The Gary Schools

The criticisms directed against the Gary schools by superintendents and teachers are criticisms rather of the whole educational philosophy behind the institution than objections to the detailed working-out of the philosophy. Those who follow Professor Dewey’s philosophy find in the Gary schools—as Professor Dewey does himself—the most complete and admirable application yet attempted, a synthesis of the best aspects of the progressive “schools of to-morrow.”

Concrete criticisms almost all concern the alleged additional burdens laid upon the public, the teacher, and the pupil. As far as the public goes, the fact has been brought out that the Gary school is actually a cheaper kind of a school than is the ordinary public school, even when run in the most economical and scientific manner. The charge that the Gary schools are aided by private corporation enterprise has already been discussed. The facts are, of course, that the schools are all supported in the usual way, by local and state appropriations. The city of Gary is not overtaxed to support its schools, neither does the United States Steel Corporation pay more than its proportionate share of the local taxes. Nor is there any truth in the impression that the operation of the Gary plan is confined to the two larger school plants of the city. Although these two plants accommodate three quarters of the children of the city, the Gary plan is in operation in all the schools. In the two larger schools, Emerson and Froebel, the academic work extends from the kindergarten through all twelve grades. In the other schools there are no high-school students. Four of the other schools have eight grades, one has six, one is only for children in the kindergarten and first two grades. These schools have no high-school department because they are too small and the schools with high-school departments are easily accessible. All the schools have real shopwork, though in not all of them is the apprentice-repair feature possible. All the schools have play and recreation facilities. The smaller schools lack swimming-pools, but the children use the well-equipped Y.M.C.A. All the schools have “auditorium,” science, music, and expression work. All the schools either contain a branch of the public library or else use the main building near by. All the schools have an eight-hour day.

The charge that the Gary schools are too costly for imitation cannot be sustained. We have seen the ingenious efforts of the various features of the Gary plans to reduce costs, and there is a wealth of figures to show in detail the greater economy of the Gary plan. Superintendent Wirt has made an estimate that for an outlay of $6,000,000, “part-time” could be wholly abolished in the New York City public schools by an adoption of the Gary plan. The requisition of the board of superintendents in 1914 was for an appropriation of $40,000,000, simply for new buildings, which would require large sums for operation and maintenance and lack the equipments of the Gary plan. By the multiple use of facilities, Superintendent Wirt has shown that the number of school plants in New York could actually be reduced and yet the part-time of 132,000 children abolished. At the same time that this was done, the school day would actually be increased and the facilities more than doubled. A comparison between the per-capita costs of instruction in the Gary and New York City schools, figured in average daily attendance for 1913-14, has been made by Mrs. Alice Barrows-Fernandez. (The Jefferson School in Gary is used for the comparison because it is more like the elementary schools in New York than any other school in Gary.)

“In other words,” says Mrs. Barrows-Fernandez in her report, “in the Froebel School, which is typical of the average school because only twelve per cent of its pupils are in high school, twelve years in elementary school and high school costs the city for one pupil twelve times $32.85, or $394.20. In New York, eight years in elementary school costs the city for one student eight times $40.24, or $329.92, and four years in high school costs four times $104.74, or $418.96; or for the twelve years, $748.88. In Gary for the $394.20, a student could also get more vocational training than is given in a separate trade school. The New York boy would get none of this in the elementary school. Even if we make allowances for the fact that the average salary of teachers in elementary schools and high schools in New York City is one third higher than in Gary, it is obvious that the balance of economy is immensely in favor of Gary as against a large typical city school system operated on the conventional lines.”

It seems established that the Gary plan imposes no burdens upon the public, either in Gary or in the communities who imitate the plan, but rather provides increased facilities at reduced cost, besides immense facilities for adults. As for the burden upon the teacher, much has been said to the effect that the Gary plan is unpopular among teachers because of the extra work it entails. In connection with this criticism, it must be remembered that the Gary plan postulates an educational philosophy different from that of the ordinary public schools. Teachers trained in schools managed with rigid administrative and disciplinary methods naturally find adjustment difficult in a system which repeatedly calls upon them for initiative, alters their relations to their pupils, and requires a more practical attitude of “application” toward the subject-matter of instruction. Experience seems to show that many teachers who at first found this adjustment burdensome have later come to prefer the Gary plan. One teacher with a fine scholastic training, who had taught for many years under the traditional form of organization, is quoted by Dean Burris as saying, “I did not like it when I came here a year ago, but I begin to like it and see what it is all about, so I am going to stay.”

This attitude would seem to be typical of the intelligent teacher who comes to appreciate what it is all about and the valuable educational advantages which the system provides for the teacher herself. And although the problem of securing teachers has been somewhat difficult in Gary, owing to the newness of the town, the large factory population, and the relative absence of organized social life, most visitors are impressed by the unusual personal caliber of the head teachers.

It is difficult to see where the Gary plan involves extra burdens for teachers. The teaching period is only four hours a day, with an hour for “auditorium” and an hour for “application.” This is certainly no more exacting than the five-hour teaching day of the ordinary teacher. All “home work” and “paper work,” moreover, is supposed to be done by the Gary teacher during school hours, so that her school day is over when the bell rings. This makes her real school day actually shorter than that of the teacher in the ordinary school, whose afternoons and evenings must often be spent in correcting papers, etc. The Gary teacher is supposed to have leisure and to behave in school and out of school as a good citizen actively interested in the community welfare. The Saturday school work, for which the teachers are called upon in turn, is paid for at a rate of one dollar an hour. The care and work involved in the “register-teacher” plan is certainly offset by its valuable educational value for the teacher herself.

It should be clear that the various features of the Gary plan tend to relieve the teacher of burdens and particularly of nervous strain. The teaching of special subjects by special teachers relieves the grade teacher of the obligation of teaching, under the exacting direction of supervisors, subjects like music and drawing with which she may be little acquainted. The departmentalizing of subjects down through the lower grades gives a breadth to the teachers’ work, and enables them to concentrate on the subjects which interest them, rather than diffuse their attention among many. The absence of uniform standards, the absence of formal term examinations for which a whole class must be prepared, the promotion of children by subjects rather than whole classes, as well as the division of grades according to rate of progress,—all this makes for a great saving in the teacher’s nervous energy. She does not have the strain of passing her whole class in every subject, of finishing her course on schedule time, of cramming for examinations. She has some freedom in the division of her time and a voice in the making of the course and curriculum. The less experienced teacher has in her classroom the assistance and advice of the senior teacher, as well as of the head teacher of her subjects in the head school. Teachers are not rivals, but colleagues as in a college faculty.

The freer methods of discipline are much to the teacher’s advantage. When the ideal is no longer to keep the classroom in a rigid military silence, a large part of the teacher’s energy may go into teaching which formerly went into the maintenance of discipline. Where “interest” and “application” and “learning by doing” are the keynotes, and where every one—teacher and pupil alike—is at some time in the course both teaching some one and learning from some one, the teacher is no longer interested in “making the child obey,” or “commanding his respect.” No official gulf is set between teachers and pupils. It is discipline that wears out most teachers,—and children too,—and a greater flexibility makes for the lessening of nervous strain on both.

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:—

“1. For the better use of school-buildings day and evening, including Saturdays, the year round, making it possible to save large sums of money expended for this purpose.”

This multiple use of school plants, which secures greatly increased facilities at greatly reduced cost, while it permits the giving of full-time instruction to all the children of even the congested school districts, is the aspect which has appealed most generally to educators outside of Gary. For administrators confronted with problems of part-time, it makes an examination of the Wirt plan almost essential. No educationist can afford to ignore a plan which, in mere details of mechanical administration, provides not only a full-time program, but actually a longer school day, for all the children in the city school—something hitherto considered impossible in the larger school systems. The Gary plan seems to provide an easy solution for these difficulties which grow progressively worse in the large city with every year.

“2. The possibility of a better division of time between the old and the new studies, the ‘regular studies’ and ‘special activities.’”

The Gary plan provides not only an enriched curriculum, but an unusually favorable and harmonious balance between the various activities. The larger emphasis on science and manual work has not made the school ultra-utilitarian in its purpose. The Gary schools have not been “turned into mills and factories,” as certain educators have feared. For many visitors, the Gary school is a living refutation of the idea that the useful and the beautiful are opposed. The new school plants, such as the Emerson and Froebel, are spacious and dignified buildings, with many touches of thoughtful taste that one usually associates only with the high schools of exceptionally wealthy and cultivated suburban communities. The presence of pictures, the cultivation of music, the emphasis on expression, the teaching of literature, the systematic use of the public library, indicate a determined effort to bring the cultural aspects of education to the front, and make them as real a part of the school life as the more striking special activities. The “application” work involves constant care and interest in the enhancement of the beauty of the school plant. The actual charm of the school life in Gary—the conservatories and gardens, the play, the freedom of the children, the dramatic expression, the absence of strain and confusion, the happiness of the children—is testified to by most visitors. A very beautiful school life seems to be lived, paradoxical as it may seem, where every activity is motivated by application and expression, where the learning is by doing and not by mere studying.

“3. Greater flexibility in adapting studies to exceptional children of all kinds, thereby diminishing the necessity of special schools.”

The Gary plan provides a school which is adapted to almost every kind of a child. It does not try to adapt the child to the school, casting off automatically those who do not fit. But it adapts the school to the very unequal needs and capacities of the children. Such a school seems to be one where capacities will be developed wherever there are capacities, a school where something like equal educational opportunity can be given, as it cannot be in the ordinary public school. It can almost be said that the only reason for keeping a child home from the Gary school would be a case of contagious disease. If the child is physically weak, so that he cannot undertake all the work, he may take what he can and use the other facilities of the school as one would use a sanitarium for regaining health. The daily program permits a child to spend all his time in the special activities if this is best for him. He may spend his time resting in the open air, or in supervised play until he gains strength to do the regular work. The defective child may work at what he can in the way of manual activity. And the retarded child may take such activities as will awaken his interest, and gradually bring him up to the level of his grade. An elementary school system like this has no need for the expensive special open-air schools, classes for defectives, etc., special trade schools or commercial schools. In the organized life of the complete school community, the child may find approximately what he needs.

“4. The possibility of more expert teaching through the extension of the departmental plan of organization.”

“5. The better use of playtime, thereby preventing influences which undo the work of the schools.”

“6. More realism in vocational and industrial work, by placing it under the direction of expert workmen from the ranks of laboring men, selected for their personal qualities and teaching ability as well as their skill in the trade industries.”

The organization of the industrial and other vocational work offers many practical advantages to the young worker. Not only does he have the evening continuation courses and the privilege of coming back to the school shops in the daytime when unemployed, but the most practical foundation is laid for the development of coöperative courses between school and factory on the lines of the well-known Fitchburg plan. The flexibility of administration and curriculum in the Gary school allows him to attend the academic class during slack hours, or to divide the job and the school with another student. The Gary school even offers to provide special instruction for part-time students for any desired number of hours a week, or allows them to work on their own initiative. In 1914 in Gary there were said to be about one hundred part-time students. The plan of the all-year school also offers peculiar opportunities to the young worker. The opportunity of finding employment is increased fourfold. For instead of throwing all the pupils on the market to find jobs at the same time, one quarter of those who needed work would be available throughout the year. Instead of one continuous apprentice in an industry or trade, therefore, four pupils could take his place in alternation. Instead of one young workman spending all his time at work and none at school, four would be getting a full schooling of thirty-six weeks in the year, and twelve weeks of practical apprentice training in the factory. Thus the Gary plan makes it easy for the young worker to get the maximum benefit of the modern school and his apprenticeship at the same time.

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.

“11. A saving in the cost of instruction by reducing overhead charges for supervisors, making it possible to pay better salaries or reduce the number of pupils per teacher, or both.”

“12. A plan which brings together, in a unitary way, with economy and efficiency in management, the other recreational and educational agencies of the city.”

These evaluations of Dean Burris’s sum up the various aspects of the Gary plan as it appeals to practical educators. It must be remembered that the Gary school represents not a rigid system, or a static and completed mechanism. Its chief value is that it provides a flexible program and facility for change and development. Any examples of details in the curricula or details of administration can only be tentative, for it is an experimental school, where every one is constantly studying and learning. It is a growing organism. The only limit to its growth seems to lie in the imagination of teachers and pupils. Even when it starts with an admirable equipment, its life is only begun. It is the use of the equipment, the constant appeal to the imagination and to expression that is the real education. In such a school, the cultivation of resource may go on indefinitely. Such a school provides that “embryonic community life” which Professor Dewey expresses as his ideal of a school, where in actual work the child senses the occupations and interests of the larger world into which he is some time actively to enter.

We may say, then, that the Gary school has national significance because it is the first public school system in successful established operation which has been able to solve the pressing and apparently insoluble problems of the city school; which has kept pace with changing industrial and social conditions, and adapts the school to every kind of a child; which synthesizes the best educational endeavors of the day, and provides the facilities which educators have vainly sought to provide for all the children, but have only succeeded in providing at great expense for the more advanced and older pupils of the community; which marks a distinct advance in democratic education; which realizes the ideal of a truly public school, in providing for all the people all of the time; and, which, in its simple organization and ingenious financial economies, furnishes a practical working-model for imitation and adaptation in other communities, large and small.