176 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE PLAYGROUNDS OF KUKAL AND SUBURBAN 



SCHOOLS. 



By ISABELLA G. OAKLEY. 



~\T7~HILE the officers and friends of education in large cities are 

 * » exerting themselves to provide open-air playgrounds for the 

 schools, the villages and smaller towns all over the East are reversing 

 the case. Except in the small district schools, the children's play- 

 ground has almost ceased to exist. 



This is an evil which has crept in with the tendency to cen- 

 tralize the schools. When in any place the schools begin to over- 

 flow, a movement to put up a larger building takes place, accom- 

 panied by an effort to create a high-school department; not so much 

 the need of the community as the ambitious dream of some principal 

 who would be superintendent, or some sort of central sun to a group 

 of satellites. This dream is too easily realized, because it flatters the 

 people. Then there rises a preposterous structure of stone and brick ; 

 a house of many gables, out of keeping with everything, either public 

 or private, in the place; a temple of vanity. Now is rung the knell of 

 the school playground, for the new " high school," although it will 

 house all the children from five to fifteen, must needs be surrounded 

 by a fine lawn, studded with shrubbery, and threaded by bluestone 

 roads. The janitor has to employ an assistant to keep the grounds 

 in order. A shut-in, penitentiarylike place has been evolved by the 

 architect and school committee, gratifying to their pride and a 

 deep wrong to the children. There are many wrongs about it; the 

 one insisted upon here is the abolishing of the recess, that time- 

 honored joy of the American schoolboy and schoolgirl. 



The cheerful sounds of play no more re-echo; the little ones 

 march in " lock step " from the doors to the very curb of this im- 

 maculate ornate inclosure. If, on this beautiful lawn, any impulsive 

 youngster is caught running, or performing an instinctive hop- 

 scotch or leapfrog, he is sure to be seen by a watching and powerful 

 janitor and reported. Leapfrog and profanity, in the true Draconian 

 spirit, are alike visited with the extreme penalty of a visit to the 

 principal's office. However, in default of a playground, the new 

 schoolhouse provides a gymnasium for physical culture. I speak 

 now of a particular school, the pride of a simple village, and a type 

 of many. This gymnasium is a costly room filled with elaborate ap- 

 paratus, most of which is suited only to the high-school pupils, and 

 never touched by the majority, who leave school at twelve or thir- 

 teen; their physical exercises have been chiefly provided for by 

 a box of dumb-bells and wands. In many schools the " gym- 



