THE FOUNDRY AT THE EMERSON SCHOOL
Notice group of curious children at window
A word should be said about the value of the vocational industrial training that the Gary school gives, from the point of view of preparation for efficiency in the industrial world. The organization of the manual work as a part of the regular curriculum prevents the narrow specialization of the trade school. It tends to turn the young worker out, not as a part of the industrial machine fitted to do only one thing, but equipped to meet a dynamic, rapidly changing industrial world which demands above all things versatility, and which scraps methods and machines as ruthlessly as it does men. Only the man of rounded training and resourcefulness who can turn his hand quickly to a variety of occupations has a chance to-day to rise above the mass. The tendency of the old public school, in spite of its fancied “liberal” curriculum, was to turn out only very low-grade specialists in book-learning. The student who comes from the well-rounded curriculum of the Gary school into the industrial world is bound to be more alert, more interested in, and more cognizant of, what he is doing. The Gary school seems to be making an effort to produce the type of mind perhaps the most needed to-day, that of the versatile engineer, the mind that adapts and masters mechanism. This exactness, resourcefulness, inventiveness, pragmatic judgment of a machine by its product, the sense of machinery as a means not an end in itself,—these qualities of mind which come from an emphasis on applied science are the qualities which society demands in almost every industry, profession, and trade. The Gary school tends to cultivate this type of intelligence. For this type of mind, “culture” would not be a fringe, but a more or less integral part of life, because it had been woven in from the earliest years in the school community. On the other hand, skilled labor would not seem degrading or of lower value, for it too would have had its equal part in the school life.
“7. Better facilities for the promotion of the health of children.”
The large amount of play, the spacious and sanitary school plants, the care of the special school physicians and school nurses who devote their whole time to the purpose, insure the needed attention to the physical well-being of the children.
“8. The possibility of having pupils do work in more than one grade and of promoting them by subjects instead of by grades.”
“9. The possibility of having pupils help each other.”
The “helper and observer” system, applied not only in the relations between children, but between teachers, and between teachers inside the school and visitors, is one of the most valuable features of the Gary plan. It entirely alters the usual relations, making for a coöperative instead of a competitive spirit in work, and facilitating enormously the work of both pupils and teachers. Children learn by watching and asking questions—“picking up”—in the most natural way in the world, in contrast to the formal and stilted ways of the traditional classroom work.
“10. An organization which prevents a chasm between the elementary and high school, and prevents dropping out of school at critical periods in the lives of pupils by the introduction, at such times, of subjects which appeal to awakening interests not satisfied by a continuous and exclusive devotion to the ‘common branches.’”
The Gary plan, which includes all the grades in one school plant wherever possible, prevents these chasms more successfully than even such schemes as the junior high school which are being extensively experimented with elsewhere. The Gary school has an extraordinary hold on its pupils. There is no incentive for leaving school, since the school provides for the needs of the most diversely equipped children, gives them the practical vocational training they may want, and even allows their working part-time while continuing with the school. All those problems of “pupil-mortality,” whereby half the children in our public schools are said never to pass beyond the sixth grade, are almost automatically avoided in a school which deliberately sets itself to meeting the individual child’s needs. The success of the Gary school in holding its pupils is indicated in the fact that, in spite of the short time the Gary schools have been in existence, the proportion of high-school pupils in Gary is said to be almost twice as large as that in the schools of New York City.