proud of their schools, and seem to appreciate the comprehensive educational and recreational facilities which through them are provided for both children and adults. Few educational experiments have been so successful in technique and in popular support. The Gary schools represent the fruit of a very unusual combination of educational philosophy, economic engineering, and political sagacity. Circumstances seem to have conspired to produce a school system which unites a very remarkable school plant with a synthesis of novel plans of operation which are fertile in suggestion to school men, if they do not tend to revolutionize many methods of financing public schools as well as methods of administration and teaching. This outline of the setting of the Gary schools scarcely puts the background in its correct light. When we speak of the “Gary school” we are really talking about something bigger than the educational system of a small Western city. What we have to deal with is an educational idea, a comprehensive plan for the modern public school, capable of general imitation and adaptation to the needs of other American communities. In this sense it means primarily what Superintendent Wirt thought a public school should be. Being at once a social engineer and educational philosopher, he has succeeded in working out a type-plan of public school which to many educators appears uniquely valuable in American public education. The discussion which follows attempts to describe the Gary schools from this larger point of view. The effort is to show in detail how the plan actually works in the schools of Gary, while at the same time to suggest the larger ideas and principles which have motivated it. The “Gary plan” represents, of course, not only what has been done in Gary, but its further implications and tendencies, as well as the developments and modifications now working out in those schools, such as the group in New York City, which have been put in the hands of the Gary authorities for reorganization. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ II THE SCHOOL PLANT: EDUCATING THE WHOLE CHILD