various special teachers are doing team work. In a word, you find a correlation of studies and activities.
HOW MONEY IS SAVED UNDER THIS SYSTEM
The system provides for the better use of school buildings, making it possible to save large sums of money expended for this purpose, the buildings being so arranged that they may be used day and evening, including Saturdays, the year round. It would require considerable space to give the proof of this statement in detail, but it is clearly obvious that the erection of a number of unit plants, such as the Emerson and Froebel, is less expensive than the erection of a large number of buildings of the usual kind. The cost of building construction does not increase in proportion to the size of building, materials used and facilities offered remaining the same, to say nothing about the cost of fewer sites. Moreover, the establishment of school plants, so constructed as to utilize what is ordinarily waste space or space which is used only part of the time, according to a program which uses all parts of the building all of the time, makes it possible to double the plant's capacity. There is also a saving in expense for equipment by installing it in a few as opposed to many centers. Furthermore, the special activities under the new form of program are conducted in parts of the plant which are less expensive, on the average, than regular class rooms, and if there were not this alternation of classes engaged in regular studies and special activities, it would be necessary to double the number of regular class rooms, so that each pupil might have a desk and the use of a cloak room. It is equally obvious that the cost of operation and maintenance is decreased by having the necessary number of unit centers as compared with the usual practice elsewhere. The figures clearly show this. The expense per pupil for janitor service, principal, and for instruction, with the overhead charges for supervisors eliminated, is materially reduced.
The system also provides the possibility of a better division of time between the old and the new studies, spoken of throughout as “regular studies” and “special activities,” and there is greater flexibility in adapting studies to exceptional children of all kinds, thereby doing away with the necessity of numerous special schools. The system also makes it possible to have more expert teaching by reason of its departmental plan of organization, while the better use of play time and the long school day prevents influences of the street and alley which undo the work of the school.
There is also more realism in vocational and industrial work when under the direction of expert workmen from the ranks of laboring men having charge of real shops, which pupils pass from day to day, and in which sooner or later they get their first lessons in some trade industry.
HEALTH, MORE RAPID ADVANCEMENT AND OTHER ADVANTAGES
It is also clear that the system has unsurpassed facilities for the promotion of the health of children, and the possibility of having pupils do work in more than one grade and of promoting them by subjects instead of grades, gives to this system an advantage over the traditional form of organization with its “lockstep” system of gradation and promotion. In this system there is also provision for pupils to help each other. The chasm between elementary and high school is destroyed, and dropping out of school at critical periods in the lives of pupils is prevented by the introduction, at such times, of subjects which appeal to awakening interests which are not satisfied by a continuous and exclusive devotion to the “common branches.”
BETTER SALARIES AND FEWER PUPILS PER TEACHER
It is also clear that under this system it is possible to pay better salaries to teachers or reduce the number of pupils per teacher or both, and to bring together in a unitary way, with economy and efficiency in management, the other recreational and educational agencies of a city.
ADAPTATION TO OTHER CITIES
Buildings of the old type can, with varying degrees of success, be adapted to the new program, and the system as a whole is adaptable to other cities. The alteration of buildings demanded by the Gary program would practically double the school accommodations. Or, a city which already has class-rooms enough to care for all of the pupils, with a desk for each, could, by the adoption of the new plan, dispose of about one-half of its sites and buildings, the less desirable, of course, for more than enough to remodel and equip the remaining school facilities for use when operated under the program now followed at Gary in the complete unit school plant. A change to this system would involve a reassignment of teachers according to the departmental plan. Some of them, if retained in the service, would have to enter upon courses of training for some special work according to individual interests and aptitudes. Some unfitted for working in the new spirit would have to be retired. The number of principals would be diminished; supervisors would become teachers of special activities in centers, giving all their time to this work instead of spending much of it in going from building to building, breaking into programs of class room teachers at all hours of the day, and giving lessons while regular class room teachers look on. Thus reorganized, these centers would become fitted for the wealth of opportunities afforded by the Emerson and Froebel school plants; not so well suited as plants originally designed for such opportunities perhaps, but, nevertheless, well adapted to these ends.
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