William Wirt

William Wirt (born January 21, 1874, Markle, Indiana, U.S.—died March 11, 1938, Gary, Indiana) was an innovative American educator best known for his “platoon” system of alternating two groups of students between classroom and recreational or vocational activities.

Wirt graduated from DePauw University in 1898, attended graduate school there and at the University of Chicago, and then went to Europe to study educational methods. He began his professional career while in college in Indiana; he was superintendent of schools in Redkey (1895–97), taught mathematics at Greencastle (1897–99), and then served as superintendent at Bluffton (1899–1907). He introduced his system at Bluffton, but it was as superintendent of the Gary public schools (1907–38) that Wirt attracted national attention with his idea of splitting the student body into platoons. In its time Wirt’s idea, known as the Gary Plan, or platoon system, caused the city to be known as a centre for progressive education.

Wirt intended his plan to make more efficient use of school facilities. Among other changes, Wirt’s system led to greater emphasis on recreational and vocational activities in school, lengthened school hours from six to eight, created class levels based on age, and encouraged teachers in subject-area specialization. In 1914 New York City hired Wirt as an adviser to implement his system there, but controversy among New York educators over the Gary Plan led to its repudiation in 1918. The number of schools following Wirt’s program dwindled from more than 1,000 (in more than 200 cities) in 1930 to a handful within two decades. Nevertheless, certain aspects of Wirt’s system were lasting and widely used—for example, the use of testing for multiple student classifications (such as determining whether a student should be placed in a specific class) and the open shaping of curriculum by business concerns, as seen in vocational education programs.

In the 1930s Wirt charged that school leaders were becoming communists and spreading communist propaganda. In 1934 Wirt declared that certain people in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration were preparing a revolution. That led to a congressional investigation (by a House committee chaired by Alfred L. Bulwinkle), which found no evidence to support Wirt’s allegations.