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25
Open Air Schools.
Each passing year makes the demand for an Open Air School
more and more insistent. During the latter part of 1931 the
number of sub-normal children was greater than I have ever seen
before; so much so that a part of Thursday morning has been
established for children to attend for blood examination.
On visiting the schools, I have at times watched the children
coming out of school, and have been worried by the pallid faces
of these sub-normal children.
I am more than ever convinced that an Open Air School with
all that it connotes, is becoming an urgent Public Health matter
in this area, and unless a suitable site is secured before the district
is built over, the opportunity will be lost for good and all.
Never since I entered the School Medical Service have I been
so concerned about the well-being of some of these little folk it
is my duty to supervise from the health point of view.
Surely it is wise to take the long view. For practically all
of the children in our public elementary schools their Health is
their Capital, and for those whose health is not up to normal
standard, their best and in many cases their only means of earning
an adequate livelihood, is by means of their educational attainments
rather than by their physical attributes. For most of these
sub-normal children, that education which is to be their sheet
anchor is largely lost owing to broken attendance at the ordinary
school. What is the usual history? Firstly, the child finds that
the pace is too swift for its debilitated powers, which produces
more worry and further debility, and then a breakdown of some
kind. Then ensues a period of perplexity. How is the child to
get the necessary recuperative rest ? In most cases the family has
no surplus for Convalescent Homes and such things. In addition,
the extra strain of keeping the child interested, if not amused,
throughout the day is another irritant to the already fretted nerves
of an anxious and overworked mother. In the end, after a more
or less prolonged absence, the child returns to school, only to
find that the educational wave has inexorably passed on, and
the child finds itself floundering in the troubled waters of subjects
that it imperfectly understands, and vainly trying to rear an
educational superstructure on the shifting sands of imperfect
knowledge. This produces more trouble. Teachers are but human,
and it increases the burden of their work to have to give special
lessons to these educational laggards who are constantly in
difficulties.