Year: 1867




The American who visits the Grand Exposi-
ton, and wanders through the Champs de Mars,


will find therein established specimen of our
divine institution, the Public School-House. 1t
is true that the Massachusetts, Legislators,
with shrewd forethought vetoed the PROPOSE
ton TO show to the concentrated ingenuity OF
the world a structure so greatly boasted, but
so pregnant with glaring defects but more I'M
pulsive Illinois could not resist the temptation
60 thus eshihit the nursery of that knowledge
which gives power to the great Yankee nation,
and so the school-housc, with its glare OF light
direct into the eyes Of the unfortHnates who
may sit upon its thoroughly uncomfortable
seats, and with its utter absence of any system
Of ventilation, is challenging criticism three
thousand miles away from its native and ma
tural haunt We speak of these pecularities
"a actually existing, for otherwise the Ameri-
can school-house in Paris would be no fair
sample of that which it is intended to repre-
sent. The public schOol-house is n national
hobby, and incessmt riding of this hobby has
convinced the popular mind that it is absolute
ly perfect. The facts which our reporters tell
in other columns, concerning the sanitary con-


dition of the school-houses of this city, will
shake this popular confidence. Thorough in
specton of q large proportion of our public
schools, located in widely separated portions OF
the city, shows that not one single building
can be found wherein the occupants have not
been daily poisoned with foul air, through utter
want of any adequate system of ventilation
Sixty eighty, or one hundred children have been
packed into rooms capable of decently accom-
modating only one-half that number, and then
compelled to breathe the vitated air which
finds no way of escape from the over-crOwded
room. In some cases attempts have been made
60 provide way for the fresh air to get in, or
for the foul air to get out, but the architects
of these devices have not realized the import
ance of combining the two movements. In
most of the school houses the windows are de-
pended upon for the supply of fresh air, but
on damp or cold days it is manifestly unsafe to
have the draft from the windows precipitated di-
rectly upon the backs and heads of those pupils
who, 10y the faulty construction of the assembly or
recitation rooms, are placed upon level with the
window -sills In these vital points the more re-
Gently constructed school cdifces are no better
than the old ones Money has been lavishly
expended upon some of these houses, but not
a dollar devoted to that which should be in
sured TO every individual when he or she
enters any public institution-pure air. If the
question of cost is brought up as an objection
to remedying the evil which now exists in these
houses, it should be sufficient reply to say that
the health and perhaps the lives of two thou
sand teachers and two hundred thousand chill
dren are dependant upon reform. That the
complaints against an easily remeded evil are
not loud and imperative is owing to three
reasons |. Parents rarely or never visit
the public schools, and consequently have
no idea of what their children undergo III.
Teachers are one-third ignorant and two-thirds
helpless knowing that their retention in office
depends upon q Difference to status quo; III. Pri-
mary children are too young to realize their
danger, and when promoted to the grammar
department are so accustomed to foul air that,
finding themselves better off than formerly,
they rejoice rather than protest. Did parents
and teachers realize that twenty times per
minute the blood required an additional supply |
of oxygen, without which the whole body suffers
did they know that although the brain weighs but |
one-fortieth of the whole body, it receives one
fifth of all the blood flowing from the heart, |
and that at no time is decarbonizatiOn of the |
the blood required so especially as during the |
hours of study; could they realize that hstless-
ness, languor, irritabilty, want of appetite, and
inaptitudo for study, are necessary consequences
of impure aiT-peThaps the era Of reform might |