Education and living — Reading Notes

Education as Living, Not Preparation

Bourne's central argument is that the school must become "a place where children live intensively and expressively." He rejects the notion that education is a segregated process, separate from play for children or work for adults. Instead, he envisions a continuum: "education and play should be scarcely separable for the little child," and for adults, "education and work should be scarcely separable." This ideal requires dismantling the traditional boxed-in school. Bourne insists that closing off learning has "really smothered education." The alternative is a school that functions as a child-community, filled with activities that stimulate and focus a child's interest toward constructive work. The teacher's role shifts from lecturer to guide, exposing children to varied activities and helping them develop their own interests.

The Gary Schools as a Working Model

Bourne devotes substantial attention to the Gary, Indiana, schools under Superintendent William Wirt. He describes the Emerson School as "a complete school, from kindergarten to college, in the same building," with facilities used by all ages. Grading is flexible: children work in "rapid," "average," or "slow" groups and can move between them at any time. Report cards are "a concession to parents' weaknesses." All studying is done during school hours, eliminating homework. Bourne highlights a girl's schedule: "Printing, History, Gymnasium, French, Music, Botany, Auditorium, English." The inclusion of printing shocks him into realizing "the modern school you are in." He notes that such freedom is not anarchical because children select their activities through a natural process of exposure and curiosity, starting in kindergarten.

How Children Choose Their Path

Bourne explains the selection process in detail. A child in the early grades "runs about the halls" and sees shops, studios, and laboratories through big glass doors. Curiosity makes him peer in. By third or fourth grade, he has an idea of what interests him and may enter a shop as observer or helper to an older child. "He watches and asks questions, and the older boy learns by teaching him." If the work does not hold his interest, he can change. By the time he takes up the work in higher grades, he has served an apprenticeship and is familiar with the apparatus. The teacher does not have to break in a new class each year. Bourne calls this "almost a self-perpetuating and self-instructing class." The child is assimilated to work as new members are assimilated into any profession.

The Teacher as Guide, Not Lecturer

Throughout the excerpts, Bourne emphasizes the transformed role of the teacher. The teacher must "expose the child to the various activities and guide his interest" rather than deliver uniform instruction. This shift is essential for the flexible, individualized system he advocates. In the Gary schools, the executive principal devotes all his time to organizing individual schedules. Bourne notes that even in a school with twenty-five hundred children—most of them "very small alien immigrants"—the same flexible methods succeed. The key is immense variety of equipment and small classes in shops, allowing "something resembling individual instruction." Bourne's vision requires teachers who are not mere transmitters of fixed curricula but facilitators of a living, evolving educational community.

Bourne's essays are best read as a series of investigative reports from the front lines of educational reform. He does not offer a finished blueprint but rather a set of principles illustrated by specific practices. Readers should pay attention to the tension between his ideal of education as living and the practical constraints he acknowledges—such as the need to satisfy state curricula and parents. The Gary plan is presented as a hopeful experiment, not a panacea. Bourne's own enthusiasm is tempered by his recognition that such ideas require "more imagination than most teachers have yet acquired."