The Gary Schools

Front Cover
Houghton Mifflin, 1916 - Education - 204 pages
Two accounts of the Gary System, an innovative attempt to reorganize school curriculum, method, and organization, begun in Gary, Indiana in 1906. This edition includes a 1970 introduction by Adeline and Murray Levine.
 

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Page 199 - The playgrounds, gymnasiums, swimming pools, auditorium, club and social rooms, library, shops, laboratories, etc., make a complete social and recreation center for adults. Experience has demonstrated that the facilities for academic instruction add to the attractiveness of the plant as a social and recreation center.
Page 14 - ... manually, scientifically, as well as intellectually. Mr. Wirt believes that by putting in the child's way all the opportunities for varied development, the child will be able to select those activities for which he is best suited, and thus develop his capacities to their highest power. This can be done only in a school which provides, besides the ordinary classrooms, also playgrounds and gardens, gymnasiums and swimming-pools, special drawing and music studios, science laboratories, machine shops,...
Page 174 - ... 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 a city. One of the alleged advantages enumerated above, calling for further comment, is that in regard to the value of extending departmental teaching. Its value in the...
Page 199 - The opinion is becoming fixed that we have not utilized the school plants completely unless they are used for recreation and social centers by adults. Fortunately a school plant that provides for the constructive play and recreation activities of children is also most admirably adapted for similar activities with adults. The...
Page xviii - Indiana, in the year 1900. First: All children should be busy all day long at work, study, and play under right conditions. Second: Cities can finance an adequate work-study-and-play program only when all the facilities of the entire community for the work, study, and play of children are properly coordinated with the school, the coordinating agent, so that all facilities supplement one another and "peak-loads" are avoided by keeping all facilities of the school plant in use all of the time.
Page xvii - During the past fifteen years I have tried approximately fifty different programs for "work-study-and-play schools." The several factors in such a school program can be combined in countless ways. I have not tried to design a system or type of school program as set forth that would constitute a universal ideal school for all children.
Page 43 - When you have provided a plant where the children may live a complete life eight hours a day in work, study, and play, it is the simplest thing imaginable to permit the children in the workshops, under the direction and with the help of welltrained men and women, to assume the responsibility for the equipment and maintenance of the school plant. An industrial and commercial school for every child is thus provided without extra cost to the taxpayers.
Page 142 - ... detests with a growing hatred. The Gary pupil has several teachers, each of whom affects him in a different way. He becomes more conscious of his own individuality in this way and learns to determine for himself what he should do and become. Under such a system the influence of fellow pupils becomes relatively stronger than in the ordinary school. It is, therefore, highly important that care be taken to further the development of right ideals in the student body. Organized play has its great...
Page 173 - ... teaching ability as well as their skill in the trade industries. 7. Better facilities for the promotion of the health of 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. 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...
Page 169 - ... special activities." 3. Greater flexibility in adapting studies to exceptional children of all kinds, thereby diminishing the necessity of special schools. 4. The possibility of more expert teaching through the extension of the departmental plan of organization. 5. The better use of play time, 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...

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