SCHOOL 



5243 



SCHOOL 



Federal Board, in order to receive the benefit 

 of the act. 



Open-Air Schools. The purpose of the open- 

 air school is to enable children whose physical 

 condition will not allow them to remain in the 

 ordinary school, to continue their education 

 and at the same time recover their health. The 

 first schools of this sort in the United States 

 were opened in New York City and Providence, 

 R. I., in 1904. They are now found in practi- 

 cally all large cities and in many smaller ones. 

 The schools are of two types, those conducted 

 out-of-doors, as on the roofs of buildings, or 

 on the ground with only a tent or roof of some 

 6ort for shelter, and those conducted in rooms 

 with open windows, known as open-window 

 schools. Preference is usually given to the 

 outdoor school. Health inspection of school 

 children in a large number of cities shows that 

 from two to ten per cent of the pupils are 

 physically unfit to be in the public schools. 

 This means that from 400,000 to 2,000,000 chil- 

 dren of school age should have special attention 



Till-: SITTIXG-OUT BAG 



Shown closrd an 1 OJM--I. It provides protection 

 to the feet and lower limbs. 



to their physical welfare. The open-air 

 school can restore most of these to health. 



The schools endeavor to care, first, for those 

 children who arc undernourished and whose 

 general appearance indicates inability to resist 

 disease. Children suffering from any communi- 

 cable disease, those whose condition requires 

 absolute rest and hospital treatment, and chil- 

 dren suffering from forma of tuberculosis, ID 

 which the bacilli are given off thro 

 crctions, are excluded. Children should be ad- 

 mitted only after a thorough physical examina- 

 tion. 



Special clothing is necessary. This consists 

 of the sitting-out bag, the sleeping bag and a 

 warm outer garment provided with a hood; in 

 place of the hood a knitted woolen cap may be 

 used. In some schools Eskimo suits, l.ke those 

 shown on page 5242, are used. Special foot- 

 wear is recommended, but this may not be es- 

 sential. The classes are smaller than in the 

 ordinary school, and the course of study is 



SLEEPING BAG AND COT 

 Used in Chicago's open-air schools. 



more flexible, devoting a larger proportion of 

 the time to industrial work. Since rest is one 

 of the principal needs of the pupils, a portion 

 of each session is reserved for quiet. The pu- 

 pils lie upon couches in their sleeping bags and 

 are encouraged to sleep. 



Nourishing food is another important requi- 

 site and this is provided by the school. Usually 

 lunch is served in the middle of the forenoon 

 session, dinner at 12:30 and lunch before th> 

 pupils go home in the afternoon. All meals 

 consist of plain, wholesome food, so cooked 

 and served as to make every dish appetising. 



Consult Kingsley's Open-air Cruaadcrt, 1810; 

 Watt's Fresh Air for the Average School Children; 

 The Survey, March 5. 1910; Ayles' Open-air 

 Schools, 1911 ; Open-air Education, Bulletin U. 8. 

 Board of Education ; Upton's Open-air School*, 

 1914. 



Medical Inspection in Schools. Physical ex- 

 amination of over 252,000 school children in 

 New York City public schools showed that 

 seventy-four per cent of them were defer 

 Over fifty-three per cent of those examined had 

 defective teeth, over ten per cent had defer 

 vision; fourteen per cent defective nasal 

 breathing, and nearly eighteen per cent had 



rged tonsils. None of these children was 

 able to do his best in school because of his 

 physical condition. It would seem that no 

 further argument should be necessary to con- 



any community or board of education 

 of the necessity of medical inspection of school 

 children. 



In the United States medical inspection of 

 school children was begun in Boston in 1894 

 because of epidemics among the pupils in its 



