The Gary Schools

The Gary curriculum, in spite of its many special features, is neither eccentric nor overcrowded. It follows the regular course of study laid down for Indiana schools by the State Department of Public Instruction. Students who follow the full course may be ready to enter college at the age of sixteen. The additional facilities of the Gary schools are not gained at the expense, therefore, of the ordinary course of education. They are made possible through a more ingenious distribution of time throughout a longer school day, and by an integration and interrelation of subjects which tend to vitalize them all.

The regular studies in the lower grades are conducted along the conventional lines, with the addition of the “application” work which has been described. The English work is further vitalized through the employment of special teachers for “expression,” who alternate with the special teachers of music. “Expression” is a mixture of elocution and dramatics. The aim of the instruction is evidently to bring the pupils to read and speak with more intelligence and appreciation than is usually done. It is to give the training which will bear fruit in increased expressiveness in all the studies of the school, in all writing and reciting, in “auditorium” and “application” work. So far, owing to the peculiar requirements of talent in the teachers and on account of the lack of good American elocutionary and dramatic tradition, the enterprise can scarcely be called more than a frank and important experiment. For the Gary curriculum with its emphasis on self-activity, such training in expressiveness is essential, and it can be depended upon to improve rapidly in quality as the children and teachers catch the spirit of the schools and get the practice of “auditorium” and “application” work.

The importance of the equable division of time between regular studies and special activities has already been discussed. An important feature of the Gary teaching is the avoidance of that excessive subdivision of subjects which has affected curriculum-making in many schools. History and geography are here uniformly taught together; language, grammar, spelling, reading, and writing are taught as much as possible together as English; physiology is taught in connection with zoölogy. Since the teacher is left much initiative in the distribution of her time, she may emphasize and correlate the different studies as she finds necessary. All the English branches are taught constantly in connection with the other studies. The history or physics class may begin with a spelling-lesson. Compositions in science or history, or the brochures issued by the science departments, are supervised by the English teacher. We have seen how the shop and commercial instructors give special work in practical English and mathematics. The effort is constant in the Gary curriculum to teach a subject, not as an isolated body of subject-matter, but as knowledge which may bear on any or all the other departments of the school community.

Studies are taught also with as much bearing as possible on the social activities of the larger city community. The subject-matter in the history and geography classes is really “The Sociological World we Live in,” and textbooks, histories, atlases, globes, newspapers, and magazines become the reference sources and the materials for understanding that world. The working-out of such principles must, of course, be a matter of experimentation by able teachers, and the work cannot be described in any formal manner. Illustrations of some of the successful methods can, however, be given. The history room in the Emerson School, for instance, is found by the visitor to be almost smothered in maps and charts, most of them made by the children themselves, in their effort to “learn by doing,” and to contribute their part to the school community. A large Indiana ballot, a chart of the State Senate, a diagram of the state administration, a table showing the evolution of American political parties, with many war maps and pictures, covered the walls. The place is a workshop rather than a classroom, with broad tables for map-drawing, and a fine spread of papers and magazines. The ninth-grade Gary children are, in fact, conducting what some progressive colleges have introduced as “laboratory work in history.”

When the writer visited the school, the town of Gary was waging a campaign for a new water-front park. The history class had for some weeks been using this public issue as a text for their work. They had been studying “The City: A Healthful Place in Which to Live (with special reference to parks).” Outlines had been worked up from reference books in the school branch of the public library. These were read to the class and discussed by them. Such a course became almost one in town-planning, one of the most fascinating and significant of current social interests, and one which packs into itself a maximum of historical, sociological, and geographical information. Such a course provided an admirable motive for a review of history from a practical local point of view which all the intelligent pupils could appreciate. The outline follows:—

The City: A Healthful Place in Which to Live: Emphasis on Parks

The class in ancient history, owing to a belief on the part of the instructor that no child should be allowed to leave school without a background of modern affairs, devotes one day a week to contemporary history. A weekly digest of the ten most important events is kept in the history notebook, arranged, three for foreign events, three for national events, and four for local. Reports are prepared and read upon assigned magazine articles, especially from the Literary Digest, Outlook, and Independent. Everything is thus done to get the clue of historical study from the interesting events around the pupils. History is studied as much as possible backward, instead of forward.

In 1912-13 the classes in modern history became interested in the past of the Balkan nations, in order to understand the reason for their alliance against the Turkish Empire. A digression was, therefore, made to clear this point, and to vitalize thereby the history of the related European countries. The next year a similar interest was kindled in Mexico and our relations with the Spanish-American republics. During the past year the history instructor has found the study of the last two centuries of western Europe to move along without effort, owing to the interest in the great war.

Such a study of history clearly obviates the necessity of any separate study of “civics.” History and geography taught in this way become part of one’s general information. Magazines and newspapers are freely used. The systematic reading of the best weeklies and papers surely is an important training, in an age of so much cheap and worthless reading-matter.

One history class had been making a comparison of Athenian with Gary education. This is another illustration of that constant effort to make the pupils realize the meaning of what they are doing and what is around them. The effort of the Gary education is to make the child acquainted with the purposes of his school. He is not taught as an inferior who must take without question wisdom from immensely superior teachers, but as an equal and democratic citizen of his school community, learning wherever and whenever he can. The ancient history class had for its motto: “To improve its members as American citizens by a study of the experiences of the ancient peoples.” It would be difficult to imagine a more admirable reason for historical study than this phrase, the natural expression of the Gary child who wrote the constitution for the class organization. Such “social introspection” is as rare an intellectual quality as it is valuable.

The history classes in the lower grades use sand-tables to reproduce the topography of the localities which are being studied, or to describe the progress of some battle or invasion. One of the pupils in 1912 constructed with his own hands in the wood-working shops a miniature Roman temple about five feet in length, the plans of which he had worked out from the descriptions in the histories. These classes often engage in debates, and the written reports which are sufficiently interesting are read in “auditorium,” and often printed in the local newspapers. Bulletin boards are placed in the hall for displaying important clippings. The pupils bring these, and classify them under the headings,—foreign news, American news, state, city, and county news, pictures and cartoons, and items on the special topics that are being studied. The history classes have charge of a small historical museum in the corridors, which contains a loan collection of Indian relics and of pottery from Central America.

The teaching of science occupies a unique place in the Gary schools. Just as the history and geography are taught as clues to the social and political world around the pupil, so the science is used to acclimatize him to the natural world. The theory is that children should commence the study of the sciences while their minds are still plastic and their interest in natural phenomena keen. The persistent questions which the child asks are attempts to get an understanding of the world he lives in. Unless these questions are answered, his interest is apt to wane as he grows older. And unless he acquires a familiarity with nature that is accompanied by true scientific information, he is apt to get only a satisfied feeling of knowledge without any true appreciation.

Science in the Gary schools, consequently, goes beyond the simple nature-study taught now in most elementary schools. The child has experience with the laboratory at an early age. The smaller children from the third, fourth, fifth, or sixth grades go into the chemistry, physics, botany, and zoölogy laboratories as “helpers” or “observers” to the work of the high-school classes. On the theory that “children are natural scientists” they are allowed contact with apparatus and materials. It is said, in fact, that experience shows the smaller children to be as careful as the older, and actually to cause less breakage and damage.

The science classes in the lower grades are taught neither in formal recitation nor in formal laboratory work, but in a combination which the instructors describe as “experience meetings.” Pupils and teacher meet on common ground to exchange ideas about their experiences in dealing with natural phenomena. The outside world is treated as a great laboratory, and these “experience meetings” are used to interpret the children’s experiences in terms of scientific principles. There are demonstrations by the children, assisted by the teacher; a little individual laboratory work; and considerable vocal reading from textbooks and scientific story-books.

The Gary science instructors believe that much time and money have been wasted in the teaching of science in high schools, owing to the elaborate methods which have treated the students as if the purpose was to make professional scientists of them all. Children, it is believed in Gary, cannot resort to the detailed research methods of scientists, but must have quick answers and quick results. There is a waste of energy in trying to duplicate in the laboratory the fundamental experiences of life which the children are constantly seeing outside in the great laboratory of nature.

The care of the flowers and plants and gardens, the care of the animals in the zoo, and the study of their habits offer endless concrete material for building up the theoretical side of botany and zoölogy. The pupils are trained to observe and to write down what they see. One class in zoölogy last year made an illustrated booklet descriptive of the school zoo. The text was written by the pupils, the photographs prepared by them, and then the booklet was tastefully printed in the school printing-shop by the pupils themselves. The result was a charming brochure, in which not only the pupils themselves, but the whole school could take pride and pleasure. Such scientific study becomes an intimate and vital part of the entire school life.

For the physics classes, the lighting, heating, and ventilating systems of the school afford a practical textbook. In the Jefferson School, where the industrial shop is built around the boiler-room, the heating plant becomes an integral part of the shop. The physics classes study the climate and the weather. They study particularly the principles of the machines used in the different shops. Each shop may thus act as an extension of the physics laboratory. Classes of even the smaller children are sent to take apart machines like the bicycle, cream-separator, lawn-mower, and explain the construction. The automobile and motor-cycle provide many practical lessons. An old automobile which needs tinkering up is considered in the Gary school to be almost a physics laboratory in itself. The writer witnessed a physics class of twelve-year-old girls who, with their nine-year-old “helpers,” were studying the motor-cycle. With that disregard for boundaries which characterizes all Gary education, the hour began with a spelling-lesson. The names of the parts and processes of the machine were rehearsed orally and then written. After the words were learned, the parts of the machine were explained by the instructor while the class spelled the words over again. Their memory of certain physical principles, such as vaporization, evaporation, were called again into play. Then the instructor set the motor-cycle going, the girls again describing its action. When this had been thoroughly gone over, the class copied from the blackboard sentences describing the processes and parts, but omitting certain crucial words which the pupil had to supply. The intense vivacity and interest of the little group, the intelligence with which these small children grasped the principles involved, made the lesson seem a model of expert teaching. It was an excellent illustration of the way concrete processes may be used to build up scientific knowledge. It is interesting to notice that no distinction is made between boys and girls in their science work.

This lively interest in scientific processes may have unexpected results. The story is told of a high-school boy who, while the board of education was discussing means of fire-prevention, made an investigation of methods and processes which was so excellent that it was forthwith adopted by the board.

This incident is typical of the way in which the scientific work in the schools may correlate with the wider social community. Just as the history classes may bring the pupil into touch with the political life outside the school, so the physics and chemistry class may connect him with the industry of the community and with those public services into which scientific processes enter. A boy, for example, brings to the chemistry class a bag of low-grade iron ore which he has found in the vicinity. The class, under the direction of the teacher, constructs a simple electric furnace and reduces the ore. This experiment is then used as the basis for a study of the great steel industry upon which the city of Gary is founded.

A part of the chemistry work makes a direct contribution to the city. Gary has the good fortune, or the good sense, to have as chemistry teacher in the Emerson School the man who acts as municipal chemist for the city. As a result, the school laboratory becomes an extension of the municipal laboratory. The high-school chemistry pupils assist the chemist just as the smaller children assist them. With the chemist-instructor the pupils test the city water and the various milk supplies. Under the sanitary inspector they visit, as part of their “application” work, dairies, factories, bakeries, food-stores. Last year the class issued a “Milk Bulletin,” containing general information, with reports of their tests. The various articles were recorded as part of the English composition work, and the bulletin was printed by the pupils in the school printing-shop. In quality these bulletins seemed scarcely inferior to what an agricultural school might issue. On their inspection rounds, the class takes samples of sugars and candies from the various shops of the town, and tests them in the laboratory for purity and for the use of harmless coloring matter. Another class experiments with the soft drinks sold in the town, testing their composition, and studying physiological effects. The children are practically deputy food-inspectors, and make their reports on the official blanks. It is said that the result of this sort of inspection is that in a prosecution for violation of the pure-food laws in Gary a case has never been lost.

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.