OPEN-AIR SCHOOLS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 1, 2 January 1937, Page 12

OPEN-AIR SCHOOLS

HEALTH OF CHILDREN AN ADVOCATE IN BRITAIN (From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, December 9. Mr. Donald Cowie contributes to the "Scottish Educational Journal" an article on the open-air schools of New Zealand. To this experiment he applies the term "invention"—a word which may be condemned by purists. Yet he feels he cannot withhold from New Zealand "one scrap of the credit she deserves for her brave instigation of what may eventually prove to be the most important scholastic experiment of our age. The success that has so far attended the course of this experiment proclaims its significance. Over in New Zealand even the diehards now realise that the open-air principle has come to stay, and sooner or later this realisation must spread abroad." Mr. Cowie describes the school at Fendalton, and tells of the torrent of adverse criticism that descended upon the wise heads of the Fendalton pioneers in 1924. Last year, in Canterbury, approximately 3500 children were being taught in open-air schools, and the principle is extending. "I have not written this essay merely to describe the curious custom of a distant land," says Mr. Cowie. "I have had in mind the fact that Britain also possesses a legacy of unsuitable schools that have been handed down to her from the unimaginative past. Although parts of New Zealand are much warmer than Britain, the climate of Christchurch, where the open-air schools have been so successful, is extremely variable and trying. Yet the children there have not suffered from the closer contact with the elements that the open-air principle has permitted them. They have only gone from strength to strength."