Open-Air Schools.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19171, 30 November 1927, Page 8

Open-Air Schools.

The pleasant little function in Ballantyne's tea-rooms on Monday afternoon, though it was primarily a welcome to Dr. Phillipps, was an indication also of the growing strength of the OpenAir Schools League. It is interesting also to have it on the authority of Dr. Phillipps himself that there is no other such League in the Empire, though there are, of course, many open-air schools. The Spectator said the other day, in a distinctly valuable survey of the Question continued through two numbers, that the open-air schools movement is perhaps stronger in England than anywhere, but is " spreading to all parts of the civilised "world," and has taken a particularly interesting turn in New Zealand, where it is " essentially a parents' movement." So long as it is actively supported by parents it will grow—and the warm dispute, or difference of opinion, or misunderstanding, or whatever it was at Mount Pleasant the other day is a healthy sign that in Canterbury, at any rate, parents want the whole reform and not only a measure of it. But the movement is happily now (at last) a Board movement in New Zealand, and also a Departmental one. There may be differences of opinion as to the speed at which it should advance, but hardly anyone left in authority in any part of the Dominion continues to describe open-air schools as a mere fad. We have arrived also at this happy position in Canterbury that we have the medical profession not only favourable to open-air schools, but actively and earnestly preaching them and working for them, so that the Board has nothing at all to worry about but the application of the principle to each district's condition and needs. The Boar'd is, in fact, being watched by the rest of the Dominion to see how far and how fast it will go. It has in the Fendalton bungalows what is perhaps the best type of open-air school in the world, and it has only to build others of the same type —when new buildings are necessary—to give the children of Canterbury better conditions than any children in the Empire have ever had before.