“GAOL-LIKE SCHOOLS”

Taranaki Daily News, 16 July 1921, Page 6

“GAOL-LIKE SCHOOLS”

DANGER TO CHILDREN,

A DOCTOR’S INDICTMENT.

Christchurch. July 11

“Far better that a child shouid play in the gutter, where at least it can be in the sun and get fresh air, than that it should be shut away from both in many of those gaol-like buildings which we call, schools,” said Dr. G. J. Blackmore, of Cashmere Consumption Sanatorium, in an address delivered to the'Workers’ Educational Association on the subject of child welfare.

Dr. Blackmore indicted the unhealthy schools of the country as “the finest possible place for spreading children’s diseases.” Parents, he said, had the right to demand proper safeguards for their children’s health, but the State was not providing those safeguards. “The State takes the child for a certain number of hours each day,” he said, “shuts it up within four walls and causes it to breathe vitiated and often grossly polluted air. Then to make certain that nothing is overlooked to jeopardise the health of the child, it herds children together in overcrowded classes. Given one infected child in such a class and the disease which that child is suffering from must inevitably spread to others.”

The lecturer advocated open-air schools, such as are common in other parts of the world. These would not provide a new heaven and, new earth, but they would lessen disease and reduce the death rate among children. Turning to the prevention of disease in schools, he said it seemed confined almost entirely to dental defects. There was no public money being spent in New Zealand on organised research for prevention of disease. A certain amount was spent for that purpose on cattle. The" beast of the field had a market value, but the human being, even though he was of value to the State, was rwt a marketable commodity. The blame lay not with the Government, but with rhe people themselves who were apathetic. That apathy was being visited with terrible consequence on the children. No child could be neglected without the whole community suffering.