DALTON, PLAN of. — activism (v.), a notable place is occupied by the system known as the D. plan, devised by Elena Parkhurst (b. 1889) after the end of the First World War (1920) and implemented in the town of Dalton, whence its name. In accordance with the principle of the active school, it grants the pupil the greatest possible freedom and promotes knowledge as the autonomous product of his or her inner life.
The idea of “personalizing” instruction arose in Parkhurst in 1904, when she had to teach in a rural school of forty 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 curriculum is divided into ten defined assignments (piecework tasks), subdivided into a certain number of work units (twenty for each month, corresponding to the actual number of school days), each comprising the various subjects. The pupil undertakes in writing, by means of a contract, to carry out one of the ten assignments of his or her choice, and may not move on to a new one without first having thoroughly studied the subject specified for the month. This is intended to prevent the pupil from neglecting the disciplines he or she prefers least, to the serious detriment of his or her own formation, which must also arise from the necessity of confronting and overcoming obstacles. When the plan is applied to the entire school, the school is transformed into laboratories under the direction of a specialized teacher. There are as many laboratories as there are “Daltonized” subjects: history, geography, philosophy, language, mathematics, and science. Each laboratory is fully equipped with all the material relating to the discipline to which it is devoted: card indexes, bibliographical material, maps, atlases, apparatus, journals, books, and so forth. The pupil lives in the laboratory and freely carries out his or her investigations there. Instructions relating to the various assignments indicate the exercises, investigations, and readings that the pupil must undertake. When the pupil believes that he or she has completed the assignment (contract), the pupil presents himself or herself to the teacher, who examines him or her on the work units completed. The progress of each pupil and of all the pupils is indicated by means of graphs. Each pupil has a personal file in which the teachers record in linear form the units completed. The head of the laboratory also has a chart in which the pupils’ programs are represented graphically. When several pupils reach the same level, this may then be the appropriate moment to give them a lesson together. In the D. plan, as is clear from this possibility of a shared lesson, collective instruction is not abolished; since it was maintained in the class itself outside the laboratories, Parkhurst, who at first had reduced collective instruction to a minimum, later felt the need to give it greater scope and value. In the D. plan there are neither end-of-year promotions nor report cards. Advancement to a higher class takes place when the pupil demonstrates that he or she has fulfilled the “contract,” that is, when the pupil has attained the degree of formation required for admission to the higher class. This, naturally, accords with the psychological principle that formation is individual and not collective: while it is achieved in one person, it is delayed in another and just beginning in yet another.
The D. plan enjoyed considerable success in various countries throughout the world, though undergoing the modifications required by the differing conditions of those countries. Systems based on the D. plan include that of J. Mackinder at the Macborough School in Chelsea (England); the Howard plan, adopted at Clapton in a girls’ secondary school by Mrs. O’Brien Harris; in Holland, the Keenemmer Stelsel; and in Germany, P. Peterson’s Jena plan (cf. E. Planchard, La pédagogie scolaire contemporaine, Tournai-Paris 1948).
The success of the D. plan is undoubtedly to be sought rather in certain elements of it that may be called external, such as laboratories equipped with all the material necessary for research and study, individual lessons substituted for class lessons, and so forth. Nevertheless, it displays an insufficient and defective aspect when it neglects the school as a social moment, as a community, thereby reducing it to an aggregate of pupils who, separated from one another, end up stifling that very personality which the system seeks to promote—that individuality which is better formed and refined through the relationship between pupil and pupil and between pupil and teacher. A system such as this disrupts the educational relationship and, placing the entire school at the center of the pupil, isolates the pupil from the teacher—that is, from the living example whose presence and authority the child always feels the need for.