ophomores, juniors, and seniors--have spent
three-quarters of an hour in charge of themselves, and have done it with
interest, and with striking efficiency. Continuing your journey, you
find the process of individualization everywhere present. Here a girl is
in front of a class, directing the calisthenics which precede each class
hour. There a girl is standing at the front of the room, leading singing
or quizzing in geometry.

"Yes, it was a wrench," Mr. McAndrew admits. "You see, the teachers
hated to give up. They had been despots during all of their teaching
lives, and the idea of handing the discipline and a lot of the
responsibility of the school over to the girls hurt them dreadfully, but
they have tried it and found that it works."

VII Experimental Democracy

The high school pupil, after discovering himself, must next determine
his relation to the community. It is one thing to break down what Mr.
McAndrew calls the W. I. (Wooden Indian) attitude. It is quite another
to relate pupils to the community in which they live. Yet this, too, can
be done. The school is a society--incomplete in certain respects, yet in
its broad outline similar to the city and the state. The social work of
the school consists in showing the citizens of the school-community how
to enjoy the privileges and act up to the responsibilities of
citizenship. The Emerson School at Gary and the Union High School at
Grand Rapids, organized into complete schools from the first grade to
the end of the high school, are miniature working models of the
composite world in which all of the children will live.

Particularly effective work has been done on the social side of high
school organization at the William Penn High School (Philadelphia),
where Mr. Lewis has turned the conduct of student affairs over to a
Student Government Association, directed by a Board of Governors of
eighteen, on which the faculty, represented by five members, holds an
advisory position only. The Association gives some annual event, like a
May day fete, in which all of the girls take part. It assumes charge of
the corridors, elevators, and lunch rooms; grants charters to clubs and
student societies, and assumes a general direction of student affairs.

"It really doesn't take much time," Irene Litchman, the first term
(1912-13) President, explained. "We like it and we're proud to do it. We
used to have teachers everywhere taking charge of things. Now we do it
all ourselves