Evening star., 1909-04-26
LOOKING TO VACATION
Preparing to Utilize the School
Fairgrounds.
ONLY $4,000 NOW NEEDED
Each Pupil Undertakes to Contribute
q Penny.
WHAT SUCCESS OF FUND MEANS
With Equipment and Supervision
Provided, Children Will Be
Kept Of Streets.

When the hot weather comes what is
going to happen to the, school play
grounds? Will they be left idle. while
an army of youngsters, not fortunate
enough to get away to that delectable
region described as "the country" play
about the streets? Or will they be used
for what they were intended-a place
where children can play and have COM
petent teacher watch over them to see
that they do not make their games too
strenuous?
The answer lies right now, to a great
extent, with the parents OF every one of
the more than $4,000 school children in
the District Of Columbia. Every child
has taken home a little envelope bearing
the words: voluntary Contributions for
School Fairgrounds by Public School
Pupils of the District of Columbia and
has probably asked for a penny or more.
and when questioned as to what the
teacher intended to do with 1t, has prob
ably replied: Give it to the Fairgrounds"
and let it go at that.
Now the real story of what the contri-
buttons will go for starts away back In
one of the committee rooms at the Capt.
tol, where the District asked for IS, 400
for the school Fairgrounds and got s., $50
for the equipment and supervision of
eighteen Fairgrounds already in operation
and six that would be added.
These, mind, are school Fairgrounds,
not the municipal Fairgrounds When
the board of education found itself. with
there was a dark cloud on the horizon
which seemed to hide all hope of carrying
into effect all the plans that had been
worked up for the benefit of the boys
n rrsr1x- Ntnya fyxyn NM c n
came change in the method of supervis-
ing the grounds. and now the schools
have their own Fairgrounds entirely under
their own charge, SO the board has au-
thorized the asking OF this contribution.
What Success Will Mean.
The teachers for the most part call it
penny contribution. A penny contri-
button. in fact, will raise somewhere in
the neighborhood of $575. But it is not
the parent who can give only penny
whom the schools want to reach through
this little envelope, 1t is the parent who
is going to put his child on Pullman
car and send him or her off to pretty
cottage by the sea, or to bungalow up
in the mountains, where every night they
will have to have a log fire. While those
children are having the joys of wood
nymph, down here in the city there will
be the other children who. If this contri-
putlon IL 1alluIe, VIII De ucp,Scu y.
the benefit of this playground plan and
will be running wild. perhaps. every day
shaping some of them toward the out
lines of an undesirable citizen.
A playground does have a good eject
on children, IL the reports of the In
structors are correct. The boys get their
first idea of what obedience to law means
through taking part in games in which
there are rules. Should he violate rule
once too often he is ostracized under the
teachers eye, and. for aught any one
knows, is prosecuted after the manner OF
boys while the teacher is not looking.
And that the children like the play
grounds, 1t is told of one boy who was
promoted and transferred from school
blessed with a playground and a play
ground teacher he tried to smuggle him
self back into his old school on the plea
that he had been reduced or had failed
and just to get back to the playground
where he had had such a good time.