SCHOOL BUILDINGS

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 148, 12 March 1918, Page 4

SCHOOL BUILDINGS

An urgent problem which demands immediate and sympathetic attention is the provision of building accommodation and surroundings for our primary schools calculated to better ensure tho health and physical well-being of tho pupils, and to cnable i tho teachers to better perform their responsible duties. The Education Commission of 1912, hearing in mind the great drain on the Consolidated Fund this would necessitate, suggested tho establishment of a scheme of voluntary taxation largely subsidised by the' State,

bub the political danger of oven proposing legislation providing for such an innovation has evidently proved a sufficient deterrent. The necessity for proper facilities for the education of the rising generation is universally recognised, but wo seem to make little progress towards the desired goal. It is astonishing that in a country that boasts of advanced methods, modern progress, and up-to-date ideas on public matters the first requirements of a successful education system receive comparatively little attention. There are very few primary school buildings.in the Dominion which fulfil the requirements of to-day—well-ventilated rooms with plenty of air space, efficiently lighted, cool in the summer and easily heated in the winter, good seating accommodation of the pattern best calculated to induce good physical development, large playing grounds, school gardens, and wide-spreading trees for shade and shelter. Yet those conditions should be the irreducible minimum in regard to State primary schools. The cry for better school accommodation has been insistent for years, but of late the crowded state of our schools, especially in the large centres, has aggravated the position. The basis upon which the requisite floor space is calculated—the average attendance over a stated period—has always been an inadequate one, for, although as a rule in the summer the,number of pupils attending is largest, just when crowded rooms arc likely to prove most injurious, yet the fact that the attendance falls off in the winter owing to bad weather, and so reduces the average for the year,-is taken as sufficient proof that the accommodation is ample. It seems ridiculous for the State to provide school doctors and school nurses to ensure the good health of pupils without first making sure that the conditions at the schools are not detrimental to such a result. If there is any Department of State where parsimony should not be allowed to obtrude surely it is the one concerned with the training of those who are to be the men and women of the future; yet we doubt whether there exists any other Department where that i 3 so much tho ruling passion. Proof of that is in evidence in the public buildings of other Departments, such as tho post offices, the court houses, the police stations, and the Public Trust offices, where you will find everything which is wanting in our school buildings,. No doubt the Education Department .is cramped in its efforts just now by the demands made on the finances of tho country for war purposes; but parsimony in this direction is false economy, and the Minister ok Education should persist in his endeavours to impress this fact on his colleagues. <