The weekly times-record. (Valley City, N.D.) 1912-1922, 1916-02-10
BUSINESS WAYS iNcoRPoR-
ATED IN SCHOOLS OF GARY

Gary, Ind, Feb. 7-Twenty-five edu
cational experts of the Rockefeller
Foundation have begun systematic
survey of the Gary schols which viii
cover period of more than three
months, in an attempt to answer the
question which has gone up from al
parts of the country: What is there
in the Gary schools better than in the
rest?" ... 49,
In vague way people all around the
globe have heard that the Writ system
leads all others, but few know exactly
why.
In general, the reason is that there
have been fewer changes in the ma
, TONS schools in the last so years than
there have been in any other institu
ton. Because William Writ has over
turned practically everything existing
in the old-fashioned school plan and
installed instead the fundamentals OF
efficiency and result-getting that pre-.
vail in the greatest American business
firms, schools for the first time have
come to mean something more than
mere places to wrestle with set forms
of arithmetic problems, parse sent
ences and spell columns of words.
Superintendent Writ calls the basis
of the Gary schools success making
the school fit the child" Economy in
space, by which double the ordinary
number of pupils can be accommodate
ed in the same school building; voca-
tional education applied in a new way,
and the use of buildings by adults as
extensively as by children are the
more readily visible features of the
system.
In Gary the system has been work
ed out almost exactly as Mr.. Writ
would have it, because there was no
school system to revolutionize when
he was employed to establish schools
for the new city in 1907, but that the
new system can be applied in an old
community is being demonstrated in
New York, where Mr.. Writ has been
employed for scond year as an "edu-
cational engineer" giving one week
of his time each month. Perhaps the
best example is in Troy, N. Y, where
Mr.. Writ is also employed one day
a month as adviser.
More than year ago, one of the
largest schools in Troy was removed
leaving hundreds of children without
a school to attend, for the other build
ings were crowded. Mr.. Writ was
called in and not only did he place
the children from the missing build
ing in one of the other schools, but
he relieved the crowding that already
existed there. 1t was done through
the simple procedure of dividing the
school into two groups. While one
group is in the study room another
is on the playground, in the gynlnas-
ium, the shops, auditorium, or some
other place receiving different kind
of instruction. BY continuous sys-
TEN of class rotation, each child gets
an equal amount of attention and
training. He not only gets as many
hours of academic training as in the
old-fashioned school but he gets the
benefit of constructive play and voca-
tional training which holds his inter-
est every hour of the day and keeps
him off the street out of school hours,
not by compulsion, but from his own
choice.
''Too many frills," is the general cry
of adverse critics, but in Troy came
the first chance to disprove this.
School children there must take regu-
lar examinations on questions prepar-
ed by the state board At the end of
the first term after the Writ system
was installed pupils made grades from
so to 80 per cent higher than under
the old system. This is attributed by
Mr.. Writ to the correlation of studies
and the increased interest of the pupil
in all Of his work. =,
In the manual training system as ap.
piled in Gary, constructiveness is the
basis of the entire curriculum. The
child does not merely learn to use a
saw or hammer, but learns to make
something useful. Vocational shops
are presided over ~ experts. The
boy who likes sand molding goes to
the foundry shop classes. and helps
make a casting for a broken drain
grating or broken desk. The cabinet
shops make desks and bookcases for
new schoolrooms. In the domestic
science classes the girls do not dabble
with cooking, but they must do it
well enough so their products can be
sold to pupils-and teachers, too-in