UNHYGIENIC SCHOOLS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 82, 23 April 1937, Page 7

UNHYGIENIC SCHOOLS

"PABENT '»

(To the Editor.) Sir,— Are most of our Hawke's Bay schoOls modern ixygienic structures'l This surely opens up a topic for debate, Mr. C. B. teainsbury, judging by his . vemarks at a board meeting woula take the affirmative side. For a member h© seems singularly laeking in knowledge of the condition of most Hawke's Bayschools. Perhaps ho is conversanf merely with the larger town schools. Howeyer, it would be interesting to take hina on a tour of inspeetion round all the schools that do not come under tho hcading of larger town schools, He would quite possibly ehange his Blind when he saw what really oldfashipned, antiquated and unhygienic buildings most of them are. I can t-.hi n iof at ieast fiye within a very small radius that eertainly do not conform to the modern idea of achitecture, to put it politely. They are Sunlese, crowdedj breeding-grounds for germs where children, with the ^xeeption of perhaps those in one room, shiver in the winter. Why, I wonder, did our arehitects of forty or fif ty years ago plan so that most of the sehool winaows faeed away from the sun? I :am one of the many paren'ts that think that, in the interests of the children, the schools should be closed. Why wait until one or two in a "clean" ama contracts the dread paralysis and then close. Surely it is better for the children to get three weeks or a month behind with work. than to risk their becoming paralysed, pehaps for life. The whole epidemic prccautions, in Hawke's Bay, any way, have beeh a rn'ass of inconsistencies. Why not close the Schools now for the term and make the second term a longer one and so relieve parents of the big wOrry of wondering whether they are doing the right thing by their childre in aHovjng them to go to sehool. The board, I suppose, will argue that they eannot do anything without the .sanction of the Health Department; but has the board bothered to find out if it can gain that sanction? Thank you for yoax valuable space. — Yours, etc.,

Tikokino, April 20.