VALUE OF FRESH AIR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16373, 30 October 1916, Page 6

VALUE OF FRESH AIR.

DOCTOR'S" ADVOCACY. In the course of an address in Dunedin Dr. Bowie, of the Dunedin Hospital, highly commended open-air classes for children and open-air accommodation for sleeping out. Our whole modern system of life, Be added, was tending to compel children and adolescents to ?pend a very large part of their life indoors, and that was absolutely and essentially wrong. If wo were to make our children the best t.nd healthiest and bonniest possible wo must get back at Nature's methods. Our organism had marvellous powers of adaptation, and wo gradually became used to the conditions of our dwellings, but the struggle against these conditions left the organism, on account of reduced resistance, an easy prey to germs of disease. In conducting an open-air class ho admitted the teacher would have some little trouble at the beginning, but the criticism would soon die down absolutely. At first, in their unaccustomed environment., the children would watch the birds and flowers, and their attention would be taken off the immediate lesson to some small degree; hut the lessons they would learn from watching the world around them would be of infinite value. The teacher would find that the mentality would become more acute, the replies smarter, and the children would take up •* lesson more quickly and retain it more firmly. The child would hare joy and pleasure in the lesson, and would not have to yawn and stretch at the end of the day, as in an. inside school. The teacher herself, instead of wanting a cup of tea to freshen her up, would be ready and easier for a frame of tennis. The finest thing that could be conceived for the lives of these girls was to have them accommodated on balconies open to the winds of heaven. Children were often heavy and hard to rouse in the morning because they were living in an atmosphere which was not supplying them with sufficient oxygen. Those who slept with their windows wide open morning, noon, and night in all weathers wakened without yawning, fresh for their work.