"OPEN-AIR MINDS."

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 262, 5 November 1931, Page 21

"OPEN-AIR MINDS."

OLD IDEAS AND NEW.

PROFESSOR. SHELLEY'S AIMS.

"It is essential for us that the world should give back to the child the life it used to live befqre the development of large towns if we are to save civilisation," declared Professor J. Shielley, president of the Open Air School League, at a complimentary luncheon in Christcliurch prior to his departure for a tour of the United States.

Professor Shelley said that within the last century an idea had grown up in towns that churches, banks and other institutions should be associated with gorgeous buildings. The idea had also spread to schools, and consequently in many countries buildings had been erected which were an obstacle to education.

From the point of view of a child's welfare it would be a wise action to sacrifice such buildings and change over to open-air schools. It was difficult, however, to make those associated with education open-air minded. It was largely the influence of the factory idea that had caused people to build schools of the closed type, but that idea was gradually being broken down. Every effort should be made to get the child back to the conditions which obtained before the advent of the present type of building.

i Some people believed that a school should consist' of four brick walls and the requisite number of desks, conditions which made for "mental consumption." The aim to-day should be to provide a child with an open-air mind as well as an opbn-air body. It was sometimes stated that Wellington was not suited for open-air schools, because it was .so congested. His answer to that was that the city was wrong, not the type of school. To get over the difficulty of erecting schools in such a closely built city he would transport the children to where there was the necessary space for the purpose.