OPEN-AIR SCHOOLS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22615, 31 December 1936, Page 10

OPEN-AIR SCHOOLS

NEW ZEALAND "INVENTION" NOTABLE TRIBUTE PAID [from our own correspondent] LONDON, Dec. 0 Mr. Donald Cowio contributes to tlio Scottish Educational Journal an article on the Open-Air Schools of New Zealand. To this experiment ho applies tlio term "invention"—a word which may be condemned by purists. Yet he feels ho cannot withhold from NewZealand "one scrap of the credit she deserves for her bravo instigation of what may eventually prove to be the most important scholastic experiment of our ago. The success that has so far attended the ccurse of this experiment proclaims its significance. Over in New Zealand even.the die-hards now realise that the open-air principle has como to stay, and sooner or later this realisation must spread abroad." Describing the school at Fendalton, Mr. Cowie tells of the torrent of adverso criticism that descended upon the wise heads of the Fondalton pioneers in 1924. Last year, in Canterbury, approximately 3600 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. Cowio. "I have had in mind the fact that Britain also possesses a legacy of unsuitable schools that have boon 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."