CLASSROOMS SHOULD BE BRIGHT

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 55, 27 November 1946, Page 3

CLASSROOMS SHOULD BE BRIGHT

UTILITARIAN SPIRIT INTERIORS FAIL TO INCULCATE TASTE FOR BEAUTY “A schoolroom should not be a portion of space—some 5000 to 6000 cubic feet—hemmed in by bare walls. Such a room flouts and affronts the senses of children; it is emotionally depressing; it starves and thwarts the aesthetic promptings of the young, so eager for brightness and beauty, for colour and light. It casehardens them to the drab and dingy. It is, in short, a lesson and a pernicious one given five hours a day in ‘uglification’,” stated Mr W. J. Cartwright, president of the New Zealand Education Institute, in an address to the Rotorua branch recently. “Meantime, out of doors nature provides ever-changing panoramas. Scope for Artistry

‘I do not pretend to know all that should be done to break down the tradition that a classroom should be made to resemble as as possible a place of confinement. Such knowledge should, however, be an important part of the technique of the architect-cumartist, alone fit to be entrusted with designing school*. “The ultilitarian spirit oi our age is at fault here. In our practice we treat the beauties of nature as a matter with which poets alone are concerned. We fail to realise what a large share comeliness, grace, charm and other artistic qualities have in ministering to the human spirit and the result is first to starve and then to atrophy the craving for beauty. No Place for Refinement “The utilitarian spirit says in effect ‘get on with the job,’ and the outcome is that we do so in cities, offices and factories where the instinctive desire for colour, harmony and refinement is given short shift. “It seems to me that the beginning of this docile, unconscious, and in the end, disastrous acceptance of the ugly is made in our dingy, unadorned classrooms. It is as if the ■blinds were wantonly pulled down over the windows through which grace and beauty should shine into the human soul. “Having taught for nearly forty years, I hesitate to generalise about children. Nevertheless, I do not hesitate' to say that there is on the part of all children a prompt and glad response to cheerful, tasteful, picturesque surroundings. . Nor do I hesitate to say that after eight years spent in typical classrooms, most of our children have learned to do without such surroundings.”