The Gary Schools

by Randolph Silliman Bourne

The custom of “helpers and observers,” the emphasis on discussion rather than formal recitation, even take a certain amount of actual teaching out of the hands of the teachers. The teacher, as in the Montessori method, becomes the guide and mentor rather than direct preceptor. She is no longer so much concerned with predigesting subject-matter and presenting it in logical form to the pupil, only to draw it from him again in recitation and written examination. She is rather concerned with directing the large amount of practical work which the Gary child does in every course, and in devising methods of “application,” or in turning the work into practical value for the school community. Those classes where the “helper and observer” system obtains are, to a large degree, self-instructing. The older child tells the younger what he is doing in shop or laboratory, etc., and when the younger child comes to take up the work, he is already familiar with materials and apparatus and the significance of the course. Raw new classes thus do not have to be constantly broken in by the teacher. This means a very large saving of labor for the teacher, while it makes for the more thorough understanding on the part of the pupil. In the physical education work and in the organized play, the older pupils are enlisted as assistants to the teachers. Superintendent Wirt’s new plans involve the employment throughout the different departments as teachers’ assistants of a class of older pupils, selected for their interest and ability. Such work not only gives the student the best possible training for developing leadership, initiative, and the ability to assume responsibility, but it also relieves the teachers and makes possible many small classes without extra teachers and without extra rooms.

From the teachers’ point of view, then, the numerous ways in which the Gary plan relieves the nervous strain and actual responsibility of teaching, and removes the pressure of outside work, more than compensate for the slightly longer actual time during which the teacher must be in the school plant. And since this longer time means increased salary, it is clear that the teacher under the Gary plan is the gainer in every direction.

The criticisms of the Gary plan on the ground that the long school day and varied curriculum overload the pupil can scarcely be sustained in view of the fact that the “school day” is not merely a lengthening of the ordinary public school day, but an absorbing, in healthful activities of play, exercise and manual work, of time which would otherwise be spent in demoralizing street and alley or in idleness at home. We have seen that this additional activity is not gained at the expense of the academic studies, but comes from giving the children interesting things to do in the surplus hours in which they are usually left to take care of themselves. The freedom of the Gary schools, and the constant passing back and forth between school and home, church, etc., does not seem to make for truancy. The percentage of attendance in November, 1914, was for boys 92.9, for girls, 91.6,—a remarkable record when it is considered that boy truancy in most city schools is much the greater. For the year 1913-14 the percentage of attendance was for boys 89.5, for girls, 89.2.

The criticism of the Gary school on the ground that the shopwork either involves the risk of exploiting the pupil, or else introduces him to manual activity at too early an age, ignores the fact that the manual work is really unspecialized and is introduced so gradually into the child’s life that it is scarcely felt as work. “Play” and “work” are merged in “interesting activity,” and almost unconsciously the child finds himself absorbed in work which may be his vocation later on. Whether it is to be his vocation or not, the Gary school believes that such work is a good thing in the education of all children. Many educators believe that the novel form of shopwork in the Gary school offers a solution for the problems of industrial training. There is great risk, in schools where shopwork is introduced apart from the academic work, as in special technical high schools, of an undemocratic and invidious distinction between the manual worker and the brain worker. In plans of organization, such as the Ettinger plan in New York City, with a preliminary course of “prevocational training,” in which the prospective industrial pupil in the seventh and eighth grades discovers by hasty experimentation which trade his aptitudes fit him to pursue, there is great danger that the vocational work will be left unassimilated to the rest of the school work and the child trained into a narrow specialist. Such “vocational training” deserves all the criticism that has been directed against it by the opponents of a too “utilitarian” education. The Gary type of vocational training keeps the industrial work constantly in touch with the other activities, and makes it a really “cultural” branch of the school community work. And because the children lay their foundations of skill and interest so early and work at real work under real workmen, their training from a practical point of view is as good as, if not better than, the special trade school is likely to give them. More shops are actually supported in the Gary school than even the most elaborate special trade school can afford to provide. The correlation of day courses with evening continuation courses, the great attention to science, the emphasis on the social and communal bearing of all activities,—all this means a higher type of vocational training than has been worked out generally in the public school. If he is intelligent, he will be better qualified for skilled work than the more narrowly trained worker. “This is the age,” says Superintendent Wirt, “of the engineer, of machinery, and of big business. The school business enterprises offer a type of industrial and commercial education facilities ... adapted to modern industry and business. There are big business problems and machinery problems in the school.” These problems evolved in the life of a school community give an education, he holds, superior to what can be given even in schools narrowly devoted to shop-training. And it can give the training in small groups or even to individuals, where the special school has to give instruction in large classes to make it pay at all. As Mrs. Barrows-Fernandez puts it, “If you believe that vocational education is confined to specific training for a trade, and that this must be carried on in a separate trade school, and that general education has no relation to it except as it may add a fringe of culture, then you will think that there is no vocational education in Gary. But, on the other hand, if you belong to the group that believes that what children under sixteen need in the way of vocational work is not specialized trade training on top of an inadequate elementary-school education, but fundamental industrial training closely related to the science and academic work, and made real and natural because it is one of the many activities of the whole school,—then you will come away from Gary feeling that the vocational work there represents the soundest point of view and the best practical accomplishment in vocational work for children under sixteen that can be found anywhere in the country.”

In New York City, where an extended experimentation is being carried on with the Gary plan, considerable controversy is said to have arisen over the provision of the Gary scheme which permits outside institutions, including churches, to coöperate with the school and take children for a few hours a week for any special work, amusement, or instruction which the schools cannot give. The fear was expressed there that this provision would mean the entering wedge of religion into the public school.

As outlined by Mr. Wirt, however, the Gary plan holds no brief for religious instruction. It has no concern with any church activity as such. What it tries to do is to coördinate the community child-welfare agencies with the school. The lengthening of the school day absorbs an hour which would otherwise be spent by the city child in the street, or at home, church, or settlement. All the Gary school does is to organize and systematize this hour. It may be spent by the child either in play or auditorium at the school, or in any outside activity which provides wholesome activities for children. The object is to coördinate the community opportunities so that they may function regularly and vitally instead of spasmodically as at present. The school gives to all the agencies which pretend to be interested in the child’s welfare a chance to spend themselves effectively. It brings up to the level of public discussion, for the first time, the question what sort of home, church, and neighborhood activities are good for children.

Into this scheme the church enters merely as a community institution. As long as any considerable number of the parents of the children in a school believe that religious instruction is valuable, no public school which attempts to be really public can refuse to release children for this purpose, just as it releases them for playgrounds, settlements, libraries, home music, or other instruction. This outside time is not taken from study. Nor are the children turned out into the streets to be taken care of by the churches and other institutions. No child is excused unless the parents make formal application. If the parents do not do this, the child stays at the school for the full seven or eight hours of work, study, and play. The burden of responsibility rests entirely upon the parents and the churches. The teachers have nothing to do with the matter, either in segregating the children or seeing where they go. There seems to be little fear that the practice will not conform to the theory. Mr. Wirt tells us that his work-study-and-play school had been functioning for twelve years in Bluffton and Gary before any religious organization took advantage of this provision. The idea that the opportunity would unduly increase religious influence in the schools seems to be groundless. In the Jefferson School in Gary, which has been longest in operation under the Wirt plan, and where the fullest efforts have been made by all the sects and religions of the town to provide this supplementary instruction, scarcely half the children in the spring of 1915 were going out to any sort of religious training whatever. And in one of the Wirt schools in New York, where unusual efforts have been made by some of the churches to meet the new plan, not even half of the children are released for this purpose. In another Wirt school in New York, none of the children are released, because there is no demand for it on the part of the parents.

What the Gary plan seems to do is not to bring religion into the schools, but for the first time to take it out of the schools. The relations now between church and school are hidden. The Gary plan brings them out into the open. The establishment of a fair, free, and open relation between the school and all other community institutions is of utmost importance. No institution which has anything valuable to offer the child will lose by such a relation. No outside power can dominate or even partially control a public school which has established it.

We may sum up the Gary school, then, as primarily a school community for children of all ages between nursery and college, providing wholesome activities under a fourfold division of work, study, play, and expression. It aims to provide the best possible environment for the growing child throughout the course of a full eight-hour day. The school community, replacing the old-time education of household and school, aims to be as self-sustaining as possible, all activities contributing to the welfare of the school community life. By the multiple use of school facilities, on the plan of public-service principles, such a school may be provided at no more expense than that of the ordinary public school. The economics effected by this multiple use enable the Gary school to provide recreational and educational facilities for adults as well as children all the year round, as well as to pay better salaries to teachers, and completely solve “part-time problems.” It makes the school the cultural center of a community with parks, libraries, and museums functioning as contributory to the school, as well as all other activities which provide wholesome interests for children. It makes the school, for the first time, a genuine “social center,” and a genuinely “public school” in a comprehensive sense scarcely realized hitherto.

No better evaluation of the Gary plan has been made than that by William Paxton Burris, Dean of the College for Teachers, University of Cincinnati, in the Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Education, 1914, no. 18. In his opinion the school system at Gary provides:—