tion, far from meaning a great burden on the teacher, means, through the Gary scheme, an actual relief.

This scheme, by which the child is able to select his own work from natural interest and gradually weed out those activities for which he is not fitted, seems to solve many of the most vexing problems of vocational training. For most public schools operated under the old plan the equipment of the necessary shops has been too costly. The schools have not been able to meet the demands of the present movement for vocational training. Mr. Wirt has applied an ingenious idea in Gary which not only provides this training almost at no additional expense to the community, but also gives the children a better training than even the professional trade-school at present generally provides. The children in the Gary school-shops are not engaged in practising "stunts" with wood and metal. They are not merely "rehearsing" for their trade which they will take up when they go out into the world. They are working at their trade now. What they are making are bookcases, cabinets, tables, desks, etc., for the school itself. The printery is printing the blanks and leaflets and cards used by the school. The cooking-class is preparing the daily lunch, which is sold at cost to the teachers and pupils who wish it. All the shops are contributing to the actual upkeep of the schools. And the children are working not under academically trained manual-training teachers, but under regular union workmen, selected on account of their intelligence and teaching ability, who are employed all the year round in equipping and repairing the school-plants. The pupils work under them in much the same way as the oldtime apprentices. These workmen-teachers earn their salaries by the work they do on the building, and the children get the inestimable advantage of a vocational training which consists of real work done under a real workman.

This principle is not confined to the shop work. It is the key-note of all the activities of the Gary school, the fundamental pedagogical idea which distinguishes the Gary school from all other public schools and makes it definitely a new kind of a school. The aim is to have

nothing done in any department of the school which does not in some way add to the life of the school or in some way to a practical knowledge of the community and society in which the children live. Mr. Wirt believes that all learning comes from doing, that we learn only what we use in some way, that knowledge is simply the tool by which we grapple with life. School life in Gary is, therefore, not a mere preparation for life, but a life itself. The work that the children do is real work and therefore acquires all the interest of any profitable activity whose results can be seen. All the care of supplies, for instance the school accounting, the secretarial work-is in charge of the pupils of the commercial department. The physics classes study the heating, lighting, and ventilating plants, and various machines like the automobile, and use this practical knowledge as the basis for scientific theory. The chemistry teacher in the Emerson School is city chemist, in charge of the municipal laboratory, and his classes work with him in testing the coal and cement which the school board buys. They work also with him in his sanitary inspection of dairies and food-stores, analyze milk and candies, and act in general as sort of deputy sanitary inspectors. The chemistry class is thus an extension of the municipal laboratory. The botany class takes care of the shrubs and trees on the schoolgrounds and cultivates the school-gardens. The zoology class has charge of the school zoo, with its foxes and rabbits and birds. All these things are used as living text-books by the children, and thus education becomes an answer to the questions that occur to them and an explanation of the curious things they see happening around them. The history and geography class studies local, State, and city government, town-planning, the life and customs of peoples in ancient and modern times. They read the newspapers and magazines, collect pictures, make their own maps. They study history backward so that it explains what is happening to-day. Even the work in composition and grammar, in most schools the deadliest of all subjects, becomes alive in the Gary school. For the children in all the classes are constantly

expressing themselves, writing up their experiences and experiments under the direction of the English teachers. The chemistry class last year prepared a milk bulletin which was printed in the school printing-shop. The zoology class recently got out, in the same way, a charming illustrated booklet, descriptive of the animals of their zoo. The studies work in together and fertilize each other in this extraordinary way. Educators have always held the ideal of approaching the abstract through the concrete, of working to theory through practise, but the Gary school is the first to realize the ideal in this thoroughly comprehensive manner, where the manual and the intellectual work stimulate each other and fuse together a genuine school-community life where the work is interesting and vital because it is real work and not mere practise.

Yet this varied activity is not achieved at the expense of the old studies. The longer school day permits all the studying to be done in school, and thus saves both teacher and pupil from the bugbear of "home work." Experience has proved that the Gary school is able to prepare a child for the State examinations and for the State university quite as well as the orthodox public school. But the genius of Mr. Wirt enables the Gary school to economize time and means so that the child may get all these advantages in addition to the traditional schooling. Owing to the economies effected by the double-school plan the Gary school is able to afford special teachers for the science work, the athletic and playground work, the music and art and expression, and even for the ordinary subjects in the "grammar" and highschool grades. These teachers are not supervisors, as in most city schools, who teach the teachers. They are trained specialists who teach the children directly. The "departmental" plan which obtains in many high schools is carried in the Gary schools down through the lower grades. The child in the Gary school also has the benefit of working in the formal subjects with his equals in mental ability. Each class is divided into three groupsthe rapid, average, and slow-according to whether the children give promise of

completing the school course in ten, twelve, or fourteen years. In this way the bright children are not retarded by the slower ones, and the latter are not hurried ahead and discouraged by the competition of the more able. Each makes his own normal progress under the most favorable conditions. Everything possible is done in the Gary school to break down the artificial competition for marks and promotions. The emphasis is on the work and not on the rewards. The lines between the grades are very loose. Children pass from one grade to another or from one group to another at any time without examinations, but on the recommendation of the supervisor and teachers. The ideal Gary school, like the Emerson School, has all classes from kindergarten through the high school in one building. There is no break between the elementary school and the high school, nothing to mark that "graduation" from the common school which means for so many children the end of their education. This plan emphasizes the unity of the school life, and creates a fine spirit of camaraderie between the older and the younger children. It makes besides for greater economy and efficiency. The shops, etc., which in the ordinary school system are provided, if at all, only for the high school, are in the Gary school available for the younger children, in that helper and "apprentice" system which is so novel and essential a feature of the Gary plan.

The Gary school, in short, is a genuine community for children, providing for every kind of a child, and providing the flexible training that he individually needs. It is difficult to think of any excuse except contagious disease for keeping a child home from such a school. And the child gets his education not by cultivating his memory, storing his mind with information and practising work against some future time when he may need the knowledge and skill. But the boy or girl is prepared by doing real work which counts in the school. The work and study is so devised that the children are constantly using what they learn. And each child, well-to-do or poor, gets a wellrounded training, physical, intellectual, manual. By cultivating all these aspects of education equally the Gary school

avoids specialization and yet makes possible intensive work for those who desire a special training. It is as good an avocational school as it is a vocational school. In the Gary school American educational opinion is coming to realize that it has an incomparable instrument for solving most of the perplexing problems that are arising from the new demands in education, and the changing social and industrial conditions. The "doubleschool" plan not only solves the "parttime" problem, but saves money which may, and indeed must, be spent for greatly enlarged facilities. For the most ingenious point about the Gary plan is that unless the money saved in schoolbuildings is spent in these enlarged facilities the "part-time" problem is not solved, for the double school cannot be operated without them. The scheme of comprehensive school repair-shops run by trained workmen, whom the children assist as apprentices, shows the method of providing an incomparable vocational training at very small cost. The flexibility of schedules and curricula, the co-operation of outside community agencies, provide for a measure of individual instruction greater than any public school has dreamed possible. The freedom from formal discipline, the "helper" system, the abolition of "home work," lighten the effort of the teacher. The cultivation of initiative in both teachers and children makes for a genuinely democratic school. The longer school day keeps the city child from the demoralizing streets. The varied attractions and interesting activities of the school prevent a large part of that alarming school "mortality" which makes only one child in five ever even reach the high school. But perhaps the greatest advantage of all, from the practical point of view, is the economy of the Gary school. With all its wealth of facilities, it is no more costly than the old type of public school. Few communities can afford to remain ignorant of a school which not only provides the most comprehensive and practical education to-day but does it at less cost to the community. The mere economy of Mr. Wirt's idea

would force its imitation even if the democratic philosophy, and sound and fruitful educational principles, which he has applied in these schools did not. The experience of Troy, Sewickley, Kalamazoo, Passaic, New York City, and other cities and towns where experiments have been made with the Gary scheme proves its feasibility for imitation in almost any Ameriçan town. Mr. Wirt has been engaged in New York in showing how old buildings may be remodelled and equipped with shops and laboratories, and their capacity thereby doubled. The large sums of money thus saved in the cost of new buildings that would otherwise have to be erected, may then go into providing playgrounds and school equipment, and the salaries of special teachers.

Fourteen congested schools are now in successful process of reorganization. Two schools have been running for nearly two years on the Gary plan, and it is inconceivable that they will return to the old limited and narrow scheme. The Gary plan is shown to provide a flexible framework for the public school which permits experimentation and meets the need of the individual child.

It is true that many of the details of Mr. Wirt's Gary scheme are being worked out in other schools in the country. But nowhere has there been such a complete synthesis, and nowhere such a consistent application of the best modern educational ideas. The Gary school has the unique advantage of being a successful institution. It actually works. It is neither a fad nor an experiment. Most visitors to these schools come away with the conviction that there is scarcely an institution in the country that the American public can less afford to remain ignorant about than the Gary school, built up by William Wirt. To produce citizens. with the manual skill, scientific knowledge, democratic attitudes, individuality, historic and social orientation, that the Gary school tends to cultivate, is exactly the business of the modern public school. One can scarcely doubt that the Gary school is bound to become the American public school of to-morrow.

Τ

Definition by Anecdote

HERE was an attempt made in this department a few months ago to set over against one another half a dozen different efforts to define a gentleman, some of them based on the external qualities of birth and breeding and some of them founded on the more essential characteristic of kindly feeling and of delicate understanding of the feelings of others. One result of the assembling of these definitions was to bring out sharply the divergence of the views taken by the British on the one hand and by us Americans on the other, our kin across the sea tending to insist rather on birth and breeding, while we on this side of the Western Ocean are prone to dwell on the more vital quality of human sympathy. Perhaps this is simply another instance of the irreconcilable antithesis of the aristocratic and the democratic ways of looking at the social problem.

One reader of the paragraphs in which these definitions had been collected was moved to wonder whether it was possible ever to frame a satisfactory definition of a gentleman, an entity so many-sided as to refuse inclusion within a precise formula. He wondered also whether it might not be possible to indicate the distinction of the true gentleman more adequately by the citing of instances of conduct under trying circumstances, which would exemplify the essential characteristic of the type without circumscribing it within a rigid form of words. After all, a fact, a concrete example, is often of more value than the abstract theorizing which seems sometimes only to revolve on itself in a vacuum-like those globes we sometimes see in the windows of opticians wherein a silvered weather-vane turns unceasingly in the sunlight.

Just then, by virtue of what Horace Walpole called serendipity-the unexpected good fortune of stumbling on the very fact needed when no effort was being made to seek it out-this inquirer was put in possession of an anecdote of a distinguished surgeon of New York, who left us poorer by

his death as he had made us richer by his life. He stood in the very forefront of his profession, recognized by all of his associates as a man of the highest character, as a practitioner of the most ample equipment and attainments, as one who had advanced the boundaries of science, as one who was skilful, kindly, generous, and conspicuous for his willingness to give freely for the relief of suffering-conspicuous even in a profession where this giving of relief is a constant practise.

He had so the story was told-gone to bed late one night after an arduous day of labor in which he had performed successfully several difficult and dangerous operations. At two in the morning he was awakened by a telephone-call. The man on the other end of the wire apologized for disturbing him at that hour and explained that he had been a pupil of the great surgeon's a few years before and that he was now practising in the congested tenement-house region on the lower east side. He had suddenly been summoned to attend the wife of a poor little tailor and he had found that she had acute appendicitis, necessitating an immediate operation, which he did not dare to undertake himself. He had tried to summon expert help, but all the other surgeons to whom he had applied had been otherwise engaged. And he appealed to his former teacher to come to his aid and to save a human life.

Without a moment's hesitation the surgeon agreed to come as soon as he could; and within an hour he was at work. He found the case imperative and complicated; and by the light only of a kerosene lamp and with the assistance only of the young doctor who had telephoned him, he did what was needed. But it was dawn before he was able to pack his bag and make ready to go home after having saved the woman's life. While he had been operating he had been conscious of the presence of the husband, the little tailor, hovering anxiously in the doorway; and as he went out the man stopped him with profuse thanks, saying that he was

only a poor man but he wanted to pay what he could. Then he handed his benefactor a half-dollar. The surgeon put it in his pocket and shook hands heartily, saying "Thank you so much!" just as though he had received a check for five thousand dollars.

And What Is a Lady?

F it is difficult to define a gentleman, it is even more difficult to define a lady, because the gentler sex is always more evasive and more exigent of a subtler analysis. It will not do to declare a definition of a gentleman and then to dismiss a lady as only the Female of the Species. The lady is that, of course, but she is much more than that. Nor would it do to assert that as the gentleman had to be first of all a man, panoplied with manliness, so a lady must be womanly and devoid of unfeminine Feminism. Here the dictionaries fail us, although they may agree in their tale. No doubt, a lady may be "a woman of good family and of established social position, or one accepted as such." No doubt, again, she should be also "a woman of good breeding, education, and refinement of mind and manner." Yet these descriptions do not take us very far and they do not pierce to the centre.

Here again in the hour of need we may turn to the anecdote which supplies the concrete illustration of the essential fact. And it would not be easy to find an anecdote more significant than one which has been told in New York in the course of this terrible war. A Frenchwoman, engaged as a teacher in an important school of the city, was so ardent an advocate of the cause of her country, that when she heard a casual acquaintance make a slighting remark about France, she up and boxed his ears. This, you may say, was all the evidence needed to prove that she was not a lady, in any exact use of the word. But even if under temptation she fell from grace on this one occasion, none the less did she possess the indisputable instinct which is the vital factor.

Riding in a subway car in the uncrowded noon hours, this Frenchwoman could not help seeing that a woman seated opposite to her was in distress. Finally, when this woman began to sob, the French lady crossed over and sat down beside her, and said: "You seem to be in trouble. Can I do anything for you?"

With a strong German accent, the weeping woman replied: "Nobody can do anything for me. This letter has come to-day; and my eldest son has just been killed in the trenches. That makes three in the past month, and I have no more."

The Frenchwoman put out her hand. "Nobody can help you," she answered"except by sympathizing with you. And perhaps you will be willing to accept my sympathy when I tell you that my only son is now in the trenches. I have not heard from him in six weeks, and at any moment a letter may come to me, as it has just come to you, telling me that I have no longer a son."

The German woman dried her eyes and took the hand held out to her. She looked into the face of the unknown comforter, and said: "So you are a German, too?"

And the Frenchwoman unhesitatingly replied: "Yes."

It took a woman to make that noble answer, and perhaps it could have been made only by a woman of France, a country where the social instinct is cultivated from the cradle.

I

WONDER if, when he is arraigned before the bar of heaven, the man who "set fire to an orphan asylum and murdered a blind man for his pennies" will not have to yield precedence to a yet more malevolent sinner? This sinner can be indicted on many counts. Of the murder of countless innocent pleasures, of complicity in forcing up the cost of living, of robbing man of much of his normal courage, the germ will surely be found guilty, and it remains to be seen whether or not the annihilation of juvenile literature will be added to these crimes.

The Germ and Juvenile Fiction

The germ has probably harbored an animosity against this innocuous form of expression since the days when, lonely and unrecognized, he watched the cave-man chiselling tales upon the rocks to please his progeny. To-day, at the zenith of his power, he is in a position to avenge the years when he was unhonored and unsung, and only the utmost ingenuity on the part of those who write for children can turn his inevitable entrance into their field to anything but defeat.

Juvenile fiction has always been, in a