The organization of the Gary school permits the reduction of formal
discipline to a minimum. It allows the teachers to dispense with
disciplinary rules against whispering, with formal punishments, with
formal marks or demerits for conduct. The frequent change of activity,
with opportunities for exercise throughout the day, prevents the
children from becoming nervously overwrought. They thus escape
irritability and aimless boisterousness when left to themselves. The
“application” and shop work compel attention, so that the child is kept
busy and interested, and the mischievousness that arises from idleness
or distracted attention is avoided. As Professor Dewey says, “Trained in
doing things, the child will be able to keep at work and to think of the
other people around him when he is not under restraining supervision.”
When the teacher’s rôle changes from preceptor to that of helper, it is
obvious that what is needed in the classroom is not so much perfect
quiet and military order as freedom of expression and spontaneity.
Visitors to the Gary schools bear witness to the peculiarly beneficial
effects of this absence of formal discipline. The free and individual
way in which the children move about to their tasks and the spontaneous
way in which they talk to visitors make a marked impression. In
classroom or laboratory or shop, it is usual to find about as much
whispering as in a concert audience, with the same motives, freed of
“rules of order,” for quiet. A natural atmosphere of orderly and
tolerant conduct seems to be formed in such a school.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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