Open Air Schools of the 1900s
blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk
blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk
Among many things that British got wrong, one was the refusal to call a place school if it did not have a permanent building neatly separated into classrooms and such. More than the learning outcomes, the infra that mattered more for British to recognize anything as a school and they went about closing down the informal "under the tree" schools in this manner. Of course as you go deeper you realize this policy was driven more by the corruption in the East India Company and British government where missionaries wanted funding from government to build "infra" in the same of schools.
Much later in 2005 or so James Tooley another British Economist in charge of World Bank aid to school system in India discovered similar trends and quit his job to promote low cost high quality private schools.
Indian government around that time brought an evil law called Right to Education and permanently killed this concept. Running an open air school in India might get you jailed today.
There’s a lot of pretty dubious claims these days about precolonial India due to BJP. E.g. the statistic that India was 20% of world’s GDP before Britain and 5% after. (The endpoint of 1947 just happens to coincide with the US and Russia becoming absolutely massive economies.)
I hope India can wash some of this off and get to a better place.
On a societal level, the most important thing for Indians was "Truth" and "Promise". Truth was the ultimate red line at an individual / group / societal level. So was "Promise". People adhered to both, without the need for any documentation or witnesses.
Today, the reason we see so much suffering in society, at so many levels, is because truth is missing. One never knows who is lying, twisting facts or misrepresenting.
One of the most revered figures in India, Lord Rama, is worshipped, not because he is skillful in capturing kingdoms or occupying lands, but because he is the epitome of absolute truth and adherence to a promise.
Hopefully, in the times to come, India, and the world goes back to these concepts. A society cannot be happy if it is not based on Truth and adherence to promise.
There's a nice Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on the topic: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative...
Imagine a "right to education" law that mandates that a school can not fill up empty classrooms even if it has capacity and even if it offering it to needy students for free. It is a complete looney beans land.
You aren’t owed shit regardless of what some communist at Stanford wants to word salad about.
Are you referring to the English Bill of Rights of 1689, the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776, or the later US package of Constitutional amendments which takes its name from the first and provisions from both the first and the second?
Because if you are referring to the last of those, you are so very, very wrong!
The Bill of Rights was largely inspired by the Magna Carta...
Let’s keep it up by defining rights as things that government is limited by. Not empowered by.
I had assumed you were referencing the American Bill of Rights, being a great example of negative liberties ("Congress shall make no law..."). I just found that confusing since the comment you responded to was talking about the British and Indian governments.
[0] https://forestschoolassociation.org/ [1] https://www.thenativeschool.com/forest-school-101 [2] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220105-how-asia-fell-in...
I also still vividly remember the feeling of being forced to go back inside after lunch period at as a kid (lunch was semi open-air, and after our meals we'd always play outside). It was a huge mood killer. Imagining having classes outside in the yard, under some trees now, that'd be quite nice.
Also a friend in Sheffield runs https://www.forestschools.com/ - they have a few of their own schools in the area, and then run training sessions for people that want to run their own.
Most of his training is in the UK, but it is a full time job for him and his team, so I can only assume either there are loads of forest schools opening up, or people just like doing the training and then apply the learnings to 'normal' school processes.
My kids school is a standard state school, but they all do one day a week 'forest school' from the woods that form part of the school grounds. I doubt they are on the 'forest schools' list.
450-500 in Denmark here's a good research study including impact on ongoing educational attainments: https://nexs.ku.dk/forskning/idraet-individ-samfund/krop-lae...
About 1000 in the US: https://naturallykatey.wordpress.com/2021/01/08/list-of-fore...
Plenty in the UK, Spain and France too.
There are more projects for early years education than later, and they very typically don't have websites or much digital presence.
When I homeschooling my sons, we went to zoos and museums and did a lot of hands-on stuff.
There was also a lot of reading, but not in place of hands-on learning.
1. https://wwmt.com/news/local/moving-forward-kazoo-school-offe...
They still closed for part of the time early in COVID, but quickly switched to partial in-person with significant outdoor time. I think it was effective, surely better educationally and socially than my younger’s elementary school that stayed closed for a far longer time.
Being in CA, that's easy year round due to milder weather.
That said, the effort was nothing close to outdoors all the time, which has significant challenges.
1. Divide into "capsules" where people could learn indoors but with half of the cohort - spread apart, windows open, masked, etc.
2. Learn outside with forms of this.
Youth groups, scouts, synagogues, etc all did the latter. I spent the better part of a year praying in a parking lot or a park with others. Entire communities were doing shared meals - just spread apart. The park across the street from my place had a lot of picnicking going on.
As an example, the local Planetarium rejigged to do outdoor events. They were so popular that the planetarium continues to do ~40% of each season's lineup outside.
When it rains, they wear galoshes and get suited up.
Forest schools tend to have a "learning through play" philosophy, at least the ones I'm aware of.
https://learningthroughplay.com/explore-the-research/the-sci...
I suspect they do well at socializing kids, and letting them figure things out for themselves. Definitely not doing some version of teaching to the test.
Other advantage: it stayed open during COVID.
Disadvantage: The smoke season in CA is a problem.
As far as the hotter areas in the South, there's probably some solution for that too.
You do need some sort of shielding from the sky, heatstroke is a thing, so's an absolute drenchpour that lasts about twenty minutes, usually in the afternoon.
I just remember walking my dog there daily and seeing kids.
On the topic there are a category of preschools in Sweden called "Ur och skur" which have most education outdoors.
Back in the 90s I know some primary schools in Sweden also had education outside, but I think that have changed with schools becoming more competitive lately.
Most kids should start working around 12 years old. The very motivated and intelligent can be identified by then and put into longer learning.
Those who start working should be able to go back to school if they have the desire and aptitude. Too many kids develop an intense hatred of school, caused by a combination of terrible teachers and poor quality peers. Experiencing more of the real world can provide an incentive to try hard in school before life brings them someplace else.
That really saddens me. From one perspective, nature is dying because nobody can be bothered to notice her (and thereby care about/for her) any more.
I think my kids get half or less as much recess time as I did in the same grades. Sucks.
Pleasently surprised at a little piece of history I was unaware of.
Source: have owned a 1910s-construction house on the national historic registry that didn’t have any insulation or central AC. We weren’t in a hot part of the country but still slept on the front porch about two weeks a year, when window AC in the bedrooms couldn’t keep up with the heat.
But you’re right, people also used them for the hottest nights too.
Wow, that is a loaded statement that certainly has not aged well.
Plus “inmates” has narrowed in meaning a bit, so that reads harsher than it was probably intended. That doesn’t help.