As outlined by Mr. Wirt, however, the Gary plan holds no brief for religious instruction. It has no concern with any church activity as such. What it tries to do is to coördinate the community child-welfare agencies with the school. The lengthening of the school day absorbs an hour which would otherwise be spent by the city child in the street, or at home, church, or settlement. All the Gary school does is to organize and systematize this hour. It may be spent by the child either in play or auditorium at the school, or in any outside activity which provides wholesome activities for children. The object is to coördinate the community opportunities so that they may function regularly and vitally instead of spasmodically as at present. The school gives to all the agencies which pretend to be interested in the child’s welfare a chance to spend themselves effectively. It brings up to the level of public discussion, for the first time, the question what sort of home, church, and neighborhood activities are good for children. Into this scheme the church enters merely as a community institution. As long as any considerable number of the parents of the children in a school believe that religious instruction is valuable, no public school which attempts to be really public can refuse to release children for this purpose, just as it releases them for playgrounds, settlements, libraries, home music, or other instruction. This outside time is not taken from study. Nor are the children turned out into the streets to be taken care of by the churches and other institutions. No child is excused unless the parents make formal application. If the parents do not do this, the child stays at the school for the full seven or eight hours of work, study, and play. The burden of responsibility rests entirely upon the parents and the churches. The teachers have nothing to do with the matter, either in segregating the children or seeing where they go. There seems to be little fear that the practice will not conform to the theory. Mr. Wirt tells us that his work-study-and-play school had been functioning for twelve years in Bluffton and Gary before any religious organization took advantage of this provision. The idea that the opportunity would unduly increase religious influence in the schools seems to be groundless. In the Jefferson School in Gary, which has been longest in operation under the Wirt plan, and where the fullest efforts have been made by all the sects and religions of the town to provide this supplementary instruction, scarcely half the children in the spring of 1915 were going out to any sort of religious training whatever. And in one of the Wirt schools in New York, where unusual efforts have been made by some of the churches to meet the new plan, not even half of the children are released for this purpose. In another Wirt school in New York, none of the children are released, because there is no demand for it on the part of the parents.