The Waimate Advertiser. (Established 1898). Published every evening since 1914 SATURDAY, DEC. 18, 1926. OPEN-AIR SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIV, 18 December 1926, Page 6

The Waimate Advertiser. (Established 1898). Published every evening since 1914 SATURDAY, DEC. 18, 1926. OPEN-AIR SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND.

Tn view of the controversy in New Zealand in connection with Open Air Schools, it is interesting to note the Mother Country, England, has gathered together 130 boys and girls whose bodies have for years lacked the essentials of health and placed them in a garden school, designed to restore them to robustness. Many mothers of that country, fearful lest the lives of their babies be snuffed out, during the World War took refuge in dark cellars, where sunlight and winds never penetrated. The children, thus handicapped, developed bodies starved and diseased. The garden in which this school has been established is that of Stowey House. South Side, Clapham Common—the only school in Britain where sun cures are effected. Here the greatest of all healers, sun and air, join forces with the teachers. Body and brain are being given a chance. Each child has a desk and a chair. The lessons go on as quietly and efficiently as if this were an every-day schoolroom where healthy children wrestle with the intricacies of fractions or the teasing boundary lines of strange countries in their geographies. The boys wear slips of orange cloth. That is all. The rays of the sun. bathe their chests and backs and legs and arms. It is proving a spt. did bath. Give these children a string of feathers from head to heel, and they might be Indian lads playing at Indian games, for their little bodies have become brown as berries Behind a wall of foliage girls have a solarium all their own. They wear the.

| tiniest sort of skirt, maced material. A small white ht their necks from the son, a costume. Should they picks flowers and string them overa bodies and chant a piaintivei might be. for all the world Bl girls in Honolulu. Al children little cliqv| formed. They have thrill leaders and their favoaritil Gardening is popular. Neo become weather observers nd correctly the sunshine im barometer, and the sunii a medicinal standpoint,"l headmaster, “this treatment wonderfully successful, ktfl | guid when the classes staitel 1 ren are now aler and bubbiat \ good spirits. Examination I [ show a corresponding me® ) ment. We shall continue lb until November, when la® 60 per cent, of tue children’ enough to return to the ordil Our experiment is being ’ educationalists aid doctors! England but all over the