Bulletin

who declared that the child had not been able to attend school for more than two weeks at a time for years. She requested that the child be placed in the open-air school. The superintendent responded to her request and says that in the past year the child did not miss a day and besides that made three grades in one year, and gained 25 pounds in weight.

In the same school was a boy who was unable to remain in the climate of Grand Rapids the previous year and spent the cold months in Texas. His parents were planning to send him to Texas again, but decided to try the fresh-air school. The superintendent reports that he attended school regularly all winter and made good progress in his studies.

The following story was told by one of the Chicago open-air schoolboys in a little autobiography which he wrote for the Open-Air Smile, a monthly periodical which was started by the children of the Chicago open-air schools:

I was born in a little gray house in a little country town near the city of Kiev. When I was 2 years old my downfall began. First I fell sick and had the scarlet fever, and as soon as I was cured of that I caught diphtheria, and after I was cured of that I caught pneumonia. I stayed in bed for a year and I never got out of bed for that long time. When I was 6 years old I came to America to the city of Chicago. Everybody had told us in Russia that gold was lying everywhere in the streets. I started to go to school at the Garfield School. Later, we moved to a different street, so I took a transfer to the Langland School, and later on we moved again, and then I came to the Goodrich School, which I attended a couple of years. When I was finally in the seventh grade I was sent out to Winfield tuberculosis camp. I stayed there six months, because I was charged with having tuberculosis. Those six months passed away so quickly that it seemed to me like six weeks. I think it was the happiest time of my life, staying out there. When I went home hardly anybody recognized me, because I was not the sick little fellow that I was when I went to Winfield, but a big, strong, and healthy boy with cheeks like roses. Later on I was put in the Foster open-air room, where I am now in the eighth grade.

The stories of practically all the children in open-air schools are of tragic interest. In the great majority of cases the improvement is marked, and the response by the pupil is most gratifying, not only to the teachers and to the parents, but the children themselves are conscious of the change.

The chief object of these schools has been to build up the health of children, in order that they may become more capable of assimilating and benefiting by the instructions given in the ordinary schools, and that they may thereby become better qualified for the duties of life.

The material in this chapter gives some indication of the results that have accrued directly to the children and to the teachers. There has been an indirect effect upon the community itself and upon the

general school problem, for the open-air school, in addition to its direct ministry to the children involved, has become an educational laboratory where more natural and less formal methods have been used and where experiments and systems have been tried which are directed to the needs of children. Wherever there is an open-air school will be found a group of people who are deeply interested in the school problem and who are determined that the public schools shall be as rich and fruitful as it is possible for the community to make them. They believe that it should be impossible for any pupil to sit through the seven or eight years required of every child, with his handicaps undiscovered and unrelieved and his school experience impaired or negatived by the presence of remediable defects. The immediate purpose of the open-air school will be realized only when all debilitated children now in the regular schools have a chance for fresh air, sufficient food, and a general hygienic life. The ultimate purpose is to keep the children from getting sick and anemic by emphasizing the rights of all to a sanitary and wholesome life.