UNHEATED SCHOOLROOMS, o

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 183, 2 August 1923, Page 7

UNHEATED SCHOOLROOMS, o

(To the Editor.) , Sir,—lt is well that the question of \\ heating schools is at last being diseVissed. i J When office radiators were cut off there was a great outcry, and the low tempera- c ture in Mt. Albert Grammar School was " brought up officially, but the lack of l heating, and wretched conditions which obtain in the primary schools appears " to be no one's business. The recognised 8 minimum for schools is 58 degrees, and in other countries the rooms are heated *' up to that or higher, but I make bold I \ to say that in most of the primary ' schools of Auckland Province, that c temperature has been nearer to the maxi- c mum than the minimum during the past l two months—in some schools the fires c are seldom or never liprhted; no onej ß seems to know why. This condition of I , i affairs is scandalous, and is probably the j real cause of the present epidemic. Any * I parents who take an interest in their * children's health, know that most of I J their sickness can be traced to a cold flay J lin school. The big epidemic of 1918 took I 1 place in early summer, and attacked! , adults much more often than it did ' children. The present epidemic is at- ' tacking a very large proportion of the * children, because they are chilled all \ day and their resistance lowered. I ' have known of children being taught ' in a Waikato school with the thermometer at 38 degrees in the school- ' room, and that school was noted for ) pneumonia among the scholars. There should be a thermometer in every school- ] I room, and the temperature kept up to a \ definite height. If the present heating ' appliances are inadequate others should ' be installed at once, at any cost.—l am ' etc., AN OBSERVER. 1