434 SCIENCE OF HOME AND COMMUNITY 



running water is not available, there can be obtained water 

 jars to which sanitary drinking fountains are attached. 



Playground. A properly equipped school needs a large 

 playground. One great defect of our schools in the country, 

 as well as in the city, is the small size of the playground. 

 Whenever a new building is being planned, provisions should 

 be made for adequate playgrounds, with room for baseball 

 grounds, tennis courts, and open spaces for other games. 

 Play is an essential part of a child's life. It not only fur- 

 nishes the physical exercise that the growing child needs, 

 but it also has a distinct educational value in itself. 



Open-air schools. During recent years open-air schools 

 have been established for tuberculous and sickly children 

 unable to attend the regular school. Sometimes these are 

 entirely in the open, sometimes they are provided with a 

 roof, and sometimes an ordinary room is changed into an 

 open-air school by hingeing the windows at the top and 

 opening them to their fullest capacity. For the colder 

 seasons the children are provided with special clothing to 

 keep them warm. These schools have proved almost uni- 

 versally successful in that the children have made great 

 gains physically and are able to do better work in their 

 school subjects. If these open-air schools are good for weak 

 and sickly children, we are naturally led to inquire why 

 they would not also be good for the ordinary child. 



Defects in school children. Having seen that the con- 

 ditions under which children study are healthful and sanitary, 

 the next step in looking after children's health is to examine 

 the child himself and see if he is handicapped by any physi< 

 defects that can be remedied. All over the country, chil- 

 dren are now being examined and the results show tl 

 more than half of all children have some defects of the 

 eye, teeth, throat, or nose. In many cases neither the chil- 

 dren nor their parents know that these defects exist. Wh< 

 these defects have been discovered, in most cases they can 



