The “helper and observer” system, applied not only in the relations between children, but between teachers, and between teachers inside the school and visitors, is one of the most valuable features of the Gary plan. It entirely alters the usual relations, making for a coöperative instead of a competitive spirit in work, and facilitating enormously the work of both pupils and teachers. Children learn by watching and asking questions—“picking up”—in the most natural way in the world, in contrast to the formal and stilted ways of the traditional classroom work. “10. An organization which prevents a chasm between the elementary and high school, and prevents dropping out of school at critical periods in the lives of pupils by the introduction, at such times, of subjects which appeal to awakening interests not satisfied by a continuous and exclusive devotion to the ‘common branches.’” The Gary plan, which includes all the grades in one school plant wherever possible, prevents these chasms more successfully than even such schemes as the junior high school which are being extensively experimented with elsewhere. The Gary school has an extraordinary hold on its pupils. There is no incentive for leaving school, since the school provides for the needs of the most diversely equipped children, gives them the practical vocational training they may want, and even allows their working part-time while continuing with the school. All those problems of “pupil-mortality,” whereby half the children in our public schools are said never to pass beyond the sixth grade, are almost automatically avoided in a school which deliberately sets itself to meeting the individual child’s needs. The success of the Gary school in holding its pupils is indicated in the fact that, in spite of the short time the Gary schools have been in existence, the proportion of high-school pupils in Gary is said to be almost twice as large as that in the schools of New York City. “11. A saving in the cost of instruction by reducing overhead charges for supervisors, making it possible to pay better salaries or reduce the number of pupils per teacher, or both.” “12. A plan which brings together, in a unitary way, with economy and efficiency in management, the other recreational and educational agencies of the city.”