Since the other institutions have the same privileges as the churches,
they are all given the opportunity in this plan of enlarging their
effective resources. City schools which wish to adopt the Gary plan, but
lack the ideal school plant or the varied facilities, may often avail
themselves of the gymnasium, pools, playgrounds, etc., of near-by
Y.M.C.A. or settlement houses, and use the public library and public
playground, and thus acquire, by systematic coöperation with these other
agencies, an effectively working Gary school. This plan has been adopted
with great success in the case of the New York schools, a number of
which are in the course of adopting the Gary plan, or many features of
it. Their experience has shown that, by making the school a
“clearing-house for children’s activities,” the social resources of all
these communal institutions are vastly increased.
* * * * *
To sum up, the Gary school forms a children’s community, which aims to
provide the practical natural education of the old school, shop, and
home which educated our forefathers. It is a necessary evolution and
reorganization of the public school to meet the changed social and
industrial conditions of the modern city. The school community, by
providing a fourfold activity of work, study, and play, uses the
children’s time and keeps them from the demoralizing influence of the
streets. In the “auditorium” it provides a public theater which may
motivate all the work and study. By coöperating with all the community
agencies which provide wholesome activities for children, it makes them
all more valuable and effective. And by making the school as far as
possible a self-sustaining community, it gives meaning and purpose to
all the work, trains the children for the outside world, and cultivates
the social virtues.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IV
PROGRAMS: THE SCHOOL AS A PUBLIC UTILITY
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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