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to be sufficient to render the best aid to the child, and for
this reason the residential open-air school has been instituted.
It is not unlikely that as experience is gained in
Willesden of the open-air school about to be erected, the
Committee will be impressed with the necessity for establishing
a residential open-air recovery school, so that the
children may benefit to the greatest possible extent.
Sanatorium School.—The next stage in the development
of the open-air school movement was that represented
at "Woodlands," Northfield, Eastcote, Harpenden, and
Alton, Hants., where sanatorium schools were seen. In all
these institutions children are taken in who require medical
or surgical treatment, and in some of them operating theatres
are provided. The children taken into these institutions
are generally cases requiring prolonged rest in bed,
during which period it is advisable that their education
should not be neglected. Such a school as this is also
required in Willesden, and will be one of the developments
which the Committee will consider as their knowledge and
experience of the open air school movement extends.
Mentally Defective Children.
At Kettering the open-air school process is applied to
mentally defective children, and the head teacher of this
school bore testimony to the advantages of open-air teaching
for the mentally defective. The mentally defective
child has got to be brought into the best physical state of
health, and taught by methods in which the brain and nervous
system generally is called upon to respond to sensory
impressions obtained by methods of teaching similar to
those adopted in the open-air school, that is, bathing, gardening,
nature study, manual training and so on.
The proposal now before the Committee to transfer the
mentally defectives in both Leinster Road and Leopold Road