, and some form of manual and scientific work. The courses in science, industrial work, and music and expression, below the high school, are taken in alternation. Each occupies one third of the school year. The individual choice of the pupil comes in what science or what shop work he or she will take. The beginning is not by chance, but really the result of a natural process of selection by the child. All the early years are made a sort of unconscious prevocational school in which the child tries out his interests and powers. Things are neither forced on him nor aimlessly selected. The child in kindergarten or first three grades moves about the halls and corridors. Since the shops and studios and laboratories are not segregated, but distributed over the building, so that all seem equally significant, the child has every opportunity to become familiar with them. His curiosity is aroused, and, unaided, he is tempted to peer in through the glass doors and windows, and wonder what the older children are doing. When the child has reached the fourth grade, he already has an idea of what activity interests him, and what he would like to try. Fourth- and fifth-grade children then go in as helpers to the seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-grade students in shops, studios, and laboratories. 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.
Vocational guidance in such a system is simple and effective. The “auditorium” teacher, in charge of the presentation of material relating to the shops and industries, is able to give information as to the desirability of the several trades and industries as occupations. For example, the school plumber may prepare with his students a plumbing outfit for an ordinary dwelling or apartment, and give a lesson on the way in which plumbing should be cared for in the home. The plumbing instructor may know much about plumbing, but very little about presenting his information to a large body of students. The “auditorium” teacher would assume the responsibility of supervising such auditorium presentations in order that they might be dramatically effective. The day that the plumber and his students present the advantages and disadvantages of plumbing as a trade, the teacher of industries may announce to the boys in “auditorium” period that for the remainder of the week any boy may be excused for a personal consultation with him concerning the desirability of joining a class in plumbing. Students are thus directed in their shop assignments by this “auditorium” teacher of industries. Vocational guidance is thus made possible as far as it is probably wise to undertake such guidance in the school at present. Such a plan directs the mechanically inclined among the children by enlisting their interest and then their will. The “auditorium” teachers for the other activities may also act as advisers in the same way. Teacher and pupil thus coöperate, not in any haphazard fashion, but systematically, in studying the various activities with a view to their future use as a vocation. Such an attitude not only organizes and motivates the work, but gives it seriousness and purpose. Every detail of organization in the Gary school is devised to make the pupil as well as the teacher an integral part of the school life, not only in its own meaning, but in its relation to the outside world.
VI
CURRICULUM: LEARNING BY DOING
The Gary curriculum, in spite of its many special features, is neither eccentric nor overcrowded. It follows the regular course of study laid down for Indiana schools by the State Department of Public Instruction. Students who follow the full course may be ready to enter college at the age of sixteen. The additional facilities of the Gary schools are not gained at the expense, therefore, of the ordinary course of education. They are made possible through a more ingenious distribution of time throughout a longer school day, and by an integration and interrelation of subjects which tend to vitalize them all.
The regular studies in the lower grades are conducted along the conventional lines, with the addition of the “application” work which has been described. The English work is further vitalized through the employment of special teachers for “expression,” who alternate with the special teachers of music. “Expression” is a mixture of elocution and dramatics. The aim of the instruction is evidently to bring the pupils to read and speak with more intelligence and appreciation than is usually done. It is to give the training which will bear fruit in increased expressiveness in all the studies of the school, in all writing and reciting, in “auditorium” and “application” work. So far, owing to the peculiar requirements of talent in the teachers and on account of the lack of good American elocutionary and dramatic tradition, the enterprise can scarcely be called more than a frank and important experiment. For the Gary curriculum with its emphasis on self-activity, such training in expressiveness is essential, and it can be depended upon to improve rapidly in quality as the children and teachers catch the spirit of the schools and get the practice of “auditorium” and “application” work.