A ZOO IN A SCHOOL

Shannon News, 28 June 1929, Page 4

A ZOO IN A SCHOOL

PIONEER EXPERIMENT. An amusing pioneer experiment, i miniature "zoo" at a.school in BU friars is recalled by the retirement Mrs. Alyce L. Sandford, one of the ginators of the modern type of inf school, states an English writer. Mrs.. Sandford, who was latti head-mistress of Brandlchow R< School, Putney, described in an in view some of the vicissitudes of little menagerie, which she started a time when nature study was self taught in schools. "We had rabbits, doves, tadpc guinea pigs, hedgehogs, goldfish, an snake several feet long," she s "The only difficulty was the snake, would eat frogs in such a disgust way, and we had to turn his cage the wall when he was feeding, beca the children could not bear to sec do it. The zoo succeeded in arous the children's imagination' and in est. They . were the roughest cr< ot" children I have ever taught, they all took an interest in the zoo, I loved teaching them." The authorities, she said, viewed experiment with some .concern, u Sir Cyril Cobb, as chairman of the Ii cation Committee of the L.C.C., visi the zoo, and was impressed by w ho saw. "I told him that all IW! ed was a dormouse," said Mrs. Sa fcrd. "Sir Cyril Cobb at once g me 5s with which to buy a dormo and in gratitude the children callei 'Cyril." When, the Moral Education Lea held a conference and exhibition Caxton Hall, Mrs. Sandford was aS »to take her zoo to the exhibition. " packed them all into a cart, and I in front with the driver holding a b of goldfish in my arms. We arri safely at the exhibition, but.that ni 'Nigger,' the black rabbit, escaped, was not found until the following m< iiig, when he darted out at one of cleaners and so alarmed: her that declared ever afterwards that she seen the devil in Caxton Hall."