The Parkway Experiment

The most interesting high school in the U.S. today does not have a classroom it can call its own. But every week, some 30 to 40 school administrators come to Philadelphia to examine the Parkway Program high school.

The program began only a year ago as an effort on the part of Philadelphia's board of education to deal with overcrowding in the city's high schools. Someone suggested setting up a school that would use such cultural facilities as museums and libraries for classrooms. Since many of them are located on tree-shaded Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the project was forthwith dubbed the Parkway Program. To run it, the board hired John Bremer, a 42-year-old British educator who had been head of a community-controlled school district in New York.

On Location. Bremer briskly set about expanding the program far beyond its original blueprint. He established an auto-mechanics class in an auto-repair shop, a leatherworking class in a leather shop, a journalism course at the offices of the Evening Bulletin, and dozens of others that are taught on location.

In most cases, the specialized courses are taught by the professionals themselves. A physician gives the course in health services. A printer teaches printing, a jeweler gem cutting, an art historian a course in art history. And all of the professionals volunteer their services. As a result, the school's catalogue bulges with some 250 offerings. Philadelphias downtown area has literally become the school's campus, with students making their way from class to class by bus, subway or on foot.

More important in Bremer's eyes, he has reorganized the entire administration of a public high school. He has split the school into three self-governing units and set up a weekly "town meeting" for each unit between students and faculties. Together, they discuss the curriculum, the students proposing to teachers what they want to know, the teachers explaining to students what they need to know. Classes often mix ages, with ninth-grade students, for example, being challenged by mingling with high school seniors. No marks are given. Instead, teachers write an evaluation of each student's work. For the most part, attendance is not compulsory. Informality and responsibility are emphasized. Students can smoke in class, call teachers by their first names, and utter four-letter words without inhibition.

The enthusiastic teachers, selected from a flock of applicants, are mostly under 30, frequently wear jeans and long hair. The experimental cast of Bremer's program has also drawn a good number of student interns from a variety of colleges. Along with the regular staff, the interns have brought the student-faculty ratio to less than 8 to 1 and the average class size to 15.

"The dignity and the importance of the learner become paramount," says Bremer proudly. Explains Robert Johnson, a chubby 14-year-old black student: "In my old school, I was often afraid to ask a question, because I thought the teacher would think it was stupid. Here I'm never afraid to speak my mind."

Parkway is not as unstructured as it may seem. Students must attend a two-hour tutorial twice a week, where teachers and students in groups of up to 15 meet for individual consultation and general togetherness. All the courses necessary for gaining a high school diploma and college admission are offered. But even these may be given in a unique form. A social studies course, for instance, may be a seminar on the Viet Nam War, taught by staffers from the American Friends Service Committee.

Of the 10,000 applicants for Parkway, the 500 students now enrolled were selected from all over the city. Most are middleclass, about half are black, and IQs range from 74 to 140.

Marvelously Economical. It is too early to tell if Parkway students are well prepared for college, but it is already clear that given Parkway's style of freedom, many high school students not only mature faster but also learn more. Though many were behavioral problems in their previous schools, discipline problems have proved minimal, and the school has no hard-drug problem. There have been no racial incidents, though blacks and whites tend to keep apart.

"Up till now we've had the notion that the classroom is the only place where learning can take place," says Ford Foundation Official Mario Fantini. "The Parkway Program utterly rejects that notion; it breaks down the dichotomy between living and learning." Furthermore, he points out, Parkway is marvelously economical. A school for 500 pupils costs some $1,000,000 to build. Parkway's capital costs were practically nil. The most impressive praise of all is that Parkway already has at least one imitator. Chicago last month began its own peripatetic school. Kansas City, San Francisco, Hartford and Washington may follow suit.

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