placed in a lower arithmetic class. He may even be transferred
to another teacher for special arithmetic work. The system permits this
flexibility because it allows each teacher, an expert in her own field,
to shape her work to suit her pupils.

Better still, if John cannot master his arithmetic in the regular
classes, he may attend voluntary classes on Saturday, at night, or
during the summer months. The schools afford him every chance to keep up
in every subject, and if he cannot make his way in this subject or in
that, he works in the fields which are open to him, doing what he can to
make his course a success.

John, in the schools of Gary, is John Frena, with all of John Frena's
limitations and possibilities. The Gary school seeks to bridge the
limitations, expand the possibilities, and give John Frena a thousand
and one reasons for believing that if there is any place in the world
where he can grow into a complete man, that place is the Gary school.

XV Smashing the School Machine

One of the oft-repeated complaints against the old education arose from
the iron-clad system of promotion which once in each year, with
automatic precision, separated the sheep from the goats, saying to the
sheep, "go higher," and to the goats, "repeat the grade."

For the sheep, the system worked fairly well, at least that once; but
for the goats, it was a tragedy. The child who had failed in one out of
six branches, side by side with the child failing in six out of six,
repeated the year.

The new education affords several remedies for this situation. Of these
the most generally known is promotion twice yearly. While this affords
considerable relief, it is greatly improved upon in Springfield, Mass.,
by the division of each grade into three divisions--advanced, normal
and backward. These divisions the teacher handles separately so that
when promotion time comes the children who have shown special aptitude
are prepared to go into the next grade. Meantime the children have been
constantly changing from one division in the class to another.

Perhaps the most generally practicable plan for relieving the mechanical
features of promotion is found in Indianapolis, and even more intensely
in Gary, where children are promoted by subjects rather than by grades.
In Indianapolis, the child entering the sixth grade, takes all English
with one teacher from that time until the end of the eighth grade. If
the child is strong in English, he