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Dharampal a student of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi wrote a book called "A beautiful tree" which documented at great lengths how British administration destroyed the local schooling system in India which at that time had managed to produce higher literacy rate (even among working low status masses) than England.

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.

That literacy rate claim is questionable. By 1830, the literacy rate among English men was 60%. Dharampal’s book is based on British surveys of India during that same period, and don’t show anything approaching those rates: https://www.indica.today/long-reads/remembering-dharampals-s... (“Campbell’s report reveals that there were 533 schools in the Zillah of Bellary, in which 6338 boys received instruction, out of a total male population of 438,673.”).

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.)

How did they measure literacy without a nationalised curriculum? Did the British system also introduce English?
And on top of that, they introduced architecture that is currently exacerbating heat island effect. The native architecture was designed for the local climate and didn't do that.

I hope India can wash some of this off and get to a better place.

The British have messed up a lot in India. Their aim was to break the backbone of Indian cultural thought and values, and unfortunately, they have succeeded in doing that, to the detriment of whole of India. Fortunately, the likes of Swami Vivekananda were instrumental in reviving the national consciousness of India, paving the way for Freedom.

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.

It’s funny how the concept of rights have been twisted from things the government can’t do to you to things they must do to you.
It sounds like you're talking about the distinction between positive versus negative liberties as defined by Isaiah Berlin. I'm not sure the original concept of rights was ever limited to just negative liberties, i.e. freedom from government.

There's a nice Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on the topic: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative...

I am not OP but what you are discussing is much higher level stuff. Problems of "rights" in India are totally twisted and far more primal that a typical western mind wont be able to grasp at all.

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.

I’m talking about the “Bill of Rights” which is a description of government limitations. It was a completely novel concept in terms of rule. And now we talk more about what you’re entitled to for existing.

You aren’t owed shit regardless of what some communist at Stanford wants to word salad about.

> I’m talking about the “Bill of Rights” which is a description of government limitations. It was a completely novel concept in terms of rule.

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!

Bill of rights is/was not a novel concept. It has roots in many older systems in Europe.
Thousands of Forest Schools in Europe now; a huge growth sector spreading globally.

[0] https://forestschoolassociation.org/ [1] https://www.thenativeschool.com/forest-school-101 [2] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220105-how-asia-fell-in...

What an awesome movement. Most of my best memories at school as a kid were when I was outdoors.

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.

Thousands? I would like that, but on the map [0] I see only a couple in england. Where is the rest?
Not sure what the data source is for that map - but in my small part of Norfolk I know of 4 forest schools my kids could go to - plus if you click on the lower of the 2 blue dots over the map of the UK, it opens out to show you 61 schools.

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.

Around 2000 in Germany: https://www.bvnw.de/natur-und-waldkindergaerten/deutschland

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.

Well, I think a kindergarten is not the same as a school and as far as I understand the concept, it just means they are close to a forest and spend more time in it (which is something good already and I have nothing against solid houses).
I am reminded of commentary I have seen about how if we taught baseball like we teach science, no one would play. They would study it in books for years without being allowed to play at all. No one would be excited about it.

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.

Were there examples of schools trying to follow something similar during the peak of covid lockdowns? Such a simple solution if you think about it.
Yes, a school near my parents' house in Michigan did this! They built several large outdoor pavilions and also have a clearing in the adjoining woods that they hold classes in. I visited in the dead of winter and sure enough, there were about 100 kids out in the freezing cold all day long. Even from a distance, you could see that they were bundled up in multiple layers to keep warm. I was back recently and they still do outdoor classes, but I think it is only for a portion of the day now as I didn't see nearly as many students outside at a time.

1. https://wwmt.com/news/local/moving-forward-kazoo-school-offe...

My older kid’s school was founded in the 1915 respiratory pandemic era and had a significant outdoor component for the intervening 100 years.

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.

Not entirely but my kids' K-8 has pushed some of their classes outside (mostly science) to their local "woods" (a part of the land parcel of the school that's not developed and has trees, a pond and some work tables). Also a lot of effort was done during the pandemic to do events outside (like music) in the quad area. Also all meals have been outdoors (indoor not possibly during pandemic) - I remember this being the case even when I was in school in this area.

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.

This is exactly what schools did in Israel. There were two different approaches that were juggled depending on the situation - but all schools did this. The culture already existed somewhat - since varying classes have always been outside.

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.

There are open air preschools in the Bay Area. The weather being temperate year round helps a lot as well.
Fwiw, I send my pre-schooler to one. They often go by the lower-case name "forest school", although there is an official Forest School in the east bay, and frankly the outdoors that the kids spend time in is more of a cross of beach and park, less forest.

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.

If Scandinavian babies can sleep in the cold, I think our kids be lectured in it, no? https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21537988

As far as the hotter areas in the South, there's probably some solution for that too.

Fans. Possibly misters near the fans if you want to splurge. There's a lot of restaurants with open-air sections here in New Orleans that do this.

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.

The open air day cares in my hometown in Sweden never closed afaik. The ones in the pildammsparken park of Malmö, anyone noticed if they closed during covid?

I just remember walking my dog there daily and seeing kids.

Daycares did not close during covid in Sweden.

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.

Something I’ve noticed in this thread is that Californians think they’re the only people with nice weather.
You really don’t need anything special for a high quality school. Protection from the elements, a communication tool, and students who want to learn or can be punished (such as expelling) if they don’t. All of the tech this or that is totally unnecessary.

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.

Except for a small handful of Waldorf schools, there seem to be precious few schools that will give my son significant outdoor time. In fact, I'm told that WA state won't even accredit fully outdoor schools (though I haven't checked this myself).

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.

Post-NCLB, already-low amounts of recess time in many public elementary schools dropped a bunch and never rebounded. Schools are desperate to show the required improvement YoY in math and reading, so they cut time for things like music and recess to get more time for those subjects.

I think my kids get half or less as much recess time as I did in the same grades. Sucks.

This fixes myopia as well
If by "fixes" you means that there is evidence that time outdoors slows/halts it, yes. But you can't just spend time under a tree until you no longer need glasses.
Yes, that is what I meant. I probably should have been clearer in meaning it fixes our behaviours that seem to unnecessarily contribute to factors that cause myopia.
Reading the headline, I thought this was going to refer to the open layout school campuses similar to what is common in the Southwest US.

Pleasently surprised at a little piece of history I was unaware of.

Vaguely related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedge_school
Many turn of the century homes have large “sleeper porches” as the science of the day thought there were health benefits to sleeping outside. TB was an issue back then.
They also get so fucking hot in the summer that, If there’s no breeze to drive air up-and-out through the attic and give you good cross-breezes through various important airways in the house, it’s cooler to sleep outside.

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.

Does your home have working windows and are they double hung sash windows? The intent was the bottom sash would be opened on the cool side of the house and the upper sash on the hot side. This would create an airflow of cooler air entering and warmer air exiting. Well placed fans would help create airflow.

But you’re right, people also used them for the hottest nights too.

Yeah, the layout of the house and lots of huge, openable windows could get you pretty far in terms of keeping it comfortable (most modern houses cannot do that, and are horrible even in moderate temps without AC) but if the breeze was weak and temps got past 90F nothing would help much. You could run a window AC non-stop all night and keep it close to 80, maybe, but that was still too uncomfortable to make it worth the insane electric bill that would follow (no insulation, original single-pane windows, no modern mostly-airtight envelope in the walls—I do mean the AC unit would run all night). Without that option we’d probably have had more like 5-6 patio-sleeping weeks per year, instead of 1-2.
Really nice article!
"for certain children who are inmates of one of its schools for the mentally defective deaf."

Wow, that is a loaded statement that certainly has not aged well.

It’s just a couple steps behind on the euphemism treadmill, is all.

Plus “inmates” has narrowed in meaning a bit, so that reads harsher than it was probably intended. That doesn’t help.

Inmates describes most public school children pretty well though. You got your locked doors, your tall fences, your armed guards, and a limited time to spend in the yard…err playground.
It's cheaper if you don't need to provide classrooms or textbooks for the "invalid" children. Just let them freeze to death out in the forest.