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| | The Great Experiment: A Film Journey with America's Public Schools |
 | | Wirt, then the superintendent of schools in Gary, Indiana, developed a plan of school operation known variously as the Gary plan, the platoon system, and Wirt’s “Work-Study-Play” plan. |
 | | Wirt’s idea, known as “progressive education,” embraced industrial training, agricultural education, and social education, under the assumption that the child learns best in those experiences in which he or she has a vital interest, and that modes of behavior are most easily learned by actual performance. |
 | | Wirt “wanted to keep kids occupied, busy, and involved all day, and not have them sit bored at a desk, listening to the teacher drone on, doing busy work,” says Ronald Cohen, author of Children of the Mill: Schooling and Society in Gary, Indiana 1906-1960. |
| www.neh.gov /news/humanities/2001-07/school.html (2028 words) |
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