DALTON, Plain of. - Within the framework of pedagogical activism (v.) a notable place is occupied by the system that goes under the name of the D. Plan, devised by Helen Parkhurst (b. 1889) after the end of the First World War (1920) and implemented in the small town of Dalton, whence the name. It grants, according to the principle of the active school, the greatest freedom to the pupil and promotes his knowledge as an autonomous product of his inner self.
The idea of "personalizing" teaching arose in Parkhurst in 1904, when it fell to her to teach in a rural school of 40 pupils from different classes; and it grew ever stronger in her when, later, she came into contact with the thought of Montessori and Dewey. In the D. Plan the annual school program is divided into ten defined assignments (contracts), subdivided into a certain number of units of work (20 for each month, as many as are effectively the days of school), each comprising the various subjects. The pupil undertakes in writing, by a contract, to carry out one of the ten assignments of his choice, and he cannot pass on to a new one without first having thoroughly studied the subject of the one marked for that month. This is for the purpose of preventing the pupil from neglecting the disciplines he least prefers, to the grave detriment of his own formation, which must also arise from the necessity of confronting and overcoming obstacles. When the plan is applied to the whole school, the school is then transformed into laboratories under the direction of a specialized teacher. The laboratories are as many as there are "Daltonized" subjects: history, geography, philosophy, language, mathematics, science. Each laboratory is rich in all the material relating to the discipline to which it is dedicated: card indexes, bibliographic material, maps, atlases, apparatus, journals, books, etc. The pupil lives in the laboratory and freely carries out his research there. Instructions relating to the different assignments indicate the exercises, the research, the readings that the pupil must do. When the pupil believes he has fulfilled his assignment (contract), he presents himself to the teacher, who submits him to an examination on the units of work completed. The progress of each and of all is indicated by graphs. Each pupil has a personal file in which the teachers record linearly the units accomplished. The head of the laboratory also has a chart on which the pupils' programs are represented by a graphic mark. When several pupils reach the same level, that may then be the moment to give a lesson in common. In the D. Plan, as appears from these possibilities of a lesson in common, collective teaching is not abolished; for, maintained in the class itself outside the laboratories, Parkhurst, who at first had reduced collective teaching to a minimum, felt at a later stage the need to give it greater scope and value. In the D. Plan there are no promotions at the end of the year and no report cards. The passage to a higher class takes place when the pupil demonstrates that he has fulfilled his "contract," that is, when he has reached that degree of formation required to be admitted to the higher class. And this, it is understood, in respect for a psychological principle that formation is individual and not collective, and while in one it is realized, in another it is delayed, in another it is set in motion.
The D. Plan has enjoyed notable success in the various countries of the world, though undergoing the modifications required by the various conditions of those countries. Systems based on the D. Plan may be: that of J. Mackinder in the Macborough school of Chelsea (England), the Howard plan, adopted at Clapton in a girls' secondary school by Mrs. O'Brien Harris; in Holland the Keenemmer Stelsel, in Germany the Jena plan of P. Peterson (cf. E. Planchard, La pédagogie scolaire contemporaine, Tournai-Paris 1948).
The success of the D. Plan is without doubt to be sought rather in certain of its elements that may be called external, such as the laboratories equipped with all the material necessary for research and study, individual lessons substituted for class lessons, etc. However, it shows an insufficient and defective side when it neglects the school as a social moment, as a community, thus reducing it to an aggregate of pupils who, detached from one another, end up suffocating that very personality which one would wish to promote, that individuality which is better formed and refined in the relationship of pupil to pupil and of pupil to teacher. A system like this breaks the educational relationship and, centering the whole school on the pupil, isolates him from the teacher, that is, from that living example whose presence and authority the child always feels the need of.
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Nino Sammartano