The children test also the materials supplied to the schools, the coal, cement, etc., to see if they come up to the specifications. They are not only using the things around them for practical textbooks, but they are able to turn their knowledge immediately into work which is immensely beneficial, not only to themselves, but to the whole community. The value of enlisting pupils in this inspection work, of training them to observe and criticize and test the physical conditions under which they live, is incalculable. For even a small proportion of children to get this scientific-deputy-inspector habit, and to get used to thinking in terms of qualitative and quantitative tests, would evidently have some effect upon political and social conditions. Such scientific training makes science an integral part of life, not only a knowledge of how natural forces and materials behave, but also a command of technical resources in making them behave in desirable ways. The pupils in such a school, from their earliest years, get a correct appreciation of the value of science in ameliorating conditions and in improving the healthfulness and security of the community in which they live.
The Gary curriculum seems to represent a determined effort to break down the distinction between the “utilitarian” and the “cultural.” All the subjects are taught, as far as possible, in concrete ways which shall draw upon familiar experience and teach the child by making him do something. That something is made, as far as possible, an activity which will enhance the life of the school community, or contribute to the social community. These activities are “utilitarian,” but they are at the same time profoundly educative. Principles are never lost sight of in practice. The artistic and academic work take equal rank with the manual. Both “cultural” and “utilitarian” are, in fact, subjected to the “social.” This is the key note of the Gary education.
VII
DISCIPLINE: THE NATURAL SCHOOL
The problems of discipline in a Gary school are essentially different from those of public schools run on the usual semi-military plan. The large degree of coöperation between teachers and pupils and between pupils, the emphasis on laboratory, shop, and “application” work, where freedom of movement and conversation is essential, produces a more natural atmosphere, and a certain amount of genuine if unconscious self-government. The children in the Gary schools are generally conscious of the unique features of their school; they understand what the school is trying to do. This sense, and their pride in its fame, cultivate an admirable school spirit denied to those schools which are operated on conventional lines.
The organization of the Gary school permits the reduction of formal discipline to a minimum. It allows the teachers to dispense with disciplinary rules against whispering, with formal punishments, with formal marks or demerits for conduct. The frequent change of activity, with opportunities for exercise throughout the day, prevents the children from becoming nervously overwrought. They thus escape irritability and aimless boisterousness when left to themselves. The “application” and shop work compel attention, so that the child is kept busy and interested, and the mischievousness that arises from idleness or distracted attention is avoided. As Professor Dewey says, “Trained in doing things, the child will be able to keep at work and to think of the other people around him when he is not under restraining supervision.” When the teacher’s rôle changes from preceptor to that of helper, it is obvious that what is needed in the classroom is not so much perfect quiet and military order as freedom of expression and spontaneity.
Visitors to the Gary schools bear witness to the peculiarly beneficial effects of this absence of formal discipline. The free and individual way in which the children move about to their tasks and the spontaneous way in which they talk to visitors make a marked impression. In classroom or laboratory or shop, it is usual to find about as much whispering as in a concert audience, with the same motives, freed of “rules of order,” for quiet. A natural atmosphere of orderly and tolerant conduct seems to be formed in such a school.
The writer witnessed an interesting study in spontaneous discipline in one of the Saturday voluntary classes at the Froebel School. The wood-working shop was filled with little boys who were fussing over the scraps left by the week’s work and trying to make toys and knick-knacks out of them. The teacher was in the room, but was exercising no control over the children. Yet each little boy worked on his own little job as indefatigably as if he were under a drill-master. If any of them became weary and was moved to interfere with another small worker, he was apt to be brushed off as if he were an irritating fly. The theory at the back of such freedom is that rules in the school tempt to infraction, and school discipline is, as a result, largely an attempt to solve problems which the rules directly manufacture. Some visitors, appalled by the freedom of the Gary schools, look about for signs of depredation. But they do not seem to find any. The visitor gets the impression that these schools have acquired a “public sense.” The schools are the children’s own institution, and are public in the same broad sense that streets and parks are public. The tone is of a glorified democratic club, where members are availing themselves of privileges which they know are theirs. One expects children, unless they are challenged to inventive wickedness, no more to spoil their school than a lawyer is likely to deface the panels of his club. The children seem in such a school unaffectedly to own it, and to use it as a mechanic uses his workshop or an artist his studio. The halls in the Gary school become really school streets. Benches are built by the pupils along the walls, where children are seen informally studying together. Or one comes upon a table where a boy is drawing a map, having been excused from recitation, on the theory that it is not necessary for every child to be exposed to every exercise of the class when he might do something more important outside. The children come with their parents to night school and play and run about the broad halls quite unwatched. The visitor gets the idea that children come to such a school, not because education is compulsory or because their parents send them there to get rid of them, but because what is done there is so interesting that they will not stay away. The equipment, used so freely, makes the school a substitute for the defects, not only of the poorer homes, but of the well-to-do also, in supplying activities for children.
One might say that only in a free and varied school like this was such a thing as effective discipline possible. When school activities are as attractive as they are in the Gary school, deprivation means a distinct punishment. There is ready at hand an instrument for inculcating reason into the refractory which is as powerful as the stoutest disciplinarian could wish. The ordinary school has its difficulties with discipline largely because it tries to keep up a military system of conduct without any means, now that corporal punishment is generally abolished, of punishing infractions. Marks prove ineffective, “keeping in” punishes the keeper as well as the kept, and being sent home is too often a pleasure. But in the Gary school, “being sent home” would mean being sent to a place infinitely less interesting, and being deprived of school play or any special activity would mean a real hardship. The free and spontaneous discipline of the Gary school does not mean that there is no discipline at all. Unruly cases are sometimes punished severely by the executive principal. But there is little talk about “mischievous and unruly boys.” Children who, in spite of everything, are “not adapted to our kind of a school,” may go to the school farm. This, however, is not a reform school for juvenile delinquents. Delicate children may be sent there for a vacation or classes go for a holiday. The farm contains a hundred acres, with a model dairy, good orchards, and substantial farm buildings. A graduate from one of the state universities is in charge, and is working to bring the farm up to a high pitch of cultivation and production. One group of boys who were there for a while, some of whom had come from homes surrounded by unwholesome conditions, others of whom wished to try farming for a livelihood, built themselves living quarters and a clubroom. They were provided with a teacher, and school work went on with the farm work. The boys received fifteen cents an hour for their work, and earned enough to pay their board and make something besides. These boys finally drifted back to the Emerson School or to work in the factories. But the farm remains as a valuable adjunct to the schools. Efforts are being made to make it a source of income and an object lesson to farmers in the vicinity.
Freedom of discipline is obtained in the Gary schools without the methods of “self-government” and “honor systems” which prevail elsewhere. Where the teachers retain all authority, such schemes can be little more than a humiliating pretense. For a time an elaborate self-government plan was tried in the Emerson School under the name of “Boyville,” with a sort of parody of municipal functions. But it seems to have been too unreal to last. It has been superseded by a “students’ council,” elected by the pupils of the upper grades, and exercising control over athletics, social, and other student affairs. This students’ council has executive charge of the “auditorium” periods, for which it elects a presiding officer and secretary, alternately a boy and a girl, every month. The elections for councilors are conducted in regular form, with ballots printed by the pupils in the school printing-shop. Booths are erected, judges appointed, and the election carried through, after a campaign, in which the parties meet, nominate a boy and girl for each office, and appoint a campaign manager who arranges a program for the campaign. The candidates make speeches, giving their views and the arguments for their policies.