RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29075, 11 December 1959, Page 30

RANDOM REMINDER

As schools throughout the country prepare to close for the year, earnest preparations are being made in many places for the opening of new ones next year. The layman might thoughtlessly regard the building and opening of a new school as the primary concern of the architect and builder. But there is much more to it than that. It is not sufficient to put up the classrooms, install tables and chairs, and set out a box of coloured chalks. Education today demands rather more. It is conservatively estimated that there are about 1600 separate items of equipment required for a new secondary school, and when it is remembered that very many of those items are repeated

perhaps three dozen times, the total of the inventory is staggeyng. The articles range from the bassinets in the mothercraft section to mincers for the kitchen, the B.Blb shot for the physical education activities, and such peculiar items as jig dowels in the woodwork room. To assemble all these things, thousand on thousand of them, to check them all and put them where they belong is a task demanding extraordinary patience. Of particular interest to women is the vast range of cooking, home science and mothercraft equipment. Everything is organised with military precision. For instance, the standard issue teapot holds three pints; with it goes six half-pint teacups,

six saucers and six spoons. No allowawf here for second cups** wastage from nerw* pouring. No doubt theg partment says someWM| in its regulations there is not to be one the pot. But the basins and beaters, ’r snow-white boards brushes in the kitefl* must bring an gleam to an eye or »*• s l’m just dying to your kitchen.” headmaster to a coliejw also freshly And it is good to that part of the stand*; school kitchen equip®* includes a fir*.. S tinguisher, a first-aid ana a screwdriver, seems that every of emergency hu foreseen.