Gary Plan

The scientific management movement in the early part of the 20th century strongly encouraged the use of business-related practices in the United States. Schools were also influenced by this [Page 397]business-driven movement. Its influence can readily be seen in reforms associated with progressive education, such as the Dalton Plan, the Winnetka Plan, and the Gary Plan.

William Wirt was hired as superintendent of schools for the industrial city of Gary, Indiana; it was here that he developed the Gary Plan. This radical school plan, also known as the “work–study–play” plan or “platoon system,” emerged soon after Wirt assumed the Gary superintendency. Influenced by the philosophy of John Dewey and the methods of Frederick Taylor, a pioneer of scientific management, the Gary Plan had organizational and curriculum components that provided pragmatic school subjects related to occupations and everyday life. Students were split into platoons, so that while one platoon group of students was studying the core academic-related subjects (math, science, social studies, English), another platoon group was receiving art, physical education, and industrial arts courses in specially equipped facilities. The Gary Plan broke from what many thought was the rigidly bureaucratized and inefficient schooling of that time, and made the city's schools widely known as a center for progressive education.

Gary, Indiana, was founded in 1906 by Elbert A. Gary, chairman of the United States Steel Corporation. Being a new and emerging industrial center, the city of Gary had the opportunity to embrace some of the new reform models of progressive education that were openly available and easily implemented. Industrial leaders, politicians, and reform-minded educational leaders brought a passion for businesslike efficiency and progressive programming to the schools of Gary. They called for innovative educational practices and “experimental approaches” for vocational education in both elementary and secondary schools. Gary schools' industrial training, vocational education, and social education reforms had their roots in the progressive education movement.

Superintendent Wirt had been a student of John Dewey's at the University of Chicago. One of Dewey's ideas was a community school within a school, creating a school setting in which both elementary- and secondary-level students would be together and learn from each other. Bringing his ideals and ideas from John Dewey and the scientific management movement, Wirt quickly experimented and developed his reforms in the Gary School System. He pioneered a new organizational structure, the “platoon system,” in the schools in 1908. The key features in this plan were to utilize the school building more efficiently, provide more curriculum opportunities for manual training and work, and coordinate various levels of schooling under one roof. School subjects were departmentalized so that students could move from one area of the school to another area on a regular, daily schedule in order to achieve full utilization of the building's space.

In the Gary Plan, Wirt saw a school as a playground, garden, workshop, social center, library, and an academic classroom setting all housed within one facility and administration. Wirt named this educational setup the “work–study–play” plan. Through this setting, students were exposed to many work-related activities, socialization experiences, and planned physical exercise, in addition to the basic academic subjects. Many efficiency-minded business leaders appreciated this economical use of the school plant. They noted how school officials scheduled a student body twice as large (as before the Gary Plan) into the same space parameters and time schedules by having students travel to special subject teachers who would teach their specific subjects to classes rotating through the school building on a precise time schedule. In addition to this innovative scheduling, Wirt allowed for student participation in religious instruction through released times.

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