The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1912. FRESH AIR.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 42, 12 October 1912, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1912. FRESH AIR.

The suggestion 'made' at a meeting bj Auckland school teachers : . the, other day that, to obtain more fresli air. schools should be built with removablt walls, is not quite so far-fetched aftei all. In'the United States .of America some time ago a campaign was started with the object of bringing more fresh air into the Chicago schools, and, in fact, into the busy city itself. A writer in ‘McClure’s Magazine’ deals with this “oxygenizing a city” and shows how “the old street cars illustrated the quickly acting dangers of bad air—those of bacterial infection. The public schools well illustrated the slow acting—the lowered resistance to the disease caused by spending nearly the entire day in close, hot, dry rooms. In the fall the Chicago schools open their doors to thousands of brighteyed, rosy-cheeked boys and girls. Then the janitor turns on the steam, the teacher shuts down the windows, and lessons begin. Soon the colour disappears from the children’s faces, the brightness from their eyes, the activity from their bodies. They grow listless, stupid, irritable: they fall behind in their lessons and become a problem and a torment to their teachers. Dr. Evans (Health Commissioner for Chicago) attributes these changes not so much to original sin as to bad ventilation. His air teste in the Chicago public schools showed that they exemplified all the terrors of hot-air heating.” The article goes on to show, how beneficial were the results of allowing cool fresh air to enter the school-rooms freely, in the almost entire disappearance of colds and the normal afflictions of school life, and in the response made by the mentality of the children to the altered conditions. In many of our schools it may not bo possible to have removable walls, hut it would certainly be possible to obtain a greater supply of fresh air without taking such an extreme step. In the better health of the children and the better work done, ample repayment would be made for the cost or trouble of attending to this very important matter.