Now, is it to be expected that with our teachers themselves so ignorant of the first principles of healthy dietetics our students should know any better? Our whole system of eating is wrong. We eat anything and everything our tastes—often perverted and depraved—demand, and we never ask ourselves the question as to whether the food is good, or our methods of eating it wise and proper. In my chapter on the Indian and diet I discuss this question more thoroughly, but I refer to it in this connection as one of the great defects of our educational system.
2. My second proposition is, that we keep our students indoors all the time,—as a settled, established custom,—with occasional short periods out of doors, instead of reversing the matter and keeping them out of doors all the time, with occasional short periods indoors.
Why keep children or university students indoors? While in the winter climate of the East outdoor life is not as possible as it is in the balmy West, there certainly can be much more time spent out of doors than there now is. We pride ourselves upon our scholastic progressiveness, yet they do these things far better in Germany. The educational and medical authorities of Berlin have organized a forest school for the city children of the crowded districts of Berlin and Charlottenburg. In a wide clearing 150 children follow—out of doors—the usual procedure of school, delightfully varied with nature study at first hand. The hours of work are short, and fresh air and exercise are given a supreme importance. The children cook their own dinners at a camp-fire, and their desks and seats and shelter-sheds were made from the timber felled to form the clearing. At 1 o’clock they are all required to take an hour’s nap, for which each child is provided with a blanket and a reclining-chair.
This is a move in the right direction. Our schools cost the nation millions of dollars each year. Surely we have a right to demand that they give us health for our children in exchange, instead of ruining it in so many cases as they now do.
In Japan out-of-door schools are quite common, especially when the cherry and plum trees are in blossom.
In Los Angeles, California, a business college holds many of its class sessions out of doors, and I trust the time will come when this will be the rule in all schools, instead of the exception.
I am perfectly well aware that there is danger that these statements will be taken too literally. They must be taken as broad and general statements. My conception is that in our present condition we live indoors and go out of doors occasionally. I would have that proposition reversed. We should live out of doors and go indoors occasionally.
The same common sense and rational mode of reading my words must be applied to all that I say on out-of-door education. Naturally, I am not such a fool as to suppose that all educational or scientific or any other work can be done out of doors. Though I am not a college professor, and never shall be, though I am not a scientific expert, and never can be, though I am not many things that other men are, I know enough—have observed and seen enough—to know that delicate experiments of a variety of kinds need the most rigid indoor seclusion for their successful conducting. But this does not alter my general propositions, viz., that the health of students is of more importance than any and all education given in schools or colleges; that outdoor life is more conducive to the health of students than indoor life, and that, therefore, where possible, all education should be given out of doors.
AN ALEUT BASKET MAKER. THESE WOMEN MAKE THE MOST DELICATE BASKETRY IN THE WORLD.