OPEN-AIR SCHOOLS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19028, 27 May 1925, Page 10

OPEN-AIR SCHOOLS.

The, correspondence between the Minister for Education and the Canterbury Hoard concerning an experiment in open-air schools calls attention to an idea that, should have, a more cordial welcome in the Dominion than it has yet received. Children spend the live best hours of daylight shut up, more or less closely, in school buildings that impose, upon them unnatural conditions. This must exercise a prejudicial effect upon their bodily health and mental alertness. New Zealand possesses many advantages calculated to make its people robust, yet the reports of the medical inspectors employed by the Education Department show that large numbers of children are wanting in vigour and tone. That physical development is here often faulty was proved in the years of the war, when one-third of the young men examined for military service were found physically unfit. While examples of constitutional and muscular strength are numerous, these are offset seriously by the, prevalence of less robust types, and the average development is not as good as it should be in so favourable a natural and social environment. This imperfection, although not altogether attributable to improper methods of schooling, is certainly aggravated by them. To be indoors and still is not natural to childhood, and a type of school building whose characteristics approximate, as closely as is reasonably possible, to those of the open air, and allow of free movement, is preferable to the sort

of building generally provided. In the educational supplement ol the Times there was made last May a strong protest against "the old inelastic buildings, now seen to be unsuitable," and the desirability ol New Zealand's breaking away from an injurious tradition was emphasised in a resolution passed unanimously by the Dominion's branch of the British Medical Association in 1923. /That resolution urged the authorities "to take into consideration the desirability of open-air schools when framing their school building proposals in the future." It has been shown that this type of building, with a life of forty years or more, involves less than half the average cost of the prevailing type; and this adds a telling reason for giving it a trial. But the most impressive argument for that trial is the unanimity with which it is approved by the medical faculty and the, educational authorities in countries with a climate far more rigorous than New Zealand's. If the London County Council, for instance, can adopt this style of building for its new housing estates at Bellingham and lloohampton, why should it not be in general use here 1 ?