Background
William A. Wirt was born on January 21, 1874, on a farm near Markle, Indiana, the son of Emanuel Wirt, a farmer, and Mary Elick.
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(Excerpt from Newer Ideals in Education: The Complete Use ...)
Excerpt from Newer Ideals in Education: The Complete Use of the School Plant; An Address Delivered Before the Public Education Association in the New Century Drawing Room January 30, 1912 They decided then that the common schools should not only teach reading, writing and arithmetic, but that they should also include the principles of good citizenship by organizing courses in history and civics, and placing them in the school as class room subjects. While the results of this may be a little better, we are not yet satisfied, so that we have had one thing after another placed upon the public school curriculum. We public school men were startled a few years ago when business men and parents of children who attend the public schools blamed us, first, because the child did not have the power of concentrating his thoughts in one direction until he got somewhere, and, second, because he did not wish to do things with his hands when he came out of school. Public school people were surprised to learn that they were held responsible. They were not able to make a success with certain backward children, they explained, because the child did not want to learn, and did not have the power of concentration, the very thing that the people outside blamed the schools for. To insist that the school should turn out boys and girls of well-rounded characters, with the strength of manhood and womanhood was an unheard of thing. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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William A. Wirt was born on January 21, 1874, on a farm near Markle, Indiana, the son of Emanuel Wirt, a farmer, and Mary Elick.
He attended DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana, from which he received the degree of Ph. B. in 1898 and subsequently the degree of Pd. D. (1916); in addition he did postgraduate work at DePauw and the University of Chicago and made a study of educational methods in England, Belgium, France and Germany.
Beginning his educational career while in college, he served as superintendent of schools at Redkey, Indiana, 1895 - 1897, and instructor in high school mathematics at Greencastle, 1897 - 1899. From 1899 to 1907 he was superintendent at Bluffton, Indiana. Wirt first attracted public attention by his application of new educational methods at Bluffton in 1900. He later applied similar methods on a larger scale at the new steel-manufacturing city of Gary, Indiana, where he was superintendent of schools from 1907 until his death. His "platoon" or "work-study-play" system provided for the division of the pupils of a school into two groups or platoons, with a schedule of classes arranged so that one platoon was studying the fundamental or tool subjects in home rooms while the other platoon was engaged in activity subjects in special rooms. In this way, such specialized facilities as shops, laboratories, studios, auditoriums, and gymnasiums could be introduced, their expense being offset by their full and efficient use. Wirt estimated that through the platoon plan the capacity of the average building was increased about forty per cent, that the children had a school day about twenty per cent longer than did the teachers, and that no extra teachers were employed. In the decade before the first World War, Wirt's "Gary system" attracted nationwide attention. Books and articles were written about it; visitors came to observe it; and the General Education Board made a thorough study of it, publishing the results in a series of eight reports in 1918. The system, too, was widely copied. Its popularity lay not only in its appeal to economy-minded taxpayers pressed by rising school enrollments but also in the way it adapted the progressive idea of a "community school" to an urban industrial center. One of the early cities in which the Gary lead was followed was New York. In 1914, under the reform administration of Mayor John Purroy Mitchel, the board of education engaged Wirt to devote one week in every four to work as an official adviser. After being tested in two large public schools there, his plan was extended to a number of others - though not without opposition from students and teachers, particularly during the mayoralty campaign of 1917, when the Tammany candidate, John F. Hylan, attacked the "Gary system" as being backed by the Rockefeller interests on behalf of the wealthy classes. In 1929 a nationwide survey found 1, 068 schools in 202 cities throughout the country using the "platoon" system, under that or some other name. Twenty years later only a relatively few schools were still following Wirt's specific program. Nevertheless, his emphasis on including vocational and recreational subjects in the curriculum had had a lasting effect upon American education. His major efforts after 1934 were devoted to writing and talking about his political beliefs. He died suddenly on March 11, 1938, at Gary, Indiana, of a heart attack and was buried at Bluffton.
(Excerpt from Newer Ideals in Education: The Complete Use ...)
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Although William Wirt was one of the leading exponents of progressive education, he was a staunch conservative in politics. In the 1930's he became obsessed with the idea that Franklin D. Roosevelt was "the Kerensky of an American Revolution" and that the New Deal, working through the schools, was planning the overthrow of our democratic institutions.
William A. Wirt has been described as having certain personal qualities which lessened his influence in the professional field of education: "tremendous inflexibility once a line of action had been decided upon, . .. an intense preoccupation with his own point of view . .. [and] a certain heaviness in writing and oral expression".
On August 15, 1900, William A. Wirt married Bertha Ann Koch of Bluffton, by whom he had three children: William Franz, Sherwood William, and Bertha Eleanor.
In 1927, Wirt married Mildred Harter, the general supervisor of speech in the Gary schools. They had no children.
