An open air school in 1957, Netherlands ⁣ In the beginning of the 20th century a movement towards open air schools took place in Europe. Classes were taught in forests so that students would benefit physically and mentally from clean air and sunlight.

In 1905, a health official from New York City spoke to the American Academy of Medicine and asked for changes to be made in the country’s schools. At the time, tuberculosis was common and people were afraid of it. “We need to ask school boards, superintendents, teachers, and school doctors to do everything they can to get rid of any factors that could make a child more likely to get tuberculosis while in school.” The speaker was shocked to hear that American classroom windows only opened halfway and that French-style windows should be put in right the first time to “let twice as much bad air out and twice as much good air in.” He said that every school should have a big playground and “advanced” ventilation in the classrooms. A “wise curriculum” would have “as much instruction outside as possible” and the classrooms would be cleaned every day.

S. Adolphus Knopf, a German-born tuberculosis expert who started the American Lung Association after the National Tuberculosis Association, gave the keynote speech. Like many other important people of his time, Knopf had a scientific philosophy that was influenced by eugenics. Knopf said that it was important to invest in young, healthy bodies to stop the spread of tuberculosis, an infectious disease that kills almost as many people as the flu. Knopf thought that by 1915, there should be “open-air schools” and “as much open-air instruction in kindergarten, school, and college as possible.”

Some parents wonder why school can’t be held outside, where the risk of Covid-19 spreading is lower. This is because schools have been closed and kids will have to learn online for months. Even though there are no big plans to do this in the United States right now, it has been done before. Early in the 20th century, when one in seven people in Europe and the United States died from tuberculosis, outdoor schools became popular, first in Germany and then all over the world. Doctors and people in charge of public health were worried that kids who spent most of their time inside were more likely to get tuberculosis. They also thought that living in small apartments and cities with too many people was unnatural and unhealthy because there wasn’t enough sunlight and fresh air. Knopf said that the solution was to move classes outside so that kids could “learn to appreciate fresh air.” There, the “tuberculous infant” wouldn’t “be a threat to his comrades.”

On August 1, 1904, the world’s first open-air school for “delicate children from poor families” opened in a pine forest in Charlottenburg, a wealthy town near Berlin. Bernhard Bendix, a paediatrician at Berlin’s Charité Hospital, and Hermann Neufert, a local school inspector, came up with the idea of a Waldschule. Adolf Gottstein, who was an epidemiologist and Charlottenburg’s chief medical officer, helped the men plan the school and get money from the city. The state was happy with the idea. Tuberculosis was a threat to German society, and the damage it did to children’s health made it a top priority for the whole country.

In 1904, there were 193.8 deaths from tuberculosis for every 100,000 people in Germany. (For comparison, during the Covid-19 pandemic, about 52 people die for every 100,000 people in the United States.) Experts in public health said that overcrowding, stuffy rooms, dirty linens, bed-sharing in working-class families, and spending too much time inside doing nothing were to blame. Paul Weindling, a Wellcome Trust research professor in the history of medicine at Oxford Brookes University in England, says that both doctors and the general public were very worried about tuberculosis. “There were many rules about social distance in different social settings, as well as attempts to control personal behaviour.”