The Gary Schools

Schools such as those in Gary, with their elaborate equipment and special school enterprises, obviously require methods of financing radically different from those of the ordinary public school. It is, perhaps, this problem of how a small and relatively poor city like Gary could afford to maintain such schools that has aroused the interest of practical school men in the Gary plan. When the public schools were first started in the new town, the authorities found themselves in a peculiarly difficult situation, owing to the limited funds at hand and the demands of a rapidly increasing population. The conventional method of meeting the situation would have been to erect inferior buildings, to omit playgrounds, laboratories, workshops, to employ cheap teachers, to increase the size of classes, to limit the yearly term, or else to try to accommodate all the children in a few buildings on half-time work. These have been the methods which our large cities have almost universally felt themselves obliged to adopt when confronted with these problems of economy and congestion.

The other possible method—and this seems to be the unique contribution of the Gary plan to the economics of education—was to treat the public school as a public service, and apply to it all those principles of scientific direction which have been perfected for the public use of railroads, telephones, parks, and other “public utilities.” The new city of Gary could create thoroughly modern, completely equipped school plants, and operate them so as to get the maximum of service from them. Superintendent Wirt and the school board believed that this plan would be the true economy.

Mr. Wirt says, “You can afford any kind of school desired if ordinary economic public-service principles are applied to public-school management. The first principle in turning waste into profit in school management is to use every facility all the time for all the people.” Instead, therefore, of counting their financial resources and then deciding what limited educational facilities could be provided with them, the Gary authorities seem to have decided upon the ideal school plant desired to meet the needs of the modern city child, and then to have proceeded, by the ingenious application of principles well recognized in business and industry, to utilize their resources so as to support the desired facilities. The Gary plan has made evident the great wastes involved in the conventional methods of managing the public-school plant. All school men will agree with Superintendent Wirt when he says that “most certainly playgrounds, gymnasiums, and swimming-pools are good things for all children to have. I believe that gardens, workshops, drawing and music studios are good things for children to have. I believe that museums, art galleries, and libraries are good things for children to use systematically and regularly. In my judgment opportunities for religious instruction, for private instruction in music, and for assisting in desirable home work are good things for children. So also are coöperative classes between the academic school and the industrial activities of the school business departments, and between the school and industrial activities outside the school. In what way will the use of these facilities handicap a child in his efforts to secure an education?”

The answer is, of course, “in no way.” These are the things the most advanced higher schools and wealthy private schools are providing for their pupils. School men may have desired to provide all these things for all the children of the elementary schools too, but rarely has economic skill combined with educational philosophy to bring such an ideal within the bounds of possibility. The Gary school seems to have found a way. It has actually realized the ideal, and made practicable that school-community life which other schools have only envisaged. It has found that any kind of school desired may be had if classrooms, auditoriums, playgrounds, etc., are in constant use all day long by all the children in alternating groups and out of school hours by adults.

“The modern city,” says Superintendent Wirt, “is largely the result of the application of the principle of the common use of public facilities that we need for our personal use only part of the time. We are willing that other people use public services when we cannot use them. How many street-cars and what sort of service could we afford if each citizen had to have his own private street-car seat for his own exclusive use?” Yet the educational ideal in school management generally remains what is set forth in the report of the 1913 Part-Time Committee of the New York public schools,—“Every pupil is entitled to an individual seat and desk. The teacher is entitled to the exclusive possession of a classroom....”

In the light of the Gary plan this ideal is absurd. It means, as has been discovered in the New York experience, that school facilities can never be made to catch up to school population. And it is absurd because it assumes that all persons in school want to do the same thing at the same time. But all “modern public conveniences are made possible only by their common use and the fact that we do not want to use the same public conveniences at the same moment. We are willing to have some one else use our public library, look at our pictures in our public museum, walk in our public park, sleep in our Pullman berth or in our hotel bedroom, or travel in our steamboat when we are otherwise engaged.” It proves to be as financially prohibitive to attempt to provide an individual desk and seat for every school-child as it is to provide an individual seat for every citizen who may sit in the park. “The great masses of children in our city schools can never have ample play spaces, suitable auditoriums, gymnasiums and swimming-pools, workshops, libraries, museums, or even ordinary schoolrooms for study and recitation, if all children at the same time must be using each of these facilities separately.” The more people use these public services, the cheaper they become for each one of us. And the more evenly the public use is distributed, the more valuable becomes the service to each one of us. “Increasing the number of persons using any public facility either under public or private ownership betters the service for all, provided the load can be uniformly distributed during operating hours. The problem with a public lighting or transportation service is to eliminate ‘peak-loads’ as far as possible.”

We have had constantly before us the gradual extension of the principle of multiple service of public facilities. The Gary plan makes the public school the last of these public services to come under the operation of these principles. As generally managed the public school has not recognized these principles. The effect of its administrative methods, its rigid school hours, its uniform curriculum, its emphasis on academic work, has been rather to increase the “peak-loads” and thus inadvertently to increase the costs of operation. In many schools, the use of the “auditorium” does not average more than ten minutes a day for each day of the year, and the playgrounds barely an hour each day of the year. And for every hour that shops, etc., are empty, there is a waste and leakage, which would be permitted in no other public-service institution.

The Gary plan, therefore, has worked out a multiple use of the school plant in the most comprehensive form. By distributing classes in alternating groups, so that every department and room is in use as nearly as possible every hour of the eight-hour day, the “peak-loads” are prevented and the costs of operation reduced to the minimum. This system, variously called a “rotation-of-crops” or a “platoon” system, permits almost the actual doubling of the capacity of the school plant. Two duplicate schools may function together in the same building all day long. This “duplicate-school” plan is not, it must be observed, that used in some cities, where one school occupies the rooms for a few hours while the other remains at home, to take its turn in the rooms while the other goes out. That is merely a “part-time” scheme, and only accentuates the usual evils of fragmentary schooling and demoralizing street life. The Gary plan involves two distinct schools, known as the “X” and the “Y” schools, each of which has the entire program and the full day. The Gary plan, in other words, can accommodate twice the ordinary number in a school-building, not by shortening the time for each child, but actually by lengthening it.

How this plan works out in detail for a school unit of eight classes may be shown by the following program, which was used in the Jefferson School when Superintendent Wirt first came to Gary. The Jefferson School has been described as a conventional school-building, which was adapted to the Gary plan by the institution of shops, gymnasium, etc., and the conversion of classrooms into laboratories and studios. The program shows how a small eight-room school, ordinarily accommodating three hundred and twenty children (forty to a class), may, with a small auditorium, playground, attic gymnasium, and basement shops accommodate two duplicate schools of eight teachers each, with a total of six hundred and forty children. The first column gives the teachers,—grade teachers for the regular studies of the eight grades, and special teachers for the special activities. The second column gives the rooms where the work is conducted; the other columns give the distribution of time. “1X” means the first grade of the “X” school; “1Y” means the first grade of the “Y” school, etc. The program shows the ingenious distribution of classes throughout the school and throughout the course of the day,—six hours in this case, to which one hour and a quarter must be added for lunch-time.

According to this program, only eight regular schoolrooms are required for the sixteen classes. While these eight classrooms are occupied by the classes engaged in the regular studies, the eight other classes are engaged in special activities in other parts of the school plant, in basement shops, attic gymnasium, or playground. Half the day is given to the regular studies, and half to the special activities. The regular studies occupy two periods of ninety minutes each, one in the forenoon and one in the afternoon. The same amount of time is given to the special activities, but the ninety-minute periods are divided into two forty-five-minute periods. The time devoted to the regular studies is divided as the teachers see fit. Each teacher has but one class at a time, and the way in which the time is distributed between the arithmetic, reading, spelling, geography, history, etc., depends upon the needs of those in the class. It will be seen from the program that each class of the two duplicate schools has time not only for three hours a day of the traditional school studies, but for three hours of play and special activities besides. And since this is the daily program, each class gets this varied work, study, and play every day, and not, as is the case of the special work in most public schools, only once or twice a week. Thus, according to this program, the day’s work for the third grade in the “X” school would be mapped out in this way,—regular studies, drawing or manual training, playground or gymnasium, lunch, regular studies, music, and playground again. The sixth grade in the “Y” school has a program of physical education, music or literature, regular studies, lunch, play, science or manual arts, and regular studies again. The program shows not only how double the number of classes are accommodated, but how all are given a longer and more varied day than is possible in the ordinary school.

This program represents the simplest framework of the application of public-service principles to the daily school program, with its multiple use of facilities. It is known as the “Old Gary School Program,” and has, of course, been much modified and refined and complicated as the need for flexibility and for the further departmentalizing of studies has arisen, and as it has had to be adapted to schools of different sizes. As here presented it does not include the high-school classes. The program of the complete school plant is much more elaborate. The “Old Gary School Program,” however, contains the essential principles of the distribution of classes and of school time.

Since September, 1913, a new and more satisfactory program has been followed in the four larger Gary schools. The new school day is eight and one quarter hours in length, and the work is divided into four groups, as follows:—

The first group of studies is conducted in the ordinary classrooms; the second group in the shops, laboratories, and studios; the third group in the auditorium; the fourth group in the gymnasiums, swimming-pools, playrooms and playgrounds. Four groups of children are simultaneously engaged in these four different departments throughout the day. If A represents one half of the classes of grades 1 to 4; B, one half of grades 5 to 8; C, the other half of grades 1 to 4; and D, the other half of grades 5 to 8—then A and B together will represent the “X” school of our old program, and C and D together will represent the “Y” school, each school with its own corps of teachers and classes of all grades from 1 to 8. The new program for the duplicate school then works out in operation as follows. (The new day is an hour longer.)

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:—

For the other grades, 4 to 8:—

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.”