The importance of the equable division of time between regular studies and special activities has already been discussed. An important feature of the Gary teaching is the avoidance of that excessive subdivision of subjects which has affected curriculum-making in many schools. History and geography are here uniformly taught together; language, grammar, spelling, reading, and writing are taught as much as possible together as English; physiology is taught in connection with zoölogy. Since the teacher is left much initiative in the distribution of her time, she may emphasize and correlate the different studies as she finds necessary. 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.
Studies are taught also with as much bearing as possible on the social activities of the larger city community. The subject-matter in the history and geography classes is really “The Sociological World we Live in,” and textbooks, histories, atlases, globes, newspapers, and magazines become the reference sources and the materials for understanding that world. The working-out of such principles must, of course, be a matter of experimentation by able teachers, and the work cannot be described in any formal manner. Illustrations of some of the successful methods can, however, be given. The history room in the Emerson School, for instance, is found by the visitor to be almost smothered in maps and charts, most of them made by the children themselves, in their effort to “learn by doing,” and to contribute their part to the school community. A large Indiana ballot, a chart of the State Senate, a diagram of the state administration, a table showing the evolution of American political parties, with many war maps and pictures, covered the walls. The place is a workshop rather than a classroom, with broad tables for map-drawing, and a fine spread of papers and magazines. The ninth-grade Gary children are, in fact, conducting what some progressive colleges have introduced as “laboratory work in history.”
THE HISTORY ROOM AT THE EMERSON SCHOOL
When the writer visited the school, the town of Gary was waging a campaign for a new water-front park. The history class had for some weeks been using this public issue as a text for their work. They had been studying “The City: A Healthful Place in Which to Live (with special reference to parks).” Outlines had been worked up from reference books in the school branch of the public library. These were read to the class and discussed by them. Such a course became almost one in town-planning, one of the most fascinating and significant of current social interests, and one which packs into itself a maximum of historical, sociological, and geographical information. Such a course provided an admirable motive for a review of history from a practical local point of view which all the intelligent pupils could appreciate. The outline follows:—
The City: A Healthful Place in Which to Live: Emphasis on Parks
1. Athenian recreation centers.
2. Roman opportunities for recreation.
3. Mediæval cities: England.
4. Mediæval cities: Continental Europe.