Hints and suggestions on school architecture and hygiene : with plans and illustrations for the use of school trustees in Ontario / by J. George Hodgins.
- J. George Hodgins
- Date:
- 1886
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Hints and suggestions on school architecture and hygiene : with plans and illustrations for the use of school trustees in Ontario / by J. George Hodgins. Source: Wellcome Collection.
68/140 page 66
![“ 5. The school authorities direct that a brief intermission shall be given to the pupils at the end of each hour. During this intermission, marching, gymnastics and other suitable exercises are practised by the scholars under the superintendence of the teachers. This plan has many advantages to recommend it. The physical exercises tend to pro¬ mote the health of the pupils, and also greatly conduce to their comfort. “ 6. The frequent exercises in pure air, with open windows, assist the pupils in throwing off the injurious effects of imperfect ventilation and confinement in seats.' I,i 7. Under such a system as this, energetically carried out, may it not be claimed that the perfect health of pupils can be maintained with a less air space than 500 cubic feet?” 114. The United States Book on School Architecture gives a practical application to its remarks on this subject, as follows:— “ The amount of fresh air which is allowed to hospital patients is about 2,500 cubic feet each per hour. Criminals in French prisons have to content themselves with 1,500 cubic feet per hour. Assuming that we care two-thirds as much for the health of our children as we do for that of our thieves and murderers, we will make them an allowance of 1,000 cubic feet each per hour. Forty-eight children will then need an hourly supply of 48,000 cubic feet. Definite provision must therefore be made for withdrawing this quantity of foul air. No matter how many inlets there may be, the fresh air will only enter as fast as the foul escapes, and this can only escape through ducts intended for that purpose, porous walls and crevices serving in cool weather only for inward flow. What, then, must be the size of the shaft to exhaust 48,000 cubic feet per hour? In shafts two feet or more in diameter, the velocity of the current varies with the height and with the difference in temperature between the atmosphere inside and that outside. In one 20 feet high, vertical and smooth inside, with a difference in temperature of 20 degrees, the velocity will be about 2| feet per second, or 9,000 feet per hour ; that is, it will carry off 9,000 cubic feet of air per hour for every square foot of its sectional area. To convey 48,000 cubic feet, it must have a sectional area of 5| square feet.” 115. Speaking on this subject, Hon. John D. Philbrick, LL.D. (referred to in note on page 51), in a letter to Hon. Henry Barnard, LL.D., of Hartford, Conn., a veteran educationist, and the first United States Com¬ missioner of Education, says :— ‘ ‘ The highest pedagogical authority has decided that a school room . . . should not exceed 27 feet in length or 20 in width—the story being 14 feet in the clear—this is for 49 pupils of the highest class.! The King William’s Gymnasium in Berlin—one of the grandest school buildings in the world-—in the building of which the highest authorities in architecture and pedagogy co-operated, provides for pupils of the highest class (18 to 20 years of age) 10 6 square feet of floor per pupil. The rooms in our (Public Latin and English High School, Boston], furnish 20’0 square feet to a pupil, very nearly double that of the Prussian edifice. ”J *In regard to this question of the “recess” and the advantages of it, see paragraphs, numbers 131 to 140, inclusive. t See also paragraph number 94 (2), page 51. + Dr. Philbrick when he refers to the Gymnasium in Berlin as “one of the grandest school buildings in the world,” speaks with authority, as his Report on the school architectural display at the Vienna Exposition of 1873 will testify. It must be all that he has described it to be, as the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30480449_0068.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
