No false modesty should deter the teacher from considering in detail the plans and furnishings of toilet and retiring rooms for the children. Much better would it have been had these been the subjects of more intelligent consideration and discussion in years gone by. In the estimate of a school by a practical educator many things which teachers sometimes note but little, if at all, often enter very largely into the judgment of the observer.

There are many old schoolhouses now in use which violate in their construction nearly all the canons of modern school architecture. Many of these old schoolhouses will stand for years to come. It is often the case that they can be greatly improved by inexpensive alterations-by changes in certain windows and doors, by the introduction of appliances for heating, ventilation, etc.

Sometimes a little artistic effect produced upon the exterior will greatly improve the appearance of an old building. Unsightly, weather-beaten cupolas can be made to assume more tasteful forms, or can be removed altogether. Old brick walls can be made to appear almost handsome, if painted a rich dark red color, with narrow pencilings of black.

The older the building, the greater is its need for an annual cleansing and renovation throughout. This is as necessary as the periodic house cleaning in a home. Let the teacher and the school officer, acting in concert, evolve intelligent plans for the expenditure of the available funds in securing for the children the benefits of schoolhouses intelligently planned, generously furnished, and kept always in good repair.

CHAPTER V

SCHOOL HYGIENE

Ventilation and Heating. - All who have read the old-time school novel of Locke Amsden will recall its forcible delineation of the unventilated schoolroom, and the almost fatal effects of foul air upon the schoolmaster's pupils.

In a later novel of graded school life, Roderick Hume, there is an amusing account of the principal's attempt to elucidate the subject of ventilation upon the occasion of a public gathering, and of an error from which he was rescued by the timely assistance of one of the teachers. This incident of Bardeen's clever story is related as follows:

"To enforce this last topic, he undertook to show them how soon the audience in the schoolroom would die if the ingress of fresh air were suddenly cut off. He had prepared the measurement of the room and the amount of air breathed per hour by each individual; so he put these figures upon the board, and proceeded to calculate how long it would take to convert all the oxygen present into carbonic acid. With customary self-reliance he had omitted the precaution to work the problem out beforehand, and he could not see why it was that, instead of an hour or two, it would take weeks to approximately exhaust the oxygen. He began to flounder, the people present to giggle, and the scholars to wonder what could be the trouble. Just then Miss Lowe slipped along the desk, under his eye, a piece of paper on which was written:

Air 1 per cent CO2 will not support life,

"No one else had seen the motion, but Roderick caught the hint as a drowning man clutches at a straw.

"I see that you smile,' he said, 'and well you may. It is by this sort of reasoning that builders deceive themselves and murder their occupants. If it were true, as I have assumed, that air can be breathed until all the oxygen is converted into carbonic acid, the danger of ill ventilation would be comparatively small. But what is the fact? One half per cent of carbonic acid produces headache, 1 per cent faintness, 1 per cent numbness, and 2 per cent death. These are the figures for you and for your children to remember, and I implore you never to reason that air can be breathed over and over till all its oxygen is exhausted.'

"The people remarked, as they left the schoolroom, that Roderick was an orator as well as a scholar. By no other way than by pretending for the moment to be himself misled could he so forcibly have impressed upon them the minute proportion of carbonic acid which makes the air deadly."

So much has been written concerning the necessity for adequate ventilation of schoolrooms, that it is unnecessary here to argue the case.

"For schoolrooms," says Dr. C. Gilman Currier, in his recent work on Practical Hygiene, "the lowest standard amount of fresh air to be supplied every hour for each pupil is set at 1800 feet. This is at the rate of 30 cubic feet per minute. Some schools receive twice this amount of fresh air for each scholar. A number of schools have 45 cubic feet a minute allowed for every child that the room can accommodate. Unfortunately, very many schools are exceedingly deficient in this respect. Where the pupils are not children, 45 cubic feet per minute ought to be the lowest amount supplied for each individual."

It must be remembered that children are far more susceptible than adults to injury from atmospheric poisons; and that such injury often acts slowly and almost imperceptibly upon the system, its cumulative effects being exhibited after

a considerable period of time, and when it is too late to repair the harm that has been done to their systems.

Among the appliances of the present time to secure the proper ventilation of schoolrooms are improved systems of heating, by means of which warm, fresh air is admitted to the schoolroom, and shafts for carrying off the impure air. However beneficial these appliances may be, they must not be relied upon exclusively.

"Nothing," says T. M. Clark, ❝can take the place of aeration by means of open windows. Artificial ventilation, though required for changing the air when the windows are necessarily closed, is insufficient, even under the best of circumstances, unless the room is from time to time thoroughly refreshed and purified by the sweep of the free winds through all its windows widely opened.

"Such an atmospheric washing should be secured three or four times daily in all weathers; at recess, particularly, it should be insisted on, banishing teachers and pupils from the room meanwhile, if necessary. They will more than make up in the brightness of the remaining hours for the time they must lose. Immediately after school, morning and afternoon, the process should be repeated for a longer time; and just before school, also, if the room can be warmed again quickly enough.

"No fixed transom lights or immovable arched heads should be permitted to exist over the windows, subtracting from the most useful portion of the opening. The large, heavy sashes common in the more pretentious buildings should be rehung with rawhide cord or copper chain, if necessary, and pulleys with friction rollers, balanced so as to move with a touch; while in new buildings the size and weight of the sashes should be carefully kept down, no sash being over 3 feet wide or 14 inches thick. Eyes must be fixed to the upper sashes, and a pole and hook furnished to handle them with, or, still better, cords fastened to each sash hanging within easy reach, and pulleys to raise or lower them at

will; and the window frames must be perfectly made, with cherry beads, and looked after from time to time to see that all is in working order.

"Besides the general airings in which all the windows are thrown wide open, it is possible and very desirable during three fourths of the year to keep some of them partly open. If they extend to the ceiling, the upper part, at least, of the south windows, in rooms properly supplied with other fresh air inlets, may be pretty widely opened in the coldest weather without causing a noticeable draught. Such openings, if on the leeward side, often interfere with the action of extraction shafts, by drawing to themselves the current of escaping air; but this is of no importance in the buildings we are considering.

"There are times, however, when windows cannot be opened, and means must be provided for insuring the withdrawal of the respired air from the room in some other way." Concerning the use of air shafts for ventilating schoolrooms this architectural critic comments upon a very common misunderstanding of their powers and properties:

"Nothing is more common or more absurd," says he, "than to see rough ventilation flues, 4 by 8 inches, built in walls without any provision for heating them, under the supposition that they will 'draw'; or to see tiny pipes, from the foulest places, introduced into chimneys which are cold half the time, in the expectation that the 'forced draught,' which is imagined to exist there, will suck up and carry off deleterious vapor as fast as a square yard of filth can generate it.

"All talk of 'forced ventilation' by means of a shaft without fans or steam jets is misleading. The action of every such shaft or chimney, warmed or not, is precisely analogous to the movement of two boys balanced on a see-saw. If their weight is equal, neither moves; if one is slightly heavier, he descends and the other ascends, but his motion would not be fairly described by saying that he was 'forced into the air.'