Open-Air Schools
REVIEWS AND CRITICISM.
- Author:
Leonard P. Ayres, Ph.D. New York: Doubleday,
Page and Company, 1910.
As a matter of fact we do not need Dr Ayres’ convincing representation of the splendid work done by open-air schools or the delightful photographs scattered through the volume to arouse our enthusiasm. The very name is sufficient. Open-air Schools! Let him who has never held his aching head in a stuffy school-room speak disparagingly of such innovations. To most of us the appeal it makes is instantaneous and irresistible.
This summer at the School Hygiene Congress held in Paris, one of the most important questions under consideration was the open-air school.
The movement as yet is only in its infancy, but it bids fair to have far-reaching results. It marks a long step toward the ideal school of the future where “the child will not have to be either feeble-minded or delinquent or tubercular or truant to enjoy the best and fullest sort of educational opportunity.”
To Dr Ayres belongs the distinction of having built the first openair school to be established under the American flag. This was in 1904 at San Juan, Porto Pico, where Dr Ayres was superintendent of schools. In Germany the open-air school is now incorporated in the elementary school system. In England it has been successfully tried in several towns. The credit of establishing the first open-air school in the United States belongs to Providence, Phode Island; Poston, New York, Chicago, Hartford, Pittsburgh, and Rochester followed suit. In Chicago the boys and girls attending the open-air school refused to take a vacation during the Christmas holidays and their request that school might go on was granted.
The results achieved all point one way. The children gained in weight, in powers of resistance, in improved appearance and mental activity. Also it was successfully demonstrated that many of the ordinary class-room subjects, like geography and natural history, can be taught more effectually in the open air.
There are two important factors in obtaining the best results from the open-air schools. The children must be well-fed and kept warm. Dr Ayres offers us practical information along both these lines. In America, it appears, the open-air school has been instituted primarily for children who are either suffering from tuberculosis or predisposed to that disease. This is not the case in Europe where the schools have been used as a therapeutic agent for physically debilitated children of all kinds. The need of these schools for all classes of sufferers is shown by the evidence that from three to five per cent of all school children are in want of just this treatment and cannot properly be cared for in ordinary schools.
We were accustomed in the past to think the efficacy of a remedy was in direct proportion to its nastiness, but times have changed, drugs are frowned upon, and the prospect of giving sick children at the same time what they like and what is good for them cannot fail to arouse a growing enthusiasm and interest. E. E. W.
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