Part 5
────────────┬─────────────────────────────────── │ Time │ Studies for │ ────────────┼────────┬───────┬──────────┬─────── │ Group │Group 2│ Group 3 │Group 4 │ 1[2] │ │ │ ────────────┼────────┼───────┼──────────┼─────── 8.15- 9.15│ A │ B │ │ C D 9.15-10.15│ B │ A │ C │ D 10.15-11.15│ C │ D │ A │ B 11.15-12.15│ D │ C │Lunch-hour│ │ │ │ for A B │ 12.15- 1.15│ A │ B │Lunch-hour│ │ │ │ for C D │ 1.15- 2.15│ B │ A │ D │ C 2.15- 3.15│ C │ D │ B │ A 3.15- 4.15│ D │ C │ — │ A B ────────────┴────────┴───────┴──────────┴───────
4.15- 5.00 Playgrounds, gymnasiums, and shops open for volunteers.
Footnote 2:
See preceding table.
Since C D, or the “Y” school, has physical education the first hour in the morning, and A B, or the “X” school, has it the last hour of the afternoon, pupils in the “Y” school are permitted to come an hour later in the morning, and the pupils in the “X” school are permitted to leave an hour earlier in the afternoon. It will be observed from this program that only one fourth of the pupils are engaged in group 1 during any hour of the day. Four separate classes are, therefore, accommodated in each regular classroom. Consequently, the capacity of the school plant is four times that of the regular classrooms. But since a number of rooms which would otherwise be used for classrooms are used for laboratories and studios, the net capacity of the school plant operating under the new program is, as under the old program, twice the capacity of the total number of classrooms.
In the lower grades it is found desirable to use for formal physical training, half an hour out of the two hours assigned to group 2. An exchange is, therefore, made with the grammar and high-school grades, which are assigned to the regular classrooms for an additional hour of English and mathematics. In all grades the time assigned to group 4 is divided between the teachers of physical education and play, and the teachers of the subjects in groups 1 and 2. In the lower grades, teachers of the regular studies use their share of the time—one hour—in games and constructive plays that apply the subject-matter taught in the classes. This is the “application” work which is so distinctive a feature of the Gary school. It is planned systematically to give the formal work of the school opportunity for expression through activity. The music and literature teachers use the “application” period for folk-dances, musical games, dramatics, modeling in clay and sand, and for free imaginative play and construction. This “application” work is carried on informally in the broad halls or in corners of the playgrounds and playrooms. Whatever work has permanent value or interest may then be practiced for presentation in the “auditorium” period. The nature-study and science teachers use the application period for the care of the lawns, trees, shrubbery, the conservatories, the gardens, the animal pets. In the upper grades, mathematics teachers use this period for the practical measuring and planning of the various mechanical construction projects of the shops or grounds, or in practical accounting in connection with the clerical work of the school. In other words, it is in the “application” periods that that work is done which contributes to the school community life which has been described in the chapter on “The School as a Community.”
In the lower grades, “application” takes largely the form of games. In the upper grades, the industrial and science work is used as the basis. Practical instruction is given by the shop and laboratory teachers, in addition to that given by the regular teachers. The special teacher has his pupils for one hour in the classroom, followed by two hours in the shop or laboratory where direct application is made of the theoretical instruction. This extra time is taken out of that assigned to group 4.
The division of time between the various activities in the new program therefore works out as follows:—
_For grades 1 to 3_:—
Language and mathematics 2 hours
Music, literature and expression, 1 hour gymnastics
Application 1 hour
Auditorium 1 hour
Lunch 1 hour
Manual work and nature-study 1 hour
Free play 1 hour
_For the other grades, 4 to 8_:—
Language, mathematics, history, geography 2 hours
Science and manual work 2 hours
Mathematics and English taught by shop and 1 hour laboratory instructors
Physical training and play 1 hour
Auditorium 1 hour
Lunch 1 hour
This is the new program for a school of eight grades. In the case of the complete school plant, such as those of the Emerson and Froebel Schools in Gary, with their twelve grades and their forty or more classes apiece, the program becomes much more complicated. But the division of time follows essentially the outlines given above, the high-school classes resembling the upper grammar grades’ distribution of time and subjects.
The noteworthy thing about this program, apart from the ingenious and successful multiple use of the school plant it represents, is the equable distribution of time between the “regular studies” and the “special activities.” In the Gary school, the “special work,” more or less an appendage in the ordinary public school, is as regular as the “regular work.” Yet the amount of academic work is no less than that in the ordinary schools. The various fundamental groups are participated in on equal terms. No subject is slighted, no age is slighted. The extended school day, which absorbs the “street and alley time” of the city child, affords ample opportunity for all activities. No activity is continued long enough to cause fatigue, while the constant daily cultivation of each activity provides the constant drill and the thoroughness of training which the ordinary school, with its short day and crowded curriculum, is compelled to slight. Such a program seems to be a highly rational distribution of school activities, as ingenious from the point of view of educational engineering as it is pedagogically sound. By treating the daily use of the schools as a public service, the Gary program obtains, for twice the number of children ordinarily accommodated, twice the number of facilities ordinarily provided. Each individual is immensely benefited because all are served. “The only reason why the public—that is, ourselves collectively—can afford to provide things for each of us individually that we cannot provide for ourselves privately, is that collectively we secure a multiple use of the facilities.”
The same principles of administrative economy—an economy which creates rather than impoverishes—are applied to the yearly schedule as to the daily program. The Gary authorities find that they cannot afford to let their plant stand idle two or three months of the year, and are therefore working toward an all-year school. This effort coincides with a growing general belief that the long summer vacations not only demoralize the city child, but are a great waste of educational influence. At the present time state laws hinder the completion of the all-year plan. The Gary schools now have ten months of regular compulsory school, and ten weeks of voluntary vacation school, but they are working toward an organization of four quarters of twelve weeks each. This plan was approximated by Superintendent Wirt in the Bluffton schools before he came to Gary. Under this scheme pupils are required to attend any three of the four quarters, attendance in the remaining quarter being wholly voluntary. In Bluffton it was found that the attendance of the younger children for the summer quarter was greater than for any other quarter in the year. With the traditional term organization, many children are unavoidably absent in the winter on account of sickness and weather. Under the four-quarter arrangement, however, the allotted vacation of these children could be so organized as to include this absence and thus insure thirty-six weeks of schooling. “When people are given a chance,” says Superintendent Wirt, “it is found that they do not want to go to school at the same time any more than they all want to travel at the same time.”
The all-year school would not increase the cost of maintenance. For with the same number of pupils per teacher, the cost is the same whether the pupils are all taught together for thirty-six weeks, on the traditional plan, or whether only three quarters of them are taught at a time throughout a school year of forty-eight weeks.
The economies which this multiple use of school facilities effects are so large as to provide ample funds for all the special features of the Gary plan of education. These savings are in construction, in operation and maintenance, and in instruction. Savings in construction alone are very large. Since, under the duplicate-school plan, two complete schools may be accommodated in one building, the number of school plants may be greatly reduced. In the light of the Gary plan, therefore, those cities which are confronted with problems of school congestion are in the paradoxical situation of having, not too few buildings, but actually too many. Fewer and better plants would accommodate their children under the Gary plan. It must be remembered that the Gary schools at present have accommodations for many more children than there are children to use them, and this in spite of a phenomenal growth of population. The erection of a number of Gary unit plants is less expensive than the erection of a much larger number of ordinary school-buildings of the common school type. For the cost of building construction does not increase in proportion to the size of the building, and large sums may be saved on the fewer sites required. The diminution in the number of classrooms in the Gary school plant is a distinct source of economy, owing to the fact that the classroom is uniformly the most expensive portion of the school plant. The Gary experience seems to show that the best and completest unit school plant is also the cheapest. The plan of having the twelve grades under one roof avoids the reduplication of expensive equipment in several centers. And the self-sustaining industrial shops cut off an item of “vocational training” expense which most cities find almost financially prohibitive.
As for the costs of operation and maintenance, it is obvious that increasing the size of the school plant makes for economy. The cost of janitor service, administrative charges, heating, lighting, etc., are much reduced by consolidation. Nor, in order to effect these economies, need the size of the school plant be made so large as to make administration unwieldy. The largest Gary school plant, operating with all these economies, accommodates only twenty-seven hundred children, forty children to a teacher, while it is the intention to reduce the average number of children per teacher to thirty, and the building capacity to two thousand children.
Finally, the cost per pupil for instruction is decreased by the plan of specializing and departmentalizing the work, and thus eliminating overhead charges for supervisors. It should be pointed out again that _all these economies actually increase the educational efficiencies of the school_.
The figures show that the Gary school plan does not increase public expenditures for educational purposes. The Jefferson School, built before Superintendent Wirt came to Gary, and representing the common type of modern school-building, was erected at a cost of $90,000 to accommodate 360 pupils, with 40 pupils per teacher. This is a _per-capita_ construction cost of $250, a cost exactly equal to that of a typical New Jersey High School recently erected at a cost of $125,000, with a maximum capacity of 500 pupils. The capacity of the Emerson School, constructed as an ideal Gary school plant, is 1800, with 30 pupils to a teacher. Its cost, with a large playground and the wealth of facilities already described, was about $300,000. The _per-capita_ cost of construction was therefore $166. At its maximum capacity, with 40 pupils to the teacher, the _per-capita_ cost of construction would be only $111, as against $250 for the Jefferson School, with no facilities. Further tables of comparative costs will be found in the Appendix.
The funds liberated by the application of these simple economical principles to public-school finance are so large as to give Gary the means to provide, as Superintendent Wirt says, “any kind of a school desired.” Extraordinarily complete educational and recreational facilities may be furnished for all the people all the year round. Money is thus provided for an evening school for adults on an almost unprecedented scale. The Gary evening schools, held in the four largest school plants, four evenings a week throughout the regular school year from 7 to 9.30 P.M., have an attendance over two thirds that of the regular day schools. The cost of the evening school is only thirteen per cent of the day-school cost.
The evening schools of Gary resemble a people’s university. Practically every study authorized by state law is given, and the bulletin of courses is like a university catalogue. All the shops, laboratories, studios, and classrooms are thrown open, either to repeat the day studies or to present more advanced work. All the work, industrial and academic, is open on equal terms to men and women. During 1914-15, 4300 students, representing all classes in the community, are said to have been enrolled in the Gary evening schools, with an average monthly enrollment of 3103. Over two thousand of the nine thousand voters at the last city election were said to be enrolled in the Gary evening schools. There are said to be more men over twenty-one attending evening schools in Gary than there are boys of all ages attending the day schools.
The Gary evening schools in the last year have achieved an even closer articulation of the work of the day and evening schools. A large number of short-unit courses were offered for busy men and women who wished particular branches of certain studies, and who could not remain in school to pursue their studies in the usual way. It has also been arranged to connect into group units the studies that bear upon a given industrial occupation, so that the school may correlate directly with all the occupations of the community, and the adult worker may come and secure the additional experimentation or theory which will help him in his work.
In addition to this instruction offered in academic and industrial work, to the evening pupils is given free use of the gymnasiums, pools, playgrounds, etc. The playgrounds are artificially lighted so that games may be played successfully at night. Playgrounds and swimming-pools are open on Sundays also, and the auditoriums for lectures, moving pictures, community forums, and the like. All wholesome social gatherings and entertainments are welcomed any evening of the week. The auditoriums are freely lent for political meetings, conferences, meetings of neighborhood or other private associations. The Gary school plant thus becomes in the fullest sense a social or community center. The “wider use of the school plant” here involves almost the widest possible use in the interests of all classes of the population; for the lavish Gary school plants contain equipments which serve the needs not only of children, but of all classes of adults as well, from the well-to-do woman who wishes to learn French to the sheet-metal worker in the mills.
By using the schools as a public service, the Gary educational authorities are thus able to provide for all the people facilities at no more expense than other communities are paying now for meager opportunities which do not even meet the needs of the children, while they leave the majority of adults entirely uninfluenced by the schools. “The private exclusive use of public-school facilities has meant and will continue to mean,” says Superintendent Wirt, “that all of the people collectively can provide for only a part of their number.”
The Gary school is evidently a genuine “public school” in a sense more “public” than is generally known. In many communities the public school is “still the old private school publicly supported.” School boards often act as if they were trustees of private property. They gravely discuss “wider use of the school plant” as if this were some gracious extension of privilege instead of a public right. The public in many communities scarcely feel yet that the schools are their own. The Gary schools seem to have produced a different spirit. They are public in the same broad sense that streets and parks are public. They are used with the same freedom and lack of reserve. In such a community and such a school education would never be finished. Just as there is no break between common school and high school in the Gary plan, so there need be none between child and adult. The child would not “graduate,” “complete his or her education,” but would tend to drift back constantly to the school to get the help he or she needed in profession or occupation, or to keep on enjoying the facilities which even the wealthy private home would not be able or willing to afford. It is toward such a public educational ideal that the Gary plan seems to work. Toward this all the economies and ingenious schemes of organization are directed—toward making the public schools veritable “schools of the public.”
V
ORGANIZATION
THE distinctive features of organization in the Gary school are the separation of administrative from pedagogical supervision; the extension of departmental teaching throughout the entire school; the increased initiative and coöperation of the teaching force; the flexibility and simplicity obtained by the “helper” or “observer” system.
The school administration is vested in a single head, the superintendent of schools, who is appointed by the board of education of three members. In charge of each school-building is an executive principal, whose duties are concerned with program-making, with supervision of the pupil’s schedules, with the general maintenance of order and discipline, and ordinary administrative work. He has no supervision of the instruction.
For all the schools there are two general supervisors of instruction, who oversee the teaching, work out the curricula in coöperation with the teachers, conduct examinations for promotion, make promotions or demotions after consultation with the teacher.
The industrial and manual-training shops are under the direction of a director of industrial work, who is also practical head of the school-building and repair department. The teacher-workmen in the shops are employed by him in the dual capacity of manual-training and industrial teachers and of regular workmen engaged in repair and construction. Each building has a head manual-training teacher, who supervises the work of the industrial classes, of the part-time classes, and acts as vocational adviser for the school’s pupils. Gymnasium and swimming-pool attendants are employed by the head teachers of the physical education departments.
The departmental teachers in the head building (Emerson School) act as assistant supervisors of instruction in their subjects and have general oversight of the courses in their subjects as taught in the other buildings.
Departmental teaching is carried out in the Gary schools to an extent generally unrealized in other public schools. It is considered that, with the exception of the lowest grades, no arguments which apply to the institution of departmental teaching in the high school are inapplicable to the grades of the common school. The special activities undoubtedly call for specialists to conduct them. History, language, literature, mathematics can also be much better taught if the teacher can devote his or her attention to the particular methods and orientation of the respective subjects, and not be required to be equally at home in the technique of all of them. Teachers can rarely be found who are many-sided enough to teach well even all the common branches, without the special activities. The Gary schools, therefore, adopt for all, except the first two or three grades, what are practically advanced high-school or college methods of specialized teaching.
In these lowest grades all the regular subjects are taught by the one grade teacher; in the other grades practically all the subjects are departmentalized. A unit school plant which should have fifty-six classes, divided proportionately among the grades, in addition to the nurseries and kindergartens and special classes, would employ for grades 1 to 3, _sixteen_ teachers, as follows: For English, mathematics, 8; for manual training, 2; for nature-study, 2; for music, 1; for expression, 1; for physical training, 2.
For grades 4 to 12, _forty-six_ teachers would be employed: For English, 4; for mathematics, 2; for Latin, 1; for German, 1; for French, 1; for Spanish, 1; for history, 1; for fourth-and fifth-grade English, mathematics, history, and geography (either departmentalized or undepartmentalized), 8; for chemistry, 2; for botany, 2; for physics, 2; for zoölogy, 2; for freehand drawing, 2; for architectural drawing, 2; for mechanical drawing, 1; for music, 2; for expression, 2; for cooking, 1; for sewing, 1; for manual training (not including the industrial shops), 2; for physical training, 6. Four teachers would be employed in the kindergarten department. A unit plant of this size would require one executive building principal, and one supervisor of instruction. Two school nurses and a school physician would also be employed.
Such a distribution of the teaching force would be considered the ideal for a unit school plant of all grades, accommodating between fourteen hundred and twenty-two hundred and fifty children in two duplicate schools. It will be observed that this most careful specialization of teaching does not increase the number of teachers required. At least fifty-six teachers, with a number of special teachers, would be required in any school of fifty-six classes, run on an undepartmentalized plan. The Gary plan, therefore, without increasing the number of teachers, provides for a much higher expertness of service. Indeed, Superintendent Wirt has worked out a form by which a school of thirty-two classes would only require thirty-two teachers, including the special teachers, and with most of the work departmentalized.
Programs may be arranged for schools with any number of classes. The number of classrooms and teachers required will be approximately as follows, including supervisors, special teachers, librarians and playground instructors:—