LITMIR.BIZ

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classes are smaller than in most public schools. For the first two hours in the morning—from 8:15 to 10:15—one school has the use of the classrooms, studios, shops and laboratories, one group in a recitation room for the first hour and in the shops for the second, the second group beginning with the shop work. The other school uses the playground for the first hour and attendance is not compulsory, for the second hour one group goes to the auditorium and the other remains on the playground for systematic gymnastics or has an “application” period. Then at 10:15 the first school goes to the auditorium and playgrounds for its work and the second school takes possession of the class and shop rooms for two hours. Grades one to five have two hours daily in regular classrooms for formal instruction in language, history, literature, and mathematics. Grades six to twelve have three hours daily for this formal instruction. The additional hour is taken from the play and application periods. Grades one to five have one hour of laboratory work in science or shop work in industrial training, thirty minutes for music or literature, and thirty minutes for physical training. Grades six to twelve have the entire two hours for shop work in industrial training, laboratory work in science, or music and drawing.

      By this scheme of alternation of classes and schools twice the number of children that are usually cared for in one building are taken care of in smaller classes by teachers who are specialists in their subjects. For besides the industrial teachers, there are teachers for French, German, history, mathematics, literature, music, art, nature study, and the sciences. This additional efficiency is paid for by the saving on buildings effected by the two school systems. Each grade room is used by at least four different classes, so each child does not have a desk where he keeps his things and belongings, but has a locker for his books and changes his classroom at the end of the hour. No one teacher is responsible for one set of pupils, but for her own work, and in the same way the pupils are responsible for themselves. Obviously such a scheme as this requires a real spirit of coöperation among the pupils and teachers, and also good business management.

      Mr. Wirt believes that lack of just this has been one of the reasons why the public schools have lost so many of the opportunities that Gary is using. Running a big institution successfully from the business end is a large order in itself, and Mr. Wirt feels that school principals and supervisors have been too greatly handicapped in being expected to do this business while carrying out an educational program. He believes that the school principal or superintendent should be a business manager, an administrative officer simply for the building or for the city. The educational policy of the schools, the program, and methods should be looked out for by experts who are free from the details of administration. These supervising educators should not be appointed for districts but for subjects, and should move their offices from time to time from one school to another, so that they may really keep in touch with all the work in their subject, and so that no one school will be overstrong in one subject. These supervisors should act as the educational principals of the schools where they have their offices for the time, and the whole body of supervisors arrange the curricula for all the schools. Gary has too few schools as yet to enable the completion of such a plan, but the present organization shows the same broad-mindedness and desire to get the coöperation and value of all the work of all the teachers through the system, from the newest assistant to the superintendent himself.

      In discipline, in social life, and in the curriculum the Gary schools are doing everything possible, in coöperation with church and home, to use to the best educational purpose every resource of money, organization and neighborhood influence. The school is a small community in its discipline, and a democratic one. The work is so well arranged that the children want to go to school; there is no need to drag them with truant officers or overawe them by a show of stern authority. Once in the school building they feel at home and take the same interest and responsibility in the work that they take in their own homes. Each child knows what all the other children and classes are doing, for all the children are constantly meeting in the locker rooms or as they pass through the halls for their change of classroom at the end of every hour. The auditorium and the system of visiting classes, and the repairing and manufacturing of school equipment by the students, are strong factors in creating the spirit that prevails among the scholars. There is a student council in each school elected by the students to attend to the interests of the student body and to the order of the building. There are health campaigns carried on by the school doctors coöperating through the school printing press with the English classes and the auditorium periods. The children take such a keen interest in these, and work so hard that there is a larger percent of contagious diseases among the children under school age than among those in school, in spite of the greater chances for contagion among the latter. Instead of simply enforcing the health laws, the school authorities tell the children what the laws are, why they were made and how they can help to keep down contagion and all sorts of sickness; in chemistry and cooking the pupils are taught enough about germs and physiology so that they understand what contagion and dirt mean. The result is that the children themselves take every precaution to prevent sickness, and when a classmate is sick they see to it that quarantine is enforced and that the school doctor is notified.

      The schools have carried on a pure milk campaign in the same way; the pupils brought samples of milk from home and tested it, and then saw that their parents did something about it if impurities were found. An anti-fly campaign goes on all the time and meets with a real response from the children. In the matter of health the schools not only do their share as a part of the whole community, they do more than this, acting as assistants to the board of health and getting rid of the prejudice and fear of city doctors which is so common in our foreign communities, and which makes it so hard to keep down disease and take care of school children. Once the coöperation and understanding of the children is gained by the city doctors, it is not hard to have their adenoids or eyes attended to. The children know why these things need to be done even if their parents do not, and they see to it that the parents are kept from interfering and that they help.

      Another difficult problem for the public schools in an industrial community with a foreign population is to keep the children in school after the legal age at which they may leave. The Gary schools go about this just as they attack the question of public health, not by making more rules or trying compulsion, but by getting the children themselves to help, by making the schools so obviously useful for each individual that he wants to stay. There are no “High Schools” in Gary! A pupil goes to school in one building from the day he enters kindergarten until he is ready for college or until he goes into business or the factory. There is no graduation with a celebration and a diploma at the end of the eighth grade. When a pupil begins the ninth grade his program deviates from the plan of previous years, but otherwise there is nothing done to make the child think he has gone as far as he needs, that from now on he will simply be getting frills and luxuries. The teachers do not change. The same history, language and literature teachers conduct all the grades; and in the shops the pupils get a chance to learn some one thing thoroughly. The pupils do not look forward to the last four years of school with dread of a hard and useless grind, they look at it as a continuation of their school life, getting harder from year to year as their own ability increases. And especially they regard this period as an opportunity to get training whose immediate value they can see. The arguments of the school to persuade the pupils to stay in school are practical, telling arguments, things the children can see. The school press prints from time to time bulletins explaining to the pupils and their parents the opportunities that the Gary schools offer in the way of general education and of special training. These bulletins give statistics and information about the opportunities in the different fields of work; they show the boys and girls in figures the relative positions and salaries of high-school graduates and those who leave school at fourteen—as they appear one, two, or ten years after leaving school. Business men come to the schools and tell the students what the chances for graduates and non-graduates are in their business and why they want better educated employees. Statistics of Gary pupils are kept and shown to the pupils. The usual break between the eighth grade and high school does not exist, and, therefore, parents do not think it necessary to take their children out of school. They find that the sacrifices they have made to keep the children in can be kept up for a few years more. If children are going to learn a trade better by staying in school than by leaving, and if children are keen to continue in school with definite plans for the future, even the most poverty-stricken parent is unwilling to thwart the advantage of his children.

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