Gina Bellafante: Schools Beat Plagues with Outdoor Education, Why Can’t We?
This is a terrific article that appeared in the New York Times by the regular city columnist Gina Bellafante. It is about how schools beat plagues in the early 20th century by opening outdoor classes. The Times is making articles about coronavirus available for free, so it may not be behind a pay wall. You should see it for the wonderful historical photographs. If the bureaucracy could think creatively in 1915, why not now?
Here is the text:
In the early years of the 20th century, tuberculosis ravaged American cities, taking a particular and often fatal toll on the poor and the young. In 1907, two Rhode Island doctors, Mary Packard and Ellen Stone, had an idea for mitigating transmission among children. Following education trends in Germany, they proposed the creation of an open-air schoolroom. Within a matter of months, the floor of an empty brick building in Providence was converted into a space with ceiling-height windows on every side, kept open at nearly all times.
The subsequent New England winter was especially unforgiving, but children stayed warm in wearable blankets known as “Eskimo sitting bags” and with heated soapstones placed at their feet. The experiment was a CONTINUE READING: Gina Bellafante: Schools Beat Plagues with Outdoor Education, Why Can’t We? | Diane Ravitch's blog
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