Fresh Air for Health

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 422, 2 August 1928, Page 12

Fresh Air for Health

VALUE TO CHILDREN

Dominion Not Too Cold

Contributed by the Open Air Schools League. SOME people in New Zealand seem to think that our climate is too cold for open-air schools. Most of these people must have forgotten what it is to he young. Never tvas there a greater mistake; the warm, debilitating atmosphere of a closed room, which to so many of the middle-aged is grateful and comforting, is pernicious to the young. The healthy child desires, and needs, a life of activity out of doors, and to shut him up in a closed room is to violate his nature.

Provided children are well fed and given sufficient exercise, they will not suffer from, but be benefited by, a reasonable amount of cold. Cold, “bracing brain and sinew,” as Charles Kingsley sang of the noreaster, is one of the best stimulants. This is recognised in the treatment of tubercular disease. It is the combination of sunlight and cold that makes the climate of Leysin, in the Swiss Alps, where Dr. Rollier has his clinic, so suitable for the treatment of bone and joint tuberculosis. At Hayling Island, in the South of England, cold is also used in the treatment of this disease, and at this modern Bethseda bedridden children are placed in nets and bathed in the sea! ENGLISH EXAMPLES Many of the open-air schools for sick children in England are entirely unprovided with means for artificial heating of rooms or shelter-sheds. In these schools the children are kept warm on cold days by frequent exercise, and a liberal diet; also the curriculum is so devised as to include much physical activity* In St. James’s Park, close to Buckingham Palace, there is a school for delicate children. In this school, unless it is actually raining—or snowing —all work is done right out of doors. The pretty, little bungalow shed which has been built for the use of the school is only used when it is too wet to be outside. This school was carried on in the Park right through last winter —an exceptionally severe one. The head teacher, Miss Corin, 8.A., writes about her experiences during the first half of the winter as follows: “I was-in the school till Christmas, and I certainly think we had the worst of the weather before I left (although I must say the bad snowstorms came in the Christmas vacation). No heating or lighting apparatus was provided —we just went on, quite happily, through all the fogs and frosts —with more physical work and taking advantage of the hut-shutters in very windy weather. And we continued to

have our hour’s sleep out in the open, unless the day happened to be really wet! We all used to feel so superior, running about on the open lawn, without overcoats, while shivering, furwrapped ordinary mortals surveyed us from the path beside the lawn. “We managed to get quite a good deal of work done, too—a rug round the knees seemed quite effective when sitting still for any length of time. WORKED WELL “I am quite sure that the way in which we ran the school in the Park should be as far as possible the ordinarily used method of running a sciwjol for ordinary, not only delicate children. I had to satisfy, in the Park, not only those educationists whose interpretation of the term “education” was a broad, wide one—but those to whom “education’ means a more narrow thing—more mere ‘book-learning.’ After all, I was expecting to have to return our children in the autumn to take their places in the various ordinary schools, from which thev had been withdrawn. And their '“booklearning’ went on quite well. I am convinced that if the education of ‘ordinary’ children proceeded along the lines we worked upon in the Park with the delicate children far better results would be obtained than are at present, with regard to both interpretations of the term ‘education.’ ” New Zealand open-air classrooms of the Fendalton, Christchurch, type can be turned into closed rooms by closing the sliding doors, and they have a fireplace where a good fire can be kept up. Till the open-air method is more thoroughly understood and appreciated this is an advantage. But think W'hat it means to be able to throw one side of the classroom right open on fine, sunshiny days! Even to be able to do this much is to entirely justly the open-air schools’ campaign.