Schools and Education

The present-day, traditional school system — nursery school, kindergarten, grade school, middle school, high school and college or trade school — will be kept intact, and all of it, including college, will be free to all students who are permanent residents of Victory City. All the costs of this public education will be financed by Victory City out of the gross rental income. Since students will be living permanently in Victory City, presumably with parents, there will be no need for dormitories.

In addition to the traditional school system, there will be another free educational system which may ultimately be more important and significant than the traditional one. The newer one will in most instances utilize the same course methodology as the old. However, with the newer system, students may take exams or not, as they choose, and they may go into a higher grade without passing the grade they are in. A second-grade student may sit in, for example, on a fifth-grade class to audit it. Auditing will be encouraged. A fifth-grader might audit a high school class and a high school student might audit a college class, etc. A student auditing classes may take exams if he wishes, and if he passes the exams, he must be given the same class credit or degree that the regular students receive. The purpose of this will be to encourage the individual to find and develop his own interests and develop his own individuality which is a fundamental part of specialization and the capitalistic free enterprise system.

In both the old and new educational systems, more emphasis will be placed on scientific, technical business and professional subjects to help prepare students for careers in Victory City and elsewhere.

Providing students of today with free classes in all scientific subjects is one of the best investments we can make in the future of our civilization.

School Location and Facilities

The entire school system, including classrooms of nursery school and kindergarten up through college, as well as administration offices, lecture halls, auditoriums, theaters and day care centers for babies and infants, and libraries for students of all ages — all these and probably more will be located in the commercial sections of the Main Elevator Building. Surrounding residential buildings will be reserved for families with school-age or college-age children and young adults.

For an auditorium and lecture halls, the Victory City theaters will be used. The movie theater will play a key role in both the new and old educational systems. The following subjects are examples of those that could be taught largely with movies: history, geography, geology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, social science, political science, civics, government, law, mathematics, medicine, psychology, psychiatry, and architecture.

Under this scenario, the theaters will be used in the mornings and afternoons for educational and technical and documentary films, and in the evenings for entertainment films. For the educational films, the finest and most outstanding nationally-known professors will be used in producing the films for tens of thousands of students to see, then afterward in the theater or back in the classroom, the in-class instructors will discuss the subject in more depth, answer questions, give exams, and grade the results.

Babies and Infant School/Pre-School

Part of the new educational system will be to start a person's education from the beginning when he is a baby and teach him as much as he is capable of learning. This will be of great advantage to working mothers who will obtain free babysitting service in addition to the new advanced educational methods. The Montessori system will be experimented with to the hilt.

Educational TV

Educational TV will be used widely. TV will be used in the classrooms to supplement the movie theaters.

Summer School

The Victory City educational system will be continuous and will include activities of a wide variety on weekends, both Saturday and Sunday and all summer long. The valuable facilities will be there and paid for, so why not use them all the time? The summer school will include frequent activity outdoors with plenty of sun, fresh air and exercise and student's free time to do as he wants. Useful activities such as picking vegetables and fruits on the nearby farms surrounding Victory City will be included on the teenager's summer program.